LITMIR.BIZ

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really knew herself, and realized that she wasn’t a messy person at all. She was a visual person, and she needed to organize accordingly. It was as though a weight was lifted off her. I was overcome with emotion as I watched her look at her home, and herself, in a whole new light.

      I saw her in a new light as well. This was the lightbulb moment that changed everything about my career as a professional organizer. I realized that organizing isn’t one-size-fits-all. What works for one person most certainly doesn’t work for everyone. Organizing systems need to be as unique as the person and the family that use them. Each space has to be designed based on their unique organizing styles in order for it to stay clean and organized. It was this new organizing philosophy that transformed how I organized my own home and my clients’ homes, and has helped hundreds of thousands of people from all over the world finally get organized for good.

      As my professional organizing business grew and I began helping thousands of families from all over the world, I was determined to research, identify, and categorize all the different organizing styles that I was seeing in so many people’s homes. After years of practice, I could instantly know someone’s style by stepping into his or her space, or even just by speaking with him or her for a few minutes about clutter issues. I was an expert at the different styles, and I had even narrowed it down to four distinct personality types, but I struggled to articulate these types in a way that was simple and easy to understand.

      I created an online test to help people identify their style, but even the test wasn’t always accurate. I just couldn’t find a way to take what I had learned inside my head—and what I had come to instinctively “know”—and say it in an easy and concise way.

      It was during an interview with a local radio station that I had my eureka moment. It all came down to two simple words: abundance and simplicity.

      When asked about the different organizing personality types, I was struggling to find the words to describe a person who craved visual organizing solutions. So many people want to actually see their stuff, and I was totally blanking on finding a positive way to describe this. Visual personality types feel anxiety with traditional minimally organized spaces, just like some people feel anxiety in a space that has a lot of visual distractions. My explanation of the differences was usually long-winded and confusing, but during this interview…it hit me…the opposite of minimal is abundant. About half the population craves visual abundance in their homes, and I finally had an easy and positive way to describe it!

      So “abundance” was the winning word, but I was also using the word “minimal” in describing the personality types that prefer to have their items organized out of sight. The problem with this word was that it was now associated with the ”minimalism” movement, and, while half the population craves minimal visual distractions in their homes, they were not in fact, minimalists. Instead, I settled on the word simplicity. Visual simplicity versus visual abundance.

      I can use the words simplicity and abundance to describe the other side of these four personality types as well. There are two very different ways to organize your belongings: micro-organizing versus macro-organizing. Micro-organization is all about having detailed, subdivided categories, with accuracy and functionality being the main goal. Macro-organization has broader, simpler categories, with ease of use being the top priority. People who prefer micro-organizing, with a more detailed and subcategorized system, crave organizational abundance. Those who prefer a macro-organizing approach need fast and simple solutions, or organizational simplicity.

      Do these personality types overlap? Of course, but I can promise that you fit into one category more than any other and, once you identify and understand your organizing personality type, everything will change.

      Now that I had this language to describe the four personalities, I gave each one an appropriate bug title, and thus the Clutterbug Classification System was born.

      The four categories are as follows:

      •Ladybug – Craves Visual Simplicity with Organizational Simplicity

      •Cricket – Craves Visual Simplicity with Organizational Abundance

      •Bee – Craves Visual Abundance with Organizational Abundance

      •Butterfly – Craves Visual Abundance with Organizational Simplicity

      It’s that simple: the entire human race sorted into four categories based on how they like their belongings cared for and displayed.

      You can easily identify your own personal organizing style by taking a look at a space in your home or at work that just seems to stay clean and organized. Maybe it’s a desk drawer or the bookcase in your living room. Perhaps it’s a filing cabinet or your daily planner. Ask yourself, is this space visual or hidden? Do you prefer to see your belongings or have them out of sight? Is this space using a micro (lots of smaller categories) or macro (a few larger categories) organizing solution?

      It’s such a simple concept that it has gone unnoticed until now. Instead of trying (and failing) to make your home and your life fit into a certain mold, it’s time to create your own. You finally can have the answers to the questions that no one has ever thought to ask: “Why does my home look the way it does and what is the meaning behind my mess?”

      In the next chapter, we will dig deep into the four different organizing personality types and identify your style, and then you will finally be able to understand yourself in a way that you never have before.

      So, repeat after me:

      “I am not messy. I am an organized and productive person.”

      Now, let me show you how you can prove this to yourself.

      The Science Behind the Clutterbug Philosophy

      Before we jump right into the organizing personality test, I first want to share with you some of the “science” behind the different organizing styles and how I developed it.

      Disclaimer: There is actually no defined science involved (yet).

      However, I’ve spent years observing my family, friends, and clients, trying to link the different organizing types to other personality traits or to one’s particular upbringing or even family history. I wanted to more deeply understand why some people are visual organizers while others are not. Why is it so easy for one person to use a detailed filing system every day, while others just make a pile? Surely I thought, there must be an easy way to wrap this whole concept up with a neat and tidy bow. Unfortunately, the more I dug into the underlying explanation for why some people organize differently from others, the further I actually got from an easy answer. Turns out people and psychological profiles are complex!

      While there are shared characteristics that apply broadly to people in each of the categories I’ve defined, these characteristics certainly do not apply to everyone in the group in every given situation. So don’t worry if you were already thinking, “I’m a Cricket, but my house looks more like I am a Ladybug.” Like a lot of things in life, there is a spectrum to the Clutterbug system. During the ups and down of its development, I found there are also a lot of personality traits that I expected to fit neatly into specific organizing categories but, in the real world, just don’t. Despite having an anti-analytical brain, I still wanted to create a test and system that provided concrete, indisputable facts and figures for analysis! However, in the end, while there are certainly four distinct organizing types (and tens of thousands of people now validating this theory with real results), a list of personality-based similarities within those

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