Home Organization: Break Bad Habits, Keeping Healthy Habits?

“Curious things, habits. People themselves never knew they had them.” ~Agatha Christie. We depend heavily on an “autopilot” to run our day-to-day lives and it works so well that we are barely aware of it as it functions. We may well know the old saying, “old habits die hard” without ever realizing how much habit runs our lives. Some of these habits benefit us greatly; others do not.

Nathaniel Emmons said “Habit is either the best of servants or the worst of masters.” I believe you can substantially improve your quality of life by re-examining your current habits to see which ones still serve you well and which are the ones described by John Dryden as “Ill habits {that} gather by unseen degrees.”

To figure out which habits are serving you well and which ones aren’t, look at your regular routines, especially those you find irksome. Ask yourself: Why do I (insert habit here)? What if I didn’t (insert habit here)? How else could I (insert habit here)? Some old habits may still be serving you well; but you will find some once helpful habits you wish to break or change. 

Closet Organization Habits

Matching and folding socks is a good example of a habit to examine. There is no universal rule, written or otherwise, that socks have to be matched—just ask a bachelor or two. If they are honest you won’t have to ask many to find one who never matches or folds anything! Keep on matching socks if you get a Zen-like response from the mindless repetition. If you don’t, think about other alternatives to matching them. Here are eight suggestions. You can probably think of others.

1. Don’t match socks at all; just toss them all into a bin or basket in your drawer and grab any two as needed. This suggestion certainly is not for everyone, but it may appeal to the free spirits among us. (Such an approach might even lead to a rep for having a cool look or being creative.)

2. Match socks at a different time in a different place—for instance, sitting in front of the TV rather than the laundry room or Laundromat.
3. Match your dress socks but toss all your athletic socks in a bin and grab any two as needed.

4. Buy socks that are easier to match. For example, Nordstrom’s sells men’s dress socks with a different colored strip around the top of each color and style, in effect color coding them, making the job of matching them that much easier.

5. Toss or donate all your current socks and start with new ones of all the same kind. That way, since they are all alike your socks are automatically matched.

6. Give the socks to someone else (in the family) to match, especially if they are not yours and maybe even if they are. What is drudgery to you may be a welcome break for someone else.

7. If you do laundry for the whole family, let each person fold and match socks as they chose. Your family may love those neat piles you put in their drawers but do they love them enough to be willing to do it for themselves?

8. Stop wearing socks. Again, this is not a choice that works for everyone, but it does for some.

I am a great believer in minimal folding or handling in other areas as well. Other thoughts on this approach include:

1. Jockey style briefs: Does they really need to be folded? Stack them flat and unfolded.

2. Lightweight panties: Toss unfolded into a basket in your drawer. The basket keeps your panties grouped together and your drawer organized.

3. Kitchen towels: toss them in a drawer unfolded. Unfolded towels dry the dishes just as well folded ones.

4. Dishes: Don’t hand dry them. Put them in a drainer or even your dishwasher rack and let them air dry. You may want to cover them with a clean dishtowel while they dry.

These examples are designed to jump-start your thnking. Take the same approach and you can examine your whole universe of chores and habits. That kind of scrutiny will help you to determine which habits to keep and which ones to replace.

Other Habits

Habits aren’t just about how you handle your laundry or whether you dry your dishes. What you do for yourself and what you have others do for you is also habitual. For example, do you cut your own hair? Do you make your own bread? Do you change the oil in your car yourself? At one time most people did all these things for themselves and some still do. But most of us don’t even question having these chores done for us. 

Some of us have never considered, or may struggle with a little guilt when we hire out such things as house cleaning, organizing an office or kitchen, grocery shopping, buying gifts, etc. Having a professional home organizer handle those items is no different than hiring a pro for any other area of your life. The personal concierge services  industry is booming because people are finding out how much the quality of their life is improved by handing off regular chores and errands to a pro.

Be Warned

Doing things differently may feel odd or uncomfortable. Goethe tells us “We dislike doing without even unpleasant things to which we have become accustomed. Give yourself a little time to adjust to the home life organizer in Yardley PA you just hired. It usually takes 21 days or more of doing things in the new way before it feels good or natural to you.

A parting thought from Albert Einstein: “Out of clutter, find Simplicity. From discord, find Harmony.”