Cut the Clutter: Find the Organizational Style that Works for You
Julie Bitely
| 2 min read
Does clutter in your home stress you out?
Research connects living in a cluttered space with decreased levels of life satisfaction and increased feelings of anxiety and even a tendency to procrastinate.
If it feels like you’ll never get your clutter under control, maybe you just haven’t found the right system, says Cas Aarssen, the certified organizational expert behind the Clutterbug method, which has earned her a large online following and generated two best-selling books.
Aarssen wasn’t always organized, describing herself as a “recovering super slob”.
“After years of struggling with clutter and organization, I realized something that would change my life forever,” she said. “I don’t organize in the traditional way. I discovered that there are, in fact, four different organizing styles. Once I knew my style, I was finally able to design a system that worked for me and stayed organized for good.”
The four styles identified by Aarssen are:
- The Cricket, who likes minimal visual clutter and prefers a really detailed organizing system.
- The Bee, who likes to see their items, but wants them organized with the “perfect” system.
- The Butterfly, who wants their things visual, but needs quick and easy organizing solutions.
- The Ladybug, who tends to hide things in hidden spaces and needs fast and easy systems.
Aarssen has an online test people can take to identify their style, which leads to more resources and information to help everyone organize in a way that suits them. Aarssen describes how she came up with the four organizing styles in this Q&A video. Most organizational systems are designed for how the majority like to organize, which won’t work for everyone, Aarssen explains. She said the first step in discovering your ideal system is to understand yourself and your motivations.
“Once you really know yourself, you’re going to be able to come up with solutions and systems in your home, in your finances, in every aspect of your life, that really work for you,” she said in this video. “Once you really understand what you’re great at, what you struggle with and a system that will work for you, you no longer have to feel like a failure.”
If you struggle with kitchen organization, enjoy these helpful meal planning printables created by Aarssen.
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Photo credit: undrey
