You Say Tomato, I Say Tomahto: Organizing Opposite Personalities, Part II

Do you live or work in the same environment with a person who doesn’t share your opinions on organizing? Maybe you have an office with a co-worker who is insanely organized and you are insanely messy. Perhaps you are a neat freak and spend most of your free time picking up after a spouse. Whatever the situation, differing mindsets often cause tension to mount over time.

Here are 4 steps to resolving this type of dispute:

Decide to talk about it. Set a time and place and be there with an open mind, ready to talk and ready to listen.

Define organizing preferences. This step is truly as easy as it sounds. What do you like? What do I like?

Explain organizing preferences.
Why do you like your way? This is why I like my way. It’s often helpful to put yourself in their shoes; if you understand why they prefer one method over another, you can grow to respect it. Who knows, you may end up adopting some of their ideas!

Establish and maintain boundaries.
In circumstances where a shared space is involved, there are two options.

(1) Divide it evenly. You are each responsible for organizing your space to your standards.

(2) You agree to share and share alike, with compromises. Decide beforehand which areas will be organized according to whose preferences.

In either case, if you are the neater of the two, it may bother you that everything is not quite up to your organizing ideals, but you must agree to disagree. Once these boundaries are established, it is very important to maintain them. Don’t allow the other’s preferences to completely take over or vice versa.

Now, I return to the coin story from Part I. After getting married, we had to reach a happy medium on the issue. Mack likes the convenience of keeping the loose change on the dresser. I don’t, but it’s more important to me to contain the pile so that it doesn’t become clutter. So we found a middle ground by putting a small container on the dresser for extra coins. He’s happy because it’s easy, and I am happy because it’s organized.

Posted September 28, 2007, filed in Clutter Control Products, Living Simply, Clutter Hacks