A month ago I was ecstatic, my craft room was going to get a closet system installed. Oh the anticipation! For the week before the date, I kept talking about it, the joy of having a system and the organization I would set up. I was excited, at least until the system actually was installed. Then something happened. I became overwhelmed with feeling daunted by the effort and process of setting the closet system up. It confused me in many ways too.<\/p>\n
I love organizing. I don\u2019t do this for a living without a reason; I am passionate about organizing. In fact, if I am feeling a bit down about something, I will tackle an organizing project and immediately start feeling better. Can you begin to see how puzzling it was for me to feeling overwhelmed? Maybe you can, yet you might be asking yourself \u2013 \u201cwhat does this have to do with ME?\u201d<\/p>\n
How often have you gotten overwhelmed at the thought of tackling a project? Although I did not take pictures of the piles of my stuff meant for the closet \u2013 the boxes filled up 3 \u00bd rooms here. Since it is my craft room, many of the items are smaller. It was going to be a process to go through it all and get it organized. It\u2019s easy to feel like there is just so much to be done. Where do I start? I don\u2019t have time to delve into this project.<\/p>\n
Interestingly, this is exactly how I felt. This is how my clients often talk about feeling with their own stuff. I joke that this is why my profession exists \u2013 help in getting started and having some direction during the process. I know all this. I knew what I needed to do. Nevertheless I was still dreading it.<\/p>\n
My point \u2013 we\u2019re all human. We can each feel overwhelmed and reluctant to jump into a project. It doesn\u2019t even need to be a big project, like my walk-in closet. Papers are a common area that causes significant dread among people. They tend to be tedious and time consuming. I have a lot of scrapbooking paper \u2013 possibly the easiest papers to organize and it still took me over 3 hours to organize the 12×12 loose sheets. <\/p>\n
Another point \u2013 all it takes is jumping in. You don\u2019t need to set aside a huge amount of time to get started. I didn\u2019t organize those loose scrapbook papers first. I did find an \u201ceasy\u201d place to start \u2013 in this case it was the completed photo and scrapbook albums. I already had at least part of a vision for the closet. Then I grabbed the next box. I won\u2019t say that my feeling of overwhelm went away just because I got started. If only it was that simple. Sometimes it is, not always.<\/p>\n
Sometimes it also means stepping back for a break. As I was going through things, I found items I spent money on and knew I would never use. I felt sad and frustrated. Even that feeling got overwhelming at times. When I saw this happening, I would try to finish the immediate stuff and then take a break and do something else entirely. Other times, I just moved the stuff off to the side and stopped anyway. This also provides a way to gain perspective \u2013 all this stuff was personal to me \u2013 ideas and plans I\u2019d had at some point or another. Yet, I needed to let some of it go. Stepping back can be just as important as jumping in and getting started.<\/p>\n
I\u2019ll admit I have been a bit ashamed of feeling overwhelmed by my craft room closet. I mean I am an organizer, how can I of all people be overwhelmed by an organizing project? Yet, it also means I can relate to other people feeling overwhelmed. It also means that I will bite the bullet and jump in. You\u2019re not alone if you too are feeling overwhelmed by an organizing task \u2013 just remember you are human like the rest of us and to just get started, somewhere or anywhere.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Beginning an organizing task can be quite daunting. It might be the hardest step. Most people experience the feeling of being overwhelmed, so you\u2019re not alone. Nevertheless, you need to find a place to get started and delve into the project.<\/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":[10,8,18,5,9,25,7,17],"class_list":["post-802","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-organizing","tag-behavior","tag-discipline","tag-goals","tag-household","tag-motivation","tag-postaweek2011","tag-procrastination","tag-spaces"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7p82c-cW","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.jenniferlinnig.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/802","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=802"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.jenniferlinnig.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/802\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":805,"href":"http:\/\/www.jenniferlinnig.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/802\/revisions\/805"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.jenniferlinnig.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=802"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.jenniferlinnig.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=802"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.jenniferlinnig.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=802"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}