3 Organizing Mistakes you might be making

I recently read this article written by Lorie Marrero, who is the creator of, "The Clutter Diet." The new year always brings resolutions which one of the biggest is to get organized. We start off meaning well but there are obstacles that pop up in our way. I like that Lorie broke it down into the 3 biggest mistakes that most of us make. Hopefully it will help you gain new perspective on organizing and achieve your goals in becoming organized in 2013!

Here are the 3 biggest mistakes we see people make when trying to get organized:

1) "All or Nothing" Thinking. This perfectionistic mindset is sure to cause failure! It's the idea that you must either be completely on, or completely off, a program of change... If you're not following it perfectly, then you've BLOWN IT! "Since I slipped with this one cookie, just forget it-- I might as well eat the whole bag." Don't do that to yourself! Getting organized means you are changing daily habits, some of which are deeply ingrained. You've got to catch yourself and make behavioral changes until they become natural, like hanging up your keys right when you walk in, or remembering to start the dishwasher each night. Here's where I talk about this on one of my videos (you can skip to 57 seconds in): http://youtu.be/bqhbKMa7_Aw Forgive yourself and keep moving forward!

2) "Crash Organizing." We all know that crash dieting doesn't work. You can't expect lasting results from doing some kind of Hollywood fad cabbage diet or just juicing for a few days. Well, crash organizing doesn't work either! Unless you address the habits that got you there in the first place, your spaces will gain all of their clutter back. You've got to put on your Sherlock Holmes hat and reason through what the bottlenecks are, where the inflow is coming from, why the problem is persisting, and how the stuff got there in the first place. Don't just focus on "cleaning up" -- solve it!

3) Not getting support. You're going to have some days where you don't want to keep your commitments to yourself, whether it's for exercise or for cutting down on sugar or for doing your organizing projects and maintenance tasks. If you don't have somebody to encourage you or hold you accountable, you are much less likely to succeed over time. I talk to my Motivation Partners every week. I just talked to them this morning, in fact! They are holding my feet to the fire about a project I am trying to finish. Who's YOUR buddy?