Are You Organized 'Enough'? {Tips on setting realistic and reasonable Organization Standards}

As a Professional Organizer, I am often asked if my own home is super organized, or if I have rigid expectations for my family. New acquaintances often assume that due to my chosen career, it must be the case that our home is always immaculately neat and tidy. Sometimes, they joke that they don’t want me to come over to their house because it probably won’t measure up to mine.

If you were able to get a sneak peek into our home on a random day, you’d likely observe that I am most definitely not what you’d call a ‘neat freak’….but, nor am I a slob or clutter bug, either.

My personal goal is to keep our home organized just ‘enough’ to promote an environment for our entire family to thrive in our current season of life.

While I do practice what I preach by having an assigned ‘home’ for all our belongings to be stowed, (read, A place for everything’ for more) not everything is ALWAYS in it’s proper place ALL the time. (It sure looks/feels nice when it is though – wink, wink!!)

I strive to set up reasonable expectations that allow for all of us to both respect one another in keeping a relatively tidy environment based on personal clutter thresholds, yet have the ability to also feel that our home is a haven to simply retreat from the world and kick back and relax as well. I want our home to be a place where maintaining just the right amount of order allows us to feel peaceful as well as productive, as well as a place where a little bit of mess is okay in order to allow some extra time and energy to just play.

So, how do you know if your home is organized ‘enough’?

The state of your space becomes a problem when it frequently impedes your ability to live a peaceful, low-stress life and/or inhibits your ability to achieve personal or professional excellence. It is also a problem when it begins to impede on other peoples ability to perform their personal best or live a low-stress, peaceful life when sharing a home or work space.

Every family member in your household will likely have varying clutter ‘thresholds’. Some folks don’t mind at all if they are surrounded by clutter, and it does not seem to impede in their ability to lead a happy and successful life. Others, however, feel visually assaulted and overwhelmed by clutter and do not have the ability to focus and function to their best ability when surrounded by clutter and chaos.

Some people would rather relax a bit before attempting to be productive or cleaning/tidying up after a busy or active day, others simply cannot physically relax until their environment is clean and tidy.

Some people are more task focused, others are more relationally focused. Neither are wrong (and we certainly need both traits to be productive as well as connect with one another!) – they are just different . We need to be mindful of where we might need to extend either a little more effort, or a little more grace toward achieving that ‘good enough’ state.

Whether you live in a shared space as a family in a home, or share space as room-mates or co-workers, it’s important to be mindful and respectful of others personal thresholds and thoughtfully consider how your habits may be impacting others. Work on developing a strategy that can allow for both tendencies to thrive.

If you find that you (or others) often feel generally over-whelmed by the build up of clutter/chaos, or stress is high due to constantly loosing or looking for things or there are rooms in your home that cannot be used or enjoyed as they were intended due to clutter/debris, it’s likely that you’re not quite organized enough.

On the flip side, maybe you might be striving to be ‘too organized’ if you’re often over-whelmed at feeling compelled to keep the environment at a certain orderly state or you’re consistently causing others around you to be stressed and unable to relax in your shared space due to always attempting to get them to maintain your un-realistic expectations.

You’ll know you’re organized just enough if you all recognize that life flows relatively smoothly and you can find things without too much effort if you need them. The rooms in a home that are organized ‘enough’ have a distinct purpose and you can use them as intended. If shared spaces and responsibilities promote both peace and flexibility in order to thrive and enjoy life together, then your home is likely organized enough for your individual family.

You’ll likely find that your standards and thresholds of desired order in your home will ebb and flow naturally in different seasons of life – especially life with babies and toddlers vs. life as a single person or an empty-nester!!

It is also not uncommon to occasionally have a lower threshold of tidy-ness for no particular reason other than feeling generally ragged or run-down due to an unexpected challenge that distinctly depletes your energy and you simply need some time to just rest in order to re-fuel your motivation/determination. If, however, you or a family member observes that is happening with high frequency, it might be a good idea to step back and evaluate if what is causing those re-curring feelings can be addressed in other pro-active ways.

One final word: Make it your goal to organize for success, not just to impress.
In other words, try not to compare your personal organizational standards against anyone else. Choose your own standards based on your current season of life and what you and your individual family requires to achieve peace and success, rather than setting standards in order to ‘keep up’ or impress someone else. “Comparison is the thief of joy.” Your home is certainly the number one place where you want JOY to thrive!