Enough

My dear friend SciWonk (check her out at http://sciwonk.blogspot.com/) recently posted the question “how much is enough?” It’s a question I’ve often asked as well, especially because I work as a personal organizer with a steady stream of clients, because I am the extremely organized managing attorney for my husband’s and my firm, and because I am a reformed pack rat. As a result, I have some pretty well thought-out opinions on what’s enough.

I am constantly asking clients to get rid of things. (And when I come home from working with them, as I told SciWonk, I often want to give away everything I own as a reaction to all my clients’ stuff!!) I push them to “love it, use it, or lose it.” I’m also big on “reduce, reuse, recycle,” and you’ll note that the first tenet is REDUCE.

So SciWonk’s post about “enough” got me thinking again about an issue that I return to over and over. I think of it as the less-is-more concept.

I’m a big believer in asking the right questions, and I think that when it comes to stuff, too many of us ask “how much do I need?” or “how much is enough?” The better question is not so easy to define, and I think really involves how little we need and how little is enough. From what I’ve seen with my clients and personally experienced, it really boils down to what you want out of life. Do you want a life controlled by stuff or do you want a life controlled by you?

I see so many people trapped in clutter, and, let me tell you, physical clutter is a sign of mental decision-making paralysis. When you do not know what is important to you, you cannot decide what to keep and what to toss. You end up with a lot of clutter, a lot of stuff, and you’re never sure what is “enough.” When you can decide what is important to you, life gets a lot simpler and a lot less cluttered and what is “enough” becomes a lot more clear.

See, the real issue for most of my clients isn’t that they’re messy, it’s that they have too much stuff. Messy is fine. Though I’m organized, I’m no paragon of neatness. In fact, I am a mess. There are very often dust bunnies on my stairs and under my bed. My desk has a pile of stuff to eBay on it. At the moment I type this, dirty dishes sit in the sink and DD’s toys are scattered around. And I never make my bed (sorry Mom). Well, okay, maybe twice a year, I make the bed before we have a party … but only because I need the space for purses and coats, and who wants to see our rumpled sheets? But you know what? It’s really not the point.

Getting organized is all the rage now, and, yes, it is important – necessary even – to have a level of organization that lets you get through your day without a nervous breakdown and without hours spent looking for that really important research or form you need and know you have somewhere. A while back, one of the number one emailed articles from The New York Times was “Saying Yes to Mess.” According to the article, “an anti-anticlutter movement is afoot, one that says yes to mess and urges you to embrace your disorder.” All the nice folks quoted in the article talk about having more urgent things to worry about, looking for creativity in chaos, saving time by not spending it organizing, etc., etc., etc.

I agree. Creative isn’t synonymous with neat, and you probably do have more important things to do than organize your filing cabinet with color-coded folders. But here’s the thing: the NYT article (and most people) miss the point because being organized isn’t really about less mess anyway. It’s about, well, just less.

Who cares how you “organize” the stuff you need? As an organizer, if a client can find what she needs when she needs it, I’ve done my job. What matters is how much people have that they don’t particularly need.

About a year ago, I did a “brutal purge” of my home. I let go of tons of things that I once thought were really important or would come in handy “some day.” It was hard, and I thought I would miss some of the things. The truth? I haven’t thought about them since other than to think of the great feeling I got when I gave some of the items to someone who really needed them right then. And it is amazing how much easier it is for me to be organized when I do not have all of those things.

Consider what you have … then consider what you need (and that includes those special items that you really, really want). It’s much easier to find what you need when you need it if all you have is what you need. Then, it really doesn’t matter so much whether you’re looking in color-coded filing cabinets or in piles.

So here’s my message to you: say yes to mess if you want, but also say yes to less. And you’ll find, I think, that when all you have is what you need and love, you have enough.