The Clutter Connection - Cassandra Aarssen

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      Here is my other disclaimer: I’m not going to tell you how to organize your home. I’ve never even seen your home—how could I possibly know how to organize it? You see, that is exactly the issue that you have been facing up until now. You have tried to organize your home and life based on other people’s and the general expectations of what organization “should” look like.

      Organizing isn’t one-size-fits-all.

      Here is what this book is going to do for you: It will give you amazing insights into your own strengths and abilities. This book will hold a mirror up to your personality and give you the gift of self-awareness. I’m going to be your own personal cheerleader, showing you all the things that make you the amazing, organized, and productive person that you are (even if you don’t yet believe it yourself). You are going to become an expert in organizational systems that work for you and your family. You are going to be a full-blown badass organizing boss.

      I will give you some hints, tips, and tricks that I have learned along my journey to get you started, and then I will leave you to your newly discovered genius. You will amaze yourself with how fast your level of organizational mastery unfolds, once you know where and how to begin.

      This journey is not going to be easy, but I guarantee it will be worth it. You probably have some bad habits that will need to be addressed and changed, but I will walk you through the process and make it as easy and painless as possible. You will have bad days; heck, you will have bad weeks. You won’t always do your dishes every night and sometimes your laundry will pile up. That’s just life. But this is my promise to you: this book will give you the tools, knowledge, and confidence to get back on track during those bad times.

      Soon, you will feel in control more than you feel out of control. Your life will get easier. Making life easier is what organization is all about. It’s about simplifying and streamlining your daily life so you can be more productive, have more time, and, most importantly, feel less stress and more happiness. I’m not just talking about organizing your home; this is about organizing your entire life, and it’s much easier to do than you think.

      How do I know this? I have been where you are. I would even bet that I was messier and more disorganized than you are now. I lived with actual paths carved into waist-high piles of clothing and trash from my door to my fridge, bathroom, and bed. Even when I attempted to control the chaos, my closets, drawers, and every other hidden space were stuffed so full, I could never find anything. I spent the majority of my life feeling messy, disorganized, frazzled, and like a total failure. I was always late, always broke, and always overwhelmed.

      So what changed? How did I transform from Super Slob to Organizing Expert? How did I go from a stay-at-home mom with ADHD, living in a completely disorganized home, to someone running a successful organizing business helping over half a million people from all across the world? I stopped copying other people. I stopped trying to emulate systems and solutions that I saw on television or in magazines. I stopped trying to plan and organize my life the way I saw my friends and family members doing it. Instead of trying to replicate other people’s systems, I discovered the systems that work best for me and my personality type. I stopped beating myself up over my failure to adapt to the idea of what an organized and productive life looked like, and instead worked with my strengths to create an organized and productive life unique to me.

      My home isn’t perfect, and I am absolutely not perfect either. The idea that everything needed to be perfect was exactly my problem in the first place. I’m embracing my “good enough” self, and guess what? My home is always clean and clutter-free, and I spend less time cleaning and organizing than I ever did before. My business is thriving. I am insanely productive, and I can honestly say that I love my life. I feel in control, and that is something that I never thought would happen for me. It is such a great and liberating feeling, I want the same for you.

      If you gain nothing else from this book, I want you to leave understanding this one simple truth: you are incredible just the way you are. I am going to show you how you can have an organized and clutter-free home, without having to compromise or change one single thing about your personality.

      If you are struggling to get your life together, drowning in clutter, or you feel as though you are lacking basic organizational skills, I want you to start by giving yourself a break. I want you to be open to the possibility that none of those negative statements are true and the real reason that you have failed up until now is that you have been trying solutions that are designed for someone else’s personality. Albert Einstein once said, “If you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its life believing that it is stupid.” You are that fish, my friend, and traditional organization is the tree. There is another way and there are other options.

      At the end of this book, your home will not look like mine. Heck, I hope your home doesn’t look like anyone else’s. Your space will be a unique creation that you have designed, filled with the things you and your family love and cherish. It is organized in a way that works for your and your family’s unique styles.

      So, my perfectly imperfect friend, let’s jump in and discover your unique organizing style and how you can work with your natural style to design the life you’ve always dreamed of.

      Before we dive in headfirst, repeat after me: “I am a hardworking, productive, and organized person.” Heck yeah, you are! Say it again! “I am a hardworking, productive, and organized person.” Now let me show you how this is so incredibly true, even if you don’t yet believe it yourself.

      I’ll never forget the day I discovered I was not, in fact, some sort of organizing genius. After years of struggling with my own clutter and mess, I had finally stumbled upon a system I could actually use and maintain long-term. Gone were the traditional detailed and micro-organized solutions I had tried so hard to emulate from television shows and various Pinterest posts. After years of feeling guilt and shame for not being able to use these complex systems, I realized that my brain just didn’t work that way. My brain is full-on ADHD, and I don’t have the patience or the self-discipline to open a lid or find the right compartment when putting things away. As soon as I’m done using something, my brain has already moved on to the next thing, so putting stuff away properly is always the last thing on my mind. I need easy solutions that take zero thought and even less effort to maintain. This ADHD girl needs fast and simple organization.

      I joyfully donated the dozens of pretty matching bento-box-style containers that just never worked for me, and I even gave away that crazy expensive paper filing system I had ordered online. In their place were pretty open baskets, complete with simple labels, allowing me to literally toss my things back into their home when I was done using them. I was totally convinced that I had discovered the Holy Grail of organizing solutions. Being less organized was actually making me more organized. It sounds insane, but shifting my perspective of how an organized space was supposed to look actually made me a more organized person.

      It was this new perspective that convinced me I was some sort of an organizing super genius. I started sharing my newfound wisdom with anyone who would listen. I would enthusiastically claim that most organizing systems were just way too complicated, and even though they were great in theory, the average person just couldn’t…or wouldn’t keep them up long-term. I honestly believed that most people fell into the same category as me, despite the fact that almost every solution seen in magazines, on television, or in stores was tailored toward a more detailed sort of organizer.

      The truth was, my husband had no issues using traditional detailed systems and thought my new simple systems were a little half-baked. I thought that was his total perfectionist talking, and I dismissed his objections out of hand. Surely that was the opinion of the few, not the many. When I shared my new lazy system with my messy friends and family, I was super excited to learn that they all felt the same way, and the simple approach was now working for them too. I was completely enamored with my new perspective and insight on clutter. The majority of organizing systems were created solely for the personality type of the minority of the population!

      My lifelong

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