So I've started on reorganizing the room, and so far, after breaking a table and creating a miniature flood in the room (I could literally sink my fingers into half an inch of water all over the floor!) which destroyed some paper-based things that were on the floor, I have lived to say that I did not expect organizing to be so...dramatic.
I would post up photos of the flood if I actually had pictures, but there's just something about having a table break, crash into the floor, knock over a whole bucket of water, and seeing the fast moving flood of water quickly being absorbed into all sorts of things, that makes you just not think of stopping to take a picture.
This is all I have to show from the incident:
Yes, that's a part of the table that broke.
It doesn't look like much here, but this whole board was not connected to the table before this. However, with the help of my amazing househelper, we managed to kinda fix it back together. But as it is right now, any random kick to this board holding the table up would send it crashing down again. I suppose it's a good excuse to get rid of the big fella...
But even after the events of the past week, I'm still more than ever determined to keep going at the goal of a beautiful organized home! :)
So it's Sunday, and today's the day I set goals for the week ahead so that I don't lose sight (and motivation) of the end-goal. This week I'm going to be continuing on the girls' room. I'm gonna have to tackle a couple of big things including:
Our amazing(-ly messy) open-concept wardrobe...
I know it looks like a mess, but what you see is basically a system that doesn't work.
What especially annoys me in this area are the bags that are put into a flimsy cloth-mesh sort of laundry basket we bought from Ikea. As you can (kinda-sorta) see here:
The mesh laundry bag is actually pretty, but the assualt that the bags have on it obviously shows a wrong choice of container! We can't access the bags. We can't even see what we have! And just thinking about digging through that pile to find a matching bag is absolutely stressful! We're going to have a get a better system for this.
I'm thinking drawers.
Other things that you see in the main picture are a futon that we don't use at all (one of my mum's random "in case we have guests" buys), and my new Nike shoes that I bought from the Outlet Mall in Aurora, Illinois! :) But these are not supposed to be here! :( So the futon and the shoes will have to make their way to some other part of the house where they'll belong. There's also a random mix of other things stored in the strangest of containers back there - including a whole bag of old belts my mum used to have, my fencing gear, and some other things that I'm sure are to give me the "Oh! I never knew/forgot I had this"-es!
I'm not even going to show you what the insides of the drawers look like now.
Yes, for the sake of your heart.
This table will also need some sort of new life:
Yes, this is also the one I broke.
Sometime yesterday, my sisters and I agreed to get rid of this table and find a piece of furniture for a vanity area instead. I'll have to think about what to do with all those files and random things all over it though. Getting rid of the table doesn't make what it currently houses disappear.
This tall shelf by the toilet will also need to be cleared out.
I technically once did develop a system for this shelf (I'm especially proud of my Language shelf), but looking at the state of it, we're obviously lacking space for our toiletries. I also have a ton of things from my travels and from friends who buy me the most amazing stuff...will need to find a space for them too. Prolly going to be giving/selling some of those books/items away.
I might embark on a new project in another area of the house tomorrow as well. Really looking forward to it.
Organizing thought of the day:
In psychology, we have a term for blame-naming called the "fundamental attribution error" which basically means that you blame a circumstance or behaviour on the intrinsic nature of a person. For example, in the case of a messy environment, you choose to say "Oh, he/she is a messy person" instead of considering the environmental factors that might have encouraged this behaviour. I used to think this way a lot about my family which caused me a lot of discouragement, but as I researched into psychological illnesses such as hoarding behaviours, and in observing the lifestyles of messy people, I've found that the causation may well be the other way round - that it is not the person that creates the mess in the environment, but the environment that might encourage the person to be messy.
Okay, let's make it simple. Let's say I put you into two environments - a neighbourhood coffeeshop and a 6-star hotel. Immediately, as you think about these places, you can very quickly know what sort of behaviours would be acceptable in both circumstances. You'd carry yourself very differently in these two places wouldn't you? You probably wouldn't care as much If you dropped a piece of tissue paper on the coffeeshop floor, compared to dropping it on the pristine floors of a well-maintained 6-star hotel. Environment influences behaviour.
It's a simple case of reframing. If you see a messy area in your home, don't be so quick to make the fundamental attribution error and blame it on the intrinsic nature of the "mess-causing" person. When you blame the nature of a person, it's almost as good as saying "there's nothing I can do about it" and "I just have to accept the person for the way he/she is, and live with it". But what if it was the environment that encouraged the messy behaviour? It may well be that your storage "solutions" may not quite have been the best choices. It's as simple as why a ring file is better than a shoebox to store papers any day.
Take a look at the area and the usage of the area, consider what is encouraging the behaviour, and whether there's a better storage solution to the problem. Sometimes it might be as simple as turning a piece of furniture around, or even getting rid of random storage bins that you don't really need lying around to tempt people to throw things in.
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