4 Reasons You Can’t Keep Your Space Organized and Decluttered

I have a confession to make…even though I love organizing and organized spaces, I have a tough time keeping my own spaces organized.

Do you have the same problem?

No matter how hard I try, I have trouble keeping things picked up and put away. It seems that the space is cluttered and disorganized not too long after I finally get it looking nice.

Last month I realized I let my home office get out of control. You can see by the pictures below how I let things pile up.

One of my goals for the last couple months of the year was to get my office decluttered and reorganized so I could begin using it more often. When things get all messy I find it hard to work in a space. So, since my office had become chaotic, I began staying away. Instead of using my nice desktop computer with its big screen, I began using my laptop downstairs.

Let’s just say that’s not really the most productive way for me to get work done. 🙂

So I finally made myself take the time to tackle the job over the holidays in December. Just being honest here, but the only reason I probably got to it that day is because we were having company over for a Christmas party that night.

As I was cleaning up and reorganizing, I finally realized why I have such a hard time keeping spaces decluttered and organized. You would think as much as I have studied organizing and talk about it that I would know better. For some reason, though, this project really opened my eyes.

Let me share with you the reasons I can’t keep my space decluttered and organized.

I have too much stuff.

My office also doubles as my craft room, so it houses all my craft supplies as well as my books and office supplies. I went through the set of drawers I’ve kept a lot of my craft supplies in. Looking through all the supplies I realized that I had way too many that I would never use. So, I cleaned out those drawers and got rid of a lot.

One area I still need to do work on is my collection of books. I regularly go through my bookcases and get rid of books I no longer want. Apparently I have not done that in a while because I’m now having to stack books on top of books. That is my next project to tackle.

I don’t always have enough space.

Ok, so if I have too much stuff, then it sounds logical that I don’t have enough space. That’s true, but that’s not what I’m talking about here.

Sometimes we have just what we need but seemingly no place to put it all. So we have to get creative.

The closet in my office is smaller than the one that is in the other room I used to use as an office. Because we use my former office as just an extra sitting area/study room for my daughter, I’m still using that closet to house some of the things I don’t use on a regular basis.

If you are having trouble finding space for all of your items, get creative and look for other places to store them. Closets with extra room, under the bed, or storage in your garage are all places that could work for overflow storage. (Remember, this is just for things you need. See #1 above.)

I don’t always have a place for everything.

Once you’ve figured out the issue of too much stuff and not enough space, there should be a place for everything. The problem arises when a new item comes into your home and it doesn’t seem to fit into the space you have.

If you’re like me then you just let that item float around until you need it or it ends up in a pile somewhere. That’s what a lot of the items were that caused the clutter in my office. I just didn’t have an obvious place for them.

Now I plan to make sure a new item has a place before I purchase it or bring it into my home. This will help to cut down on unnecessary purchases so I can keep a decluttered home.

I don’t always put things away.

Even when all my stuff has a place to go, I’m not always diligent about putting it all away after using it. My plan is to be a champion when it comes to putting things away. 🙂 Lately, I’ve been taking time to put away everything when I’m done with a project.  I have to say it’s a great feeling to walk into my office and see things all nice and tidy.

Try it a few times and I promise you’ll be hooked!

Here are my after pictures:

Doesn’t it look great!

The notebooks and small stacks in the first picture are now eliminated. I’ve created a place on my bookshelves to store them when not in use. And the items on the craft table in the picture above have found a new home, too.

Leave a comment below and share your biggest frustration with organization or decluttering.