So really, before we ORGANIZE, should we be looking instead at DECLUTTERING? I am proposing right now that although many people would say "what's the difference?", that in fact they are entirely different concepts.
For example, if I were to try to organize my bedroom closet, I would find:
- new clothes
- old clothes
- sports clothes
- sports equipment
- knitting stuff
- sewing machine and bag of material
- old board games
- box of old cds and movies
- pictures that didn't go with the new decorating scheme
- some old papers and books from school
- and more clothes that I will never wear again
That's a pretty big and varied list (yes, my closet is reasonably big). But it's pretty disorganized, and about 1/2 of the stuff I haven't touched in months/years. It's time to organize. Which, what I'm trying to say, means that I will declutter my closet first, then I will have a much better chance of creating an organized closet where I can find things (ie, not everything piled on top of each other).
I've been reading a great website which has a ton of information to help you get in the right mindset for uncluttering your life, and then getting it organized. Like this blog entry about what to do with forgotten closet items ... we save boxes and boxes of old belongings for a reason, but often they are left in closets or basements and never thought of again. If we happen upon them, do we again just blindly 're-organize' them? Or do we take a closer look, and look at the impact of decluttering our lives ... sometimes that means leaving old memories behind, and making room for new ones.
