033. Organizing for Beautiful Living: How To Organize Your Home Simply, and Live Beautifully

We've changed our name! Organizing for Beautiful Living podcast is still all about sustainable home organizing, decluttering and lifestyle tips for working moms and entrepreneurs.

It's simply that Organizing for Beautiful Living aligns more closely with my mission to help moms organize their homes sustainably without sacrificing all their time so that they can live more socially with less stress.

If you've ever felt like having someone over but talked yourself out of it because of how much preparation it would take to get your house "in oder" and "presentable", this is what I'm talking about.

When you use my CLEAR5 Framework to organize, your home can be guest-ready in a few minutes, anytime! So, let's get started, ok?

For a detailed look into the CLEAR5 Framework, listen to Episode 1: The 5 Steps to Organize Your Home Sustainably and An Organizing Story with Shireen Botha 

Connect with me:

My Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/fireflybridgeorganizing
My Website: https://fireflybridge.com

Transcript

Well! So as you can see, the Podcast is going through a bit of a re-brand, a name change! Let me briefly explain why this change and what it means.

Organizing for Beautiful Living is so much more aligned to my mission as a professional organizer, and my work at Firefly Bridge Organizing.

My approach to organizing is that we organize for a purpose, and that purpose is for social living.

You know that social interactions are crucial to your well-being, right?

The pandemic pretty much reinforced that to the world.

There’s also research on the type of social interactions we experience daily, and the sense of satisfaction and happiness we feel with these interactions we have with others. Types of social interactions meaning, yes, our family and friends, which are the closest, most intimate contacts, but also colleagues, neighbors, classmates, community members, acquaintances and strangers.

There was a study done in 2021 by Hanne Collins and other researchers while she was at Harvard. The study was specifically about this: not just the amount of TIME people spent in social interactions, and their self-reported feelings of well-being and happiness, but who they interacted with each day, how different these types of social contacts were.

So basically, who did they interact with today, and for how long, and how did they feel afterwards?

Was it talking on the phone with your mom? Or chatting with the person in front of you in the grocery line?

They looked at data here in the US, and also worldwide, across the globe.

And what they found was that people with more diverse social networks, diverse meaning not racial, ethnic, or gender diversity, but how closely they knew each of the people they interacted with - 

So those with more diverse social networks were happier and more satisfied with life than those with less diverse networks.

And this is regardless of how much time they’d spent socializing overall, and also regardless of the person’s age, gender, employment status and other factors that could influence happiness.

What does this have to do with being organized?

Well, my colleagues, who are fellow professional organizers and members of NAPO - NAPO is the National Association of Productivity and Organizing professionals, and provides education to organizers - my colleagues and I have observed over and over again how being disorganized and cluttered causes moms to pull back a bit from social interactions.

Of course it ranges, of course it varies from person to person.

But in the throes of raising kids, working, and focusing on their relationship with their partner, having clutter and disorganization around them can really cause a distancing from socializing naturally.

How many women can you think of right now who, when they opened their front door to you, or when you got into their car, they immediately apologized for the state of that space?

“Please don’t mind my house. I haven’t gotten around to tidying up quite yet”

“Sorry for the messy car! Just toss all that into the trunk!”

After a few times of this, even though you maybe don’t think of it at all, they feel self-conscious about it, and it affects their confidence.

Maybe you have had a few moments like this yourself. How did it affect you in the moment?

So for me as an organizer, the goal of helping someone get organized is not simply to make their home look stylish and completely organized, with every space like a museum and not a paper or a toy or a coffee mug out of place!

That might be a by-product of getting organized, but we need to live in our homes, the kids need to play, we need to cook, it’s gonna get messy sometimes!

But, we also need to feel confident, to be ready and willing to open our front doors to not only the people closest to us, but also those who aren’t that close, right? 

Who don’t know us that well. And the way you’re going to be able to do that is to be organized.

I’m saying that to be organized doesn’t mean your house will never be messy.

But what it means is that you KNOW that after the mess, the clean-up is pretty straightforward and won’t take long.

So the new bookclub that you’re a part of? When it’s your turn to host, you’re not going to be scrambling, or making an excuse to skip it, or to have it at a restaurant instead, because you’ll be confident that your house will be ready.

In fact, your house will always be just a few minutes from guest-ready.

You’ll be happy to have colleagues over, your neighbors, anyone at all.

So how do you organize simply so you can live this beautiful, social living way?

Well, you’ll use my CLEAR5 Framework.

The CLEAR5 Framework, which I cover in Episode 1 of the podcast, and I’ll put the link directly to that episode in the show notes, the CLEAR5 Framework makes organizing simple because it begins with your idea of what being organized looks like for you and your family.

If you’ve always wanted a pantry with matching containers and labels, fantastic! We’ll do that!

But we’ll make sure we understand basically why you want that and how you envision it working for you

Are you willing to take the time to decant all your spices, grains, cereal, snacks and pastas into containers every week after going grocery shopping?

Or would you prefer an alternative to the matching individual containers that still looks really great, but that’ll be less maintenance?

CLEAR5 makes the decluttering process easier. We all are attached to our stuff.

It’s just a matter of degree. Over the years, I’ve become less attached to my stuff, but I think my husband and my kids have more sentimental attachments to certain things.

Decluttering is a skill that gets better with practice, like yoga, or math!

The first time you start decluttering, it’s going to feel really hard.

But when you declutter with my guidance, I help you through the questions you can ask yourself to make the process easier.

And after continuing to declutter, continuing to ask yourself those questions, you’ll start to see how it becomes easier and easier as your relationship to YOUR stuff starts to change bit by bit.

CLEAR5 includes some of my favorite organizing formulas for where to assign homes to things.

In the kitchen, for example, we’ve come up with a placement formula that works in every kitchen, that makes your kitchen efficient and functional. And I have formulas for other categories, too, which takes away the uncertainty and decision fatigue of, you know, “Where should I store this thing?”

CLEAR5 also show you how to maintain, meaning how to stay organized easily.

There are a few very simple strategies I show to my clients for how to stay organized pretty easily once they’ve decluttered and organize a space.

And, of course, there’s always the option to have us come back in and do a maintenance session in your home quarterly or at some other interval.

So once you’ve decluttered and organized, and you have the strategies for staying organized, living your life socially has fewer barriers, right?

Like, you’ll be able to be more spontaneous and invite friends over for a regular weekday dinner just because you cooked a big lasagna, or ordered pizza or chinese takeout. And you’re no longer apologizing for the look of your home, or thinking about canceling because you’re not confident in the state of your home.

That’s what organizing for beautiful living is all about. 

And here we are nearing the end of 2024

And I know a lot of people say At the start of the new year, I’m making these changes! I’m going to focus on my health, I’m going to focus on my hobbies and on my family!

Well, Organizing for Beautiful Living I think is a central part of that.

When there’s less clutter around you, there’s more calm within you so you can focus more easily on whatever other goals you might have.

So if you want to wait until 2025 to get organized for beautiful living, that’s fantastic, that's great!

It’s also great to start Monday, or on Friday after work! Or even today!

So if you want to know more about my organizing process, the CLEAR5 Framework, listen to Episode 1 of the podcast, or reach out to me personally!

Enjoy your week, and I’ll see you on the next episode.