Much earlier in the year I wrote about organizing. In that writing I discussed how each month of the year we were going to pick a few rooms to focus on, so by the end of the year we had at least went through everything once. So far, that is going ok, but I am feeling that sometimes I am just going through the motions. Am I missing something that would make organizing more purposeful?
Then, I began to think about it. Organizing is not the same thing as paring down or getting rid of things. You can have a ton of stuff, and you can have it organized very well so it is easy to get to and is nicely stored for safe keeping. But, until you start eliminating things, or processes, or unnecessary steps, you are not simplifying. So, a question you have to ask yourself is this: is my purpose to organize what I have, simplify what I have, or both?
Another word that sometimes gets thrown into this topic is minimalism. Like the word implies, it is an idea that you live with less things, less activities, and so on. Minimalism can include simplifying, but if you simplify something it doesn’t have to mean you are a minimalist.
So, after having these thoughts I realized that I am organizing most rooms but I am not getting rid of anything. Organizing can be a good thing, but ultimately I would love to be able to get rid of things that we don’t need. I think that we have tried to do that when we are going through rooms, but it doesn’t seem to happen very much. I am hoping that as we move forward we can focus on eliminating stuff, and then organizing what remains. To me, that would make for a more efficient use of our time and resources.