Are you one of those people that feel guilty because you can’t seem to get organized? Do you feel like you’re the only person that can’t seem to get their life together? The good news is, that you’re not alone.

give up the guilt of being disorganized

Many, many people struggle with getting and staying organized. Here are a few tips to help you stop feeling guilty and start feeling happy in your own skin.

To let the organization industry tell it, we are only going to succeed in life when everything we own is contained.

There is a huge market for items that promise to put everything that you have exactly where it belongs, keep it there, and leave you a better more organized person.

There are reams of books dedicated to this same process – which has always been puzzling, because wouldn’t books just add to the clutter? 

The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing

There are Facebook groups dedicated to books like Marie Kondo’s the magic of tidying up.

People swear by these methods, confident that the organization is going to be the cure-all that makes their lives better.

What do you do when you aren’t the cleanup type?

If indeed it takes all kinds of people to make a world, it is easy to feel like you don’t fit in when your style of work leaves you with piles, messes, and items scattered all over the place.

Messy and unhygienic are NOT the same thing

As if that weren’t bad enough, people tend to spend a great deal of time looking down on you and determining your worth based on your ability to keep up with these arbitrary societal demands.

But we aren’t meant to live by other people’s standards. How do we learn to give up the guilt of being disorganized and live freely in our truths?

Messy and unhygienic aren’t the same thing.

There is a huge difference between being messy and disorganized and being unhygienic.

Messy means you might lose your keys once in a while, but it doesn’t mean that it is hiding under an old sandwich that you forgot.

For messy people, the goal should always be to keep the mess contained in the realm of what is hygienic.

It is ok for you to be scattered and all over the place, as long as you aren’t attracting bugs and vermin in your quest to build a better pile.

Morality isn’t determined by mess level

There is this pervasive belief in our society that organized people are good people. That they are somehow better than the rest of us.

They are able to keep control of their excesses and not waste time, energy, or space.

This couldn’t be further from the truth. There are no absolutes in life, and a messy person is just as likely to be a kind, decent, moral person as an organized one.

In fact, many times messy people are willing to be more flexible and forgiving than people who aren’t.

You are the only one it has to make sense to

Part of the guilt of being a messy person comes from the fact that most people cannot make heads or tails of what we are doing with our mess.

Here’s the good news: It doesn’t have to make sense to anyone but you.

That’s right. The only thing that is necessary for an organizational system to work is for the person to whom it belongs to use it successfully.

That means if your piles, stacks, and crumpled papers help you think, it is alright.

If you don’t have a place for everything, but you can remember where you put it, keep doing what you are doing.

Life is so short, don’t spend the precious time and energy you have on living for other people. It is perfectly alright for you to be a mess, and you don’t have to feel an ounce of shame about it. Live your life in peace and enjoy your life the way it is.

I hope this post was helpful for you, and if you have any questions, or advice for others, please do feel free to use the comments box below.

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