My husband knows me well \u2013 he used to bring home containers of various types for me.\u00a0 You see, other than media, one of my favorite things is containers.\u00a0 I ooh and aah over them, drooling.\u00a0 They come in many different sizes and shapes, then there\u2019s the material they\u2019re made out of and if they\u2019re drawers or boxes.\u00a0 How I long to take them home with me!\u00a0 There\u2019s no denying how useful and helpful they can be.<\/p>\n
My husband has also stopped bringing home those containers for me.\u00a0 We\u2019ve run out of space and use for them \u2013 at least for the time being.\u00a0 This certainly doesn\u2019t stop me from yearning to pick more up.\u00a0 Every so often I\u2019ll still get more, like that time I went to the thrift store<\/a> \u2013 I got a basket and a cute little elephant that just had to come home with me.<\/p>\n What we need to do is make sure that we know specifically what we need and only then purchase those things.\u00a0 I talk generally about when to buy things in a previous blog, True Purchasing Power<\/a>.\u00a0 When it comes to containers and other organizing supplies though, we often buy first.\u00a0 It almost seems counter-intuitive to buy containers late in the process of getting organized.\u00a0 Yet this is exactly what you need to do.<\/p>\n An extreme example is getting a file cabinet.\u00a0 You see all these piles of papers around and just \u201cknow\u201d that you\u2019ll need a 4-drawer filing cabinet.\u00a0 You go out and get it and even have a place to put it.\u00a0 Then you start going through all those papers \u2013 and discover that most do not need to be filed.\u00a0 You actually only needed a 2-drawer filing cabinet.\u00a0 You could have saved yourself money by waiting.<\/p>\n We tend to fill the available space \u2013 so if you have a 4-drawer cabinet but don\u2019t really require it, you\u2019ll probably end up putting stuff in there \u2013 whether you keep unnecessary papers or you drop random things in there later.\u00a0 This applies to any of our spaces, therefore buying what you need becomes even more important and will help avoid things getting inadvertently cluttered.\u00a0 As an aside, many organizers claim that we ahould not have more than one 2-drawer file cabinet for papers.<\/p>\n As you begin to get organized, you\u2019ll see that it changes many things.\u00a0 It\u2019s great to start with some ideas of how you want things to be and look after you\u2019ve finished.\u00a0 Yet, as you work through various things, your ideas begin to change.\u00a0 You have the freedom to decide that you want to move something to another room \u2013 not just furniture but also what activities you\u2019ll focus on.\u00a0 Then those containers might not work as well.<\/p>\n If you avoid getting containers before you get organized, you are free to figure out how and where you\u2019ll keep things without being limited by the container you\u2019ve already purchased and without any guilt!\u00a0 In this day and age, you have such a plethora of choices of not only container, but also how to store things \u2013 like the ottoman that doubles as file storage<\/a> (as long as you don\u2019t mind the price!) \u2013 so waiting until you know precisely what you need to handle and where you want it to go is critical.<\/p>\n Feel free to drool over all the nifty stuff out there for organizing, yet resist the temptation to buy any of it until you know how you will use it and that it will actually work for your needs.\u00a0 I certainly continue to salivate and contemplate whether I could use those organizing supplies.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Containers and other organizing tools are wonderful things \u2013 there\u2019s no denying that. Nevertheless we need to make sure we only buy them after we\u2019ve figured out what we specifically need \u2013 since it needs to work for us!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[8,5,20,22,15,17],"class_list":["post-268","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-organizing","tag-discipline","tag-household","tag-paperwork","tag-productivity","tag-resources","tag-spaces"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7p82c-4k","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.jenniferlinnig.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/268","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.jenniferlinnig.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.jenniferlinnig.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.jenniferlinnig.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.jenniferlinnig.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=268"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.jenniferlinnig.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/268\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":270,"href":"http:\/\/www.jenniferlinnig.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/268\/revisions\/270"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.jenniferlinnig.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=268"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.jenniferlinnig.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=268"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.jenniferlinnig.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=268"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}