If Everything Has A Place, Why Are We Looking? Simple Tips Help Clear A Path Through Our Disorganized Lives

What do you do if you and your spouse have different disorganization thresholds?

You like to keep things neat and orderly; he considers a room clean if you can walk through a room without having to step over anything.

You need to know the timing of each event for the next month; she knows you’ll tell her when it’s time to get ready.

You believe there’s a place for everything; your spouse relies on you to find things for them. What do you do? First, you can’t do it for another person. You can organize the things around them and show them how to use the systems you set up, but follow-through is up to them.

1. You can control your attitude. Keep your perspective. A friend of mine tells of coming home from work one day to find the family room looking as if it had been ransacked. Her immediate reaction was to scream at her family for being so messy. But she recalled that anger is often actually directed to oneself. Her mind flashed to the stacks of newspapers and magazines at her bedside and the make-up she had left scattered across her vanity. She realized that she was not without fault. She turned and headed off to clean her own mess, her anger dissipated.

2. Be a good example. But be a quiet one! Continually calling attention to the fact that you are organized and the person you live with is not will get you nothing except a resentful mate. Let your actions be the persuading force when words probably won’t work.

3. Realize that although being organized is very important to you, your mate may not share that concern. Maybe you have different views of what is acceptable. Your spouse may not notice that there are five pairs of socks on the floor although it makes you absolutely crazy! Maybe her attention is temporarily focused on a work situation, financial problems or some other concern that you don’t feel very involved in. If she is carrying that burden, maybe you can carry more of the load for organizing your home and family.

4. Define and share responsibilities. In other words, communicate. In some homes both partners work to support the family financially, so the responsibilities of caring for the home and family should be shared also. In other arrangements, one partner earns the money for the financial support and the other carries more of the responsibility of keeping the home operating in an organized way. Define with your mate what your roles are. Agree on the chores that have to be done to maintain your home and who will do them. If your spouse can’t stand handling the checkbook, trade off for cleaning bathrooms or being responsible for the laundry. Household chores don’t have to be unpleasant if they are shared.

5. Use positive comments to encourage your mate. Especially acknowledge them when they do a job you know they’d rather not do. Avoid negative or challenging overstatements like, “I’m the only one who ever does anything around here!”

6. Make it easy for your mate to help. Use a family calendar to help them avoid schedule problems. Label shelves and drawers to let them know where things belong. Don’t be rigid in your rules of housekeeping if someone else is helping you keep house! If you only accept the dishes being put away in a certain place or if you think it’s senseless to clean a floor unless the baseboards are done, too, then you probably won’t get much help. Can you handle sheets being put on your bed upside down?

If you and your mate don’t see eye to eye on matters of organization, try to understand what the underlying cause is. Once you know why they don’t share your concern, you can begin to address what you see as a problem. Some of the steps I’ve listed here might help you work the situation out.

The important things to remember are: communication, compromise and compassion.

Talk to your mate about what you see as a problem. Let them know it concerns you and listen to what their concerns are. Ask if and how someone can help them.

If you expect your mate to meet your level of organization, you should also be willing to meet them halfway on some of their terms.

Above all, be compassionate. Recognize your own shortcomings and that your mate may have other priorities. Consider giving them a session with a professional organizer as a birthday present.

If your mate’s lack of organization is threatening you relationship, maybe you’ll have to be the one to change. Don’t let the signals you give say someone is less lovable because they aren’t as organized as you.

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