Peace of Mind Organizing

Modeling imperfection

13 August 2018

Tomorrow evening, I’m having a dozen or so fellow professional organizers to my home. Our chapter of the National Association of Productivity and Organizing Professionals (NAPO-St. Louis) has social events every other month and they’re typically hosted by members in their homes. I volunteered for to host this month’s social. This is third one I’ve hosted since 2009.

Back in 2009, I had a semi-major freak out prior to the social. I was worried because my home was nowhere near model-home perfect. As I’ve explained here countless times, I’m a naturally messy person and my house is not perfectly kept.

At the time, my wise friend Margaret Lukens encouraged me to let go of that anxiety and “model imperfection” for the other organizers. The notion made me breathe a big sigh of relief and it took away a lot of the tension I’d built up around the event. I turned the whole thing into a post for the amazing blog Unclutterer. (Here’s that post, which they called Uncluttering is not a competition.)

I re-read the Unclutterer post this morning as I created my list of tasks to do to get the house ready for tomorrow night. (I have a client tomorrow, so everything has to be done today.) Two things came to mind as I read it: (1) After an additional nine years as a professional organizer, my house is a lot more presentable than it was then—we’ve even renovated the kitchen. (2) No one’s judging me. Organizers are non-judgmental people; otherwise we could never succeed in our businesses.

There are a few things I’m going to do that will allow me to let this be easy:

• I’m going to serve exactly what I served last time. When I hosted the organizers in 2015, a friend and colleague told me what to serve. Happily, I took note of what I bought at Trader Joe’s and the supermarket and I’m going to buy exactly the same thing. Why reinvent the wheel?
• I’m accepting help. My friend and team member Terry Capehart of Organization in Bloom offered to come early and help. I said yes.
• I’m letting go of worries that people will care about the many imperfections in my home. Chances are they won’t even notice, especially with my standard poodle, Bix, doing his best to distract them.

In Episode 8: You Be You of our podcast, Getting to Good Enough my co-host Shannon Wilkinson and I talk about how it’s our own standards that count (not those of other people) and how comparing yourself to others isn’t helpful. As I prepare my house for tomorrow’s guests, I’m going to keep that in mind.

Photo by Amy Shamblen on Unsplash.

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