How to Avoid Organising Mistake #7

Drum roll please!  We’ve come to the final in our list of 7 Common Mistakes of DIY Organising Projects.

Listen to well-intentioned but ill-informed advice

People don’t mean to make your situation worse, but unfortunately they sometimes do.  And sometimes it’s hard to differentiate the good advice people can give from the downright nonsense.  Most often it comes from someone who loves you and wants the best for you.  That’s probably the hardest one to resist.  But other times you can find this well-intentioned but ill-informed advice in glossy magazines – the ones with lovely pictures of expensive “storage solutions”.

Announcing to your friends that you wish you could be more organised is a bit like being a new mother – everyone has advice, some of it conflicting, and all of it from their own perspective, not yours.

Unless the advice takes into account your situation, your budget, your available time and resources, your learning style, your space, your needs, your desires, and the needs and desires of all the others you live with, then it’s just not good enough.

Too often well-intentioned but ill-informed advice is tempered with frustration from a loved one, for whatever reason.

Ever heard any of these…

• “You don’t need that, just chuck it out!”
• “What are you hanging on to that old thing for?”
• “Why can’t you just deal with this stuff on your own?”
• “If you haven’t worn it in a year, you don’t need it.”

Don’t get me started on that last one – it’s worth a post all its own.  Just believe me when I say, nothing is ever as concrete, set in stone, one size fits all, as that.

Anyway, my point is this – if you need help on your organising journey, by all means, invite a friend or loved along for the ride.  Just make it clear to them and yourself what their role will be, and who will be making the decisions.  And it goes without saying that if you feel pushed, or even bullied, into making decisions in the organising process, you have invited the wrong person to join you.