Organizing Your Life

Really, all I want to do is help her. She can’t keep living this way. She has kids who will grow up to be slobs too!

In reality, I do not have a sister. However, I have had 9 sisters-in-law. Everyone is different. Their level of being able to keep a neat as a pin house may not live up to others. I believe in helping those who want to be helped. With that in mind let’s cover a few basics on helping our family be able to keep up with the everyday overwhelming chores of shopping, working, cooking, cleaning and being mom or dad.

So, how can I help my sister without hurting her feelings or making her feel she’s a total slob?

The first thing is to realize she may be doing the best she can do and just doesn’t have the skills to change her way of dealing with the clutter or keeping up with everything.

Then you can approach her saying that you’ve met an organizer that wants to give a talk on how to get organized. You can have a few friends come to the house and have an organizer come and give a short speech with lots of time for questions on how she works with people. By making this a small gathering you ease the tensions that people have over being exposed to others.

This is the most gentle way of approaching the subject. It is almost a given that if the person you want to help is a family member then you’ve had this conversation over the years and the culmination is that you and your family are at the end of your rope.

Organizers will tell you that unless the person you want to help is ready for that help there is no need to hire them. You see, if you hire an organizer and the project goes “wrong” then it is the organizer’s reputation that is at stake. We want to help those who want our help.

An example is I received a call from a man who wanted to hire me to get his wife organized. When I called his wife, at his request, she hung up on me. She wasn’t ready to see she needed an outside view or that she could learn a new set of skills that could truly help her entire life. After that I called her husband and he wouldn’t return my calls.  And we wonder why, right?

A second and more fun way is to hire the organizer for an hour or two. Have your family member come over to help get you organized. The organizer can gently lead your “sister” into allowing her to come and give an assessment which can help her get acclimated to getting organized.

There are many ways to help others and just a couple are listed here. Try to understand that not everyone has your degree of organization and allow yourself to get to know if your “sister” is ready for outside help.

Being organized is a learned skill. We are not necessarily born to it, nor are we always in a home that the family has the skills for us to learn from.

That’s it for today. I hope all my readers are having a wonderful February and gearing up for Easter.

Keep on organizing!