The Clutter Connection: Cassandra Aarssen (Transcript)

Read the full transcript of Professional Organizer Cassandra Aarssen’s talk titled “The Clutter Connection” at TEDxWindsor 2019 conference.

Listen to the audio version here:

TRANSCRIPT:

The Struggle with Disorganization

Messy, chaotic, lazy – these are the three words that defined me for as long as I can remember. Given to me by parents, teachers, and society itself, they affected every aspect of my life from my finances to the way my home looked and my perception of myself. I’ve struggled with organization since I was little. I was that kid whose homework would be a dirty, crumpled little ball in the bottom of my backpack or lost completely.

When I cleaned my room, it was like kicking and shoving and hiding everything under the bed. From the moldy food in my locker to the harsh criticisms from adults in my life, one thing was really clear: I was a disaster. By the time I hit my adult years, I just resigned to the fact that I sucked at maintaining order.

Lots of little details, lots of categories – this isn’t my thing. I’m a big picture thinker, so all of those little details would fall by the wayside. This is how my brain works: big, messy, chaotic ideas, and that translated into a big, chaotic mess everywhere. My stuff was everywhere.

The Challenges of Adulthood

My apartment in my 20s was like a TLC special, kind of bad, and no matter how many times I cleaned it, it would be a mess again a few days later. Something so simple that seemed so easy for everyone else was so hard for me. It was broken inside of me. Despite my crazy messiness, I met a wonderful guy, we got married, and we had adorable tiny babies, but this is where my chronic disorganization got really real, because little tiny humans come with an obnoxious amount of stuff, and my whole house looked like Toys R Us had just vomited onto the floor.

If it was raining outside, good luck finding an umbrella under a mountain of shoes in the closet. If I had to pay a bill, I had to look in every kitchen drawer to find where I had shoved my papers. I was always late. I could never find anything, and I felt like a failure as a mom and a wife.

Attempts at Traditional Organization

I bought every organizing book, you guys. I read every magazine, I bought every organizing product I possibly could, I spent a bazillion dollars on filing cabinets and pretty matching containers, and I’ll never forget the first time I organized my bathroom closet with these pretty little pink containers with matching pink labels. I sorted everything, like pain relievers and antacids and allergy medications, and it was Pinterest-level beautiful for about a week, because every time I used something, when I went to put it back, my brain would look at all those little pretty stacked containers and be like, “Nope, not today,” and I would shove it and throw it and kick it into the closet.

Why? Why did I not take the time to stop and put things away properly? Why didn’t I take that one second to open the lid and put it away? I don’t know, and my assumption about myself is the same assumption that you’re all making about me right now: super lazy person.

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The Dollar Store Epiphany

So after 30 years of living like a complete and utter super slob, one trip to the dollar store changed my life forever. I was walking down the aisles, and I had an epiphany. I saw all of these big dishpans, these big plastic dollar dishpans, and I thought I could organize using these, so I came home and I reorganized that bathroom closet that was the bane of my existence.

I dumped everything out into this big dollar store dishpan, and I labeled it “medicine.” I had one for extra bathroom products. I had one for first aid. Everything inside was a little jumbled. Instead of lots of micro categories, I opted for a big macro category instead, and no lids because who has time for lids, right?

And this is where the magic came in. The next time I needed an aspirin because I have three kids and headaches are a thing, I knew to look in the medicine bin, but when it came time to put it away, I could just chuck it, and it would go right back into that medicine bin. No stopping, no thinking, no details for my brain to deal with.

A New Organizing Approach

Slightly chaotic macro categories to complement how my brain works, and so I replicated this macro system throughout my entire home. I reorganized everything into dollar store dishpans, but here is the thing: everything was staying tidy and organized for good.

So this is the part where I thought I was a super genius. I thought that I was an organizing genius because my husband is a traditional organizer. He has no problem putting things away. He likes details. He prefers lots of categories, but that does not work for my brain, so I thought that there were two organizing styles: the traditional detailed micro organizer and the fast, simple macro organizer.

With my new insight, I started helping friends and family and eventually clients transform their lives with this less organized macro approach. I had chronically messy clients who were forever changed organizing using this less organized approach, and everything was amazing for a while.

The Lawyer Client: A Turning Point

I had a client, a lawyer, brilliant. She owned her own practice. She had little kids. She was so busy, and she hired me to organize her home office. When I walked in, I felt better about myself because there was paper clutter everywhere. The floor – you couldn’t see her desk. I don’t know how she worked. There were piles of paper everywhere, and she had filing cabinets, but they were empty.

So my assumption is she’s just like me.

She’s a macro organizer, and the reason she wasn’t putting her papers away is because she needed a fast, easy, quick approach, and filing cabinets don’t work for us. So I sorted her papers into big categories: one for past clients, one for future clients, current clients, bills that need to be paid, bills that have been paid in big labeled baskets.

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She was horrified. She was so horrified. She said, “How am I going to find anything? This isn’t really organized.” But I assured her that this less organized macro approach would take her a few extra seconds to find the paper she needed, but she was going to save that time every time she put it away, and obviously, putting it away was her issue.

I was so confident that I told her if it didn’t work that I would come back and reorganize it for free, and a week later, she called, and it wasn’t working. I went back to her home, and she had pulled everything out of those baskets and made millions of tiny piles all over the place again, and she said to me, “I need details. I need order. I need lots of categories. I need to know where everything is.”

Discovering Different Organizing Styles

So she is a micro organizer, so I set her up a traditional organizing system in her filing cabinets. I spent days and days sorting and putting things into alphabetical order and color-coding her files and labeling my face off. It was a nightmare. Can we just say it was a nightmare for me? But I knew it would work for her and her perfectionist A-type detailed micro brain, and I told her again, “If this does not work for you, call me and I’ll come back and organize it for free.”

Why do I say these things? And she called, and when I came back, I was devastated. She had pulled everything out of the file cabinets and just spread it all over the place again, made piles on the floor and on the desk, but she was devastated, too. She said to me, “I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I just can’t bring myself to put this back in the filing cabinet. Spreading and piling – it’s just what comes naturally to me.”

My initial reaction about this hardworking, brilliant woman was that she was lazy, and that’s the same assumption I made about my own inability to conform to this traditional organizing system, and that’s when it hit me. She wasn’t lazy or messy. She organized differently. She was a visual organizer. For her, it was out of sight, out of mind, so she didn’t want to put her things in a filing cabinet because subconsciously, she was afraid that she would forget that she had them. So without even thinking, she was piling and spreading her papers everywhere, so she always knew where they were.

Tailoring Organization to Individual Needs

So we set her up a visual system. That’s the girl happy about organizing right there, a visual system, and we hung paper sorters all over her walls, and we had bulletin boards and places where she could fill color code and put all of her files in alphabetical order. Her entire wall was filled with file folders, and it was visual overload for my brain, but she was ecstatic, and she called me a week later, and this time, it wasn’t to reorganize her office again. It was to organize the rest of her home.

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She hired me, and we started in her kitchen, and we took down all of her upper cabinets and installed open floating shelves so she could see her stuff and still have it really micro-organized. She put her spices in alphabetical order. Who does that? Micro-organizers do that. That’s who does that. But she was so happy, no longer struggling with mess and clutter because she had found and discovered her organizing style, and she was forever changed, and so was I.

The Four Organizing Styles

For me and so many others, the inability to use traditional organizing methods – that’s a system failure, not a personal one. I’ve discovered that there are, in fact, four distinct, very different organizing styles.

Bees, like my lawyer clients, they’re visual organizers. They have to see their stuff, but they love detailed micro-organization, lots of categories, so pegboards, lots of hooks, file folders, and organizers on the walls work for them.

Then there’s a ladybug like me. We like hidden storage, all of our things out of sight, but we need fast, easy, simple macro-systems so we can toss and throw our stuff away, but have it go into little compartments so it stays organized, so open baskets, lots of drawer dividers.

Next we have a butterfly who’s a visual organizer. They, again, it’s out of sight, out of mind, so they have to see their stuff or they’re going to forget about it, but they need macro-solutions too, so fast, easy, simple solutions. Like big, clear containers, lots of labels, lots of hooks, and shelving for days.

Conclusion: Embracing Your Organizing Style

I want you to take a look at your own home and your own clutter, and I want you to ask yourself: are you struggling because you’re trying to use a system that is not designed for your brain? Is your challenge that you and your family members organize in completely different ways? Are you labeling your child as messy because they fail to adhere to traditional organizing systems?

I now have the privilege of helping hundreds of thousands of people all over the world get organized for good, just by knowing themselves better. I took my biggest weakness and turned it into my greatest strength. Me, I’m running an organizing business – it’s insane, right? It’s crazy.

If you struggle with clutter, I want you to remember you are not messy, you just organize differently.