Are You Clean, Tidy, or Organized?
Would you call yourself clean, tidy, or organized? If we played a game where I chose three rooms in your home and forced you to decide which to keep clean, tidy, or organized, could you choose? Would you even understand the difference?
Many people use these words interchangeably, but they hold different meanings and implications. Understanding the differences can help us transform our homes and make our spaces more aesthetically pleasing, functional, and conducive to our well-being. Everyone has different preferences and needs in their space and will need a variety of support depending on those needs.
Clean
Have you ever been called a "clean freak" or a "germaphobe"? This might be your preferred focus. Consider cleanliness as the baseline for better health. Your space is free of dirt, dust, and germs. The carpets are vacuumed, the floors are mopped, the tile is sparkling, and the surfaces are dusted and wiped down.
Lots of our clients, and many folks around the world, hire a housekeeper or a cleaning service to support the maintenance of a clean household. Some of our clients have daily housekeepers, while others have a cleaning service come on a weekly, bi-weekly, or monthly basis. Cleaning services have become ubiquitous in the last 50 years.
Tidy
Does a crowded surface make your brain fuzzy? Tidiness is about visual appeal and the absence of clutter. Many people are tidy in shared spaces but have complete chaos when you open a closet or a cupboard. Staying tidy requires daily upkeep and is much easier when spaces are zoned for different types of functions. Think about coat hooks, shoe racks, and mail drop-zones. Even if these spaces get crowded, they help to keep items off of the floor and counters clear. Many homes are tidy but not clean, especially if the homeowners have pets and kids.
Cleaning services usually tidy as they clean. It is pretty challenging to clean if there is clutter all over the floors and surfaces! You can usually spot a clean but not tidy home by the piles of miscellaneous items shoved into closets and cabinets.
Organized
Organizing is all about systems and functionality. An organized person knows what they have and how to find it, and an organized household is able to maintain homeostasis as different members of the family utilize the systems. Zoning, labels, and regular maintenance keep things organized. Being organized also involves keeping track of schedules, including work, school, meals, chores, and extracurriculars. Generally the more people there are in a household, the harder it is to keep it organized without a system. I love to say that a good system can save the world (or at least your world).
A professional organizer's job is to help you create systems in your home that are intuitive and easy to maintain. This always starts with the SPACE Acronym (Sort, Purge, Assign, Contain, Equalize). Those first two letters help us understand what you have and then what you actually want to remain. Assignment allows us to adjust your storage and create homes for each item that make sense to all members of the household. Containing includes utilizing existing storage systems, installing more functional and adaptable closet systems, and binning things in a way that is both visually pleasing and highly functional. And Equalizing is all about that maintenance - how can this system be used long term? How will it adapt to changing needs?
We work closely with cleaning services and housekeepers, but our work is really different! We use organizational systems to make your life simpler which is very conducive to a tidier and cleaner space. At the end of the day, only you can decide what is most important to you.
