What Does "Organized" Mean?

Julie Morgenstern, organizing and time management expert, defines organization as how a space functions rather than how it looks. If you can find what you need when you need it and you are comfortable with the way your space looks, then you're organized!

I once told a client that I stored my weekly grocery store circulars on top of my microwave. She exclaimed, "You mean you don't have them organized?" I replied that they were, indeed, organized. They were current (new circulars replaced old ones, which were recycled) and I could find them when I needed them. Just because they were in sight didn't mean that they weren't organized. She breathed a sigh of relief upon hearing this. She already had a great system for her mail (all outgoing mail was propped against the TV and was placed in the mailbox when she went out the door each morning) but thought that since the mail was out in plain view that it wasn't "organized". It is, in fact, a great system for tracking incoming and outgoing mail, as long as she doesn't mind looking at it, which she doesn't.

Being organized doesn't mean that your home looks like Martha Stewart's or the inside of a Container Store catalog. Homes are for living and offices are for working. If they're never messy and out of order, you're probably not living or working! The secret is to have systems and processes in place that allow you to find what you need when you need it and easily return it when you're finished using it. Anything beyond that (pretty baskets, decorative file cabinets, etc.) is just icing on the cake.

And speaking of cake, I think I'll go dirty a knife, fork and plate and enjoy a slice, comfortable in the knowledge that I have a system to wash, dry and return them to their homes when I'm finished! After that, of course, it's 30 minutes on the treadmill :-) which I can find because it's not buried under two weeks worth of dirty laundry! More on that later!