The Clutter Connection

How Your Personality Type Determines Why You Organize the Way You Do

Cassandra Aarssen

• Publisher: Mango
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781633538573
• Topic: Persönliche Entwicklung
• Subtopic: Zeitmanagement

Get Organized, Be More Productive, and Finally Understand the Why Behind Your Clutter

"...realistic organizational ideas that are geared towards your own personal style and functional needs. I highly recommend this book."? Amazon review

#1 Best Seller in Time Management, Home Improvements, Cleaning, Caretaking & Relocating, and Small Homes & Cottages

The host of HGTV's HOT MESS HOUSE helps you know your habits, declutter your space, and discover your unique organizing personality type and strategies for a more productive and clutter-free life.

An organization book for diverse habits. "You're not messy, you just organize differently". The Clutter Connection examines and explains the correlation between brain types and how they directly relate to organization and clutter. Cassandra Aarssen smashes the stereo–type that some people are "naturally messy" and offers readers insight and real-life solutions based on their unique personal organizing style. The Clutter Connection will help you get organized, be more productive and finally understand the why behind your clutter.

Individualized real life organizing. Organizing isn't one size fits all. Let go of the preconceived and conventional notions of what organization looks like and finally discover what type Clutterbug you are. With self-awareness comes happiness, personal growth and lasting change.

The Clutter Connection examines:

• The four different organizing styles and how they relate to each other
• How motivation and happiness can be directly affected by our space
• The "3P's"?Productivity, procrastination and perfectionism and how they are connected to your unique organizing style
• How you can finally become clutter-free simply by knowing yourself better

Also read Cas Aarssen's other best selling home organizing books, Real Life Organizing, Cluttered Mess to Organized Success, and The Declutter Challenge.

I’ll never forget the day I discovered I was not, in fact, some sort of organizing genius. After years of struggling with my own clutter and mess, I had finally stumbled upon a system I could actually use and maintain long-term. Gone were the traditional detailed and micro-organized solutions I had tried so hard to emulate from television shows and various Pinterest posts. After years of feeling guilt and shame for not being able to use these complex systems, I realized that my brain just didn’t work that way. My brain is full-on ADHD, and I don’t have the patience or the self-discipline to open a lid or find the right compartment when putting things away. As soon as I’m done using something, my brain has already moved on to the next thing, so putting stuff away properly is always the last thing on my mind. I need easy solutions that take zero thought and even less effort to maintain. This ADHD girl needs fast and simple organization.

I joyfully donated the dozens of pretty matching bento-box-style containers that just never worked for me, and I even gave away that crazy expensive paper filing system I had ordered online. In their place were pretty open baskets, complete with simple labels, allowing me to literally toss my things back into their home when I was done using them. I was totally convinced that I had discovered the Holy Grail of organizing solutions. Being less organized was actually making me more organized. It sounds insane, but shifting my perspective of how an organized space was supposed to look actually made me a more organized person.

It was this new perspective that convinced me I was some sort of an organizing super genius. I started sharing my newfound wisdom with anyone who would listen. I would enthusiastically claim that most organizing systems were just way too complicated, and even though they were great in theory, the average person just couldn’t…or wouldn’t keep them up long-term. I honestly believed that most people fell into the same category as me, despite the fact that almost every solution seen in magazines, on television, or in stores was tailored toward a more detailed sort of organizer.

The truth was, my husband had no issues using traditional detailed systems and thought my new simple systems were a little half-baked. I thought that was his total perfectionist talking, and I dismissed his objections out of hand. Surely that was the opinion of the few, not the many. When I shared my new lazy system with my messy friends and family, I was super excited to learn that they all felt the same way, and the simple approach was now working for them too. I was completely enamored with my new perspective and insight on clutter. The majority of organizing systems were created solely for the personality type of the minority of the population!

My lifelong struggle with being messy finally made sense. Truth be told, I thought I was really onto something. I was convinced that the whole world was trying to force themselves into one organizational style, when in fact, there was more than one way to organize. My “stick it to the man” approach to life was finally paying off and, high on fumes from dollar store plastic containers and chalkboard labels, I launched my own organizing business with the enthusiastic intent of blessing the world with my newfound expertise and wisdom. To my delight, my “less is more” approach to organization was actually a huge hit…for a while.

All good things come to an end I guess.

Fast forward one year, and I’m standing in a client’s home office as she sheepishly explains that the paper system I designed for her “just isn’t working.” I held in my tears (and thankfully resisted the urge to throat-punch her), as this was the THIRD time in as many weeks that I’d come back to redesign her space. Did I mention that my redesigns were all pro bono? Yeah, in my organizing arrogance, I had declared to all of my clients that, if they were not 100 percent satisfied, I would redesign the space for free until they were. I was now seriously regretting that promise.

Walking into that third visit, I believed that this client was just simply lazy. The first system I created for her huge piles of paperwork was a simple basket system, similar to the one I used in my own home. One basket for bills, one for receipts, one for current clients, and so on. No extra micro-sorting into small categories such as “Electricity” and “Gas,” just one macro-organized pile of mixed-up “Bills” in a pretty basket. Her reaction to my “genius” simple organizing solution was less than enthusiastic.

“Nothing is even really organized,” she gasped in horror as she surveyed the rows of pretty matching baskets labeled with simple categories such as “Home,” “Manuals,” and “Taxes.” She insisted that she couldn’t find anything at all and that it was in fact, less organized than the mountains of paper piles that she had started with. I assured her that this system had worked for all of my previous clients and that she needed to simply “get used to it.” A week later, she informed me that she would never get used to it and that she needed a much more detailed system. She craved order and perfection. I was completely shocked. Order and perfection were not my friends. Apparently, not everyone was made for my simple and easy organizing system after all.

Her redesign used filing cabinets instead. I made her a traditional filing system, complete with color-coding for all the hundreds of detailed categories and adorable tiny labels for her hoard of papers. I sorted…for days…and created a very orderly and traditionally perfect paper filing system. I even made her a little printout directory and quick-find guide for her files. I thought it was overkill, but she was thrilled. She was a perfectionist, through and through, and I had created a “perfect” organizing system for her paperwork.

I left her home resigned to the fact that some people really do love the traditional organizing systems and, therefore, there must be two different ways to organize a space; simple or detailed. These two systems were completely dependent on the person’s personality. Traditional “type A” personalities (competitive, highly organized, ambitious, perfectionist) needed traditionally detailed systems, while “type B” personalities (such as myself) needed a more laid-back and easy-to-use organizing solution.

One week later, I was back in her office for a third redesign because she couldn’t, and I quote, “put anything away” with the new system. She had pulled dozens of file folders out of the filing cabinets and spread them out on every surface, including her desk, the sofa, and even the floor. Embarrassment flushed her face as she scanned her messy office and whispered, “This just works best for me, I need to see my papers. I can’t bear to put them in the filing cabinets, I’ll forget I even have them. I’m just a messy person, I guess. Maybe I’m just too lazy to ever be organized.”

This is when realization hit me like a freight train to the face. She wasn’t lazy or messy. This incredible woman standing before me was the opposite of lazy in every way. She had her master’s degree, her law degree, and had even recently opened her own law firm. She loved to cook, sew, and paint in her spare time. Laziness and disorganization were not the reasons her office was drowning in paper clutter. She was not messy, she just organized differently.

I should have realized the difference earlier because, in my own battle with clutter, I had also resigned myself to the idea that I was just a naturally messy person. I had spent the first twenty-eight years of my life believing the lie that I was just not good at cleaning and organizing. In...