The Minimalist Way to Be Super Organized with Zero Complexity

I am super organized. It’s not to show off either.

An organized home, or being early to an appointment, won’t impress people much. You won’t achieve all of your dreams in three hours because you made a tiny decision to be organized — that’s self-help porn.

There are four reasons to be super organized:

A decluttered mind, followed by crystal clear thinking.

When I see mess, I can’t think straight. My mind’s on the mess rather than the task at hand (typically, writing).

Clean your mess up to keep your mind clean.

Less stress

I noticed I get stressed when there is mess.

If I have a bad day at my 9–5 and then come home to a hallway full of half-finished projects, that I have to walk over like dead bodies in a World War 2 battlefield, I want to break down and cry.

Staying organized helps relieve stress.

If your home is in order, at least one thing in your life is in order — even if everything else in your life is burning to the ground.

After a bad breakup a few years back, staying organized was a way to overcome lovesickness.

I threw out years worth of broken memories. I got my life together by throwing away the junk that was blocking my future.

I put that junk on eBay and got over $3000 for it. I invested the $3000 back into income-producing assets, and most of all, myself. I reckon the $3000 has probably grown to over $20,000 by now.

There is so much money lying around your house.

Calm before the storm

If you have a big life event coming, then getting super organized can help you prepare for that event.

A speech in front of fifty people, for me, means house cleaning the day before. I scrub the shower while I rehearse my speech in my head. The insights that trickle out of my brain while scrubbing the mold off the shower is something I should get scientists to study.

Trivial tasks help you relax before you take a leap of faith.

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The Ultimate Guide to Being Super Organized

It took me many years to learn how to be super organized. Practice took me to new levels. My girlfriend thinks I’m a clean-up psycho at times. She’s beginning to understand the art of being tidy. Here’s how you can do it.

The floor is a no-go zone.

This is the worst place to put things. Leaving clothes on the floor is like saying “I don’t care about life anymore. I’m going to leave my clothes on the ground where my outside shoes that have been through public bathrooms full of piss have been.” Place your stuff anywhere but the floor.

The floor is for walking on, not temporary storage.

Paper is the devil. Photograph that shit.

There is no need for paper anymore. Unless you have a super grateful journal you write in. (You can lock it in your draws.)

I look at paper as the devil. I punch the devil by photographing it as soon as it enters my life through the mailbox. Once the photo is taken, the paper goes straight in the recycle bin.

Why is paper evil?

You can’t search paper. When paper is on your phone and photographed with an app like Apple Notes (that reads the words on the paper and makes them searchable), you can find everything again if you need to.

Manually searching through paper or sticky notes is a waste of your precious time. Put paper where it belongs: in the recycle bin.

Put dishes in the dishwasher as you create them

Dishes are harder to wash when they’ve been sitting there the entire day. Wash dishes as you go to get back time in your day to do cool stuff.

Reuse dishes too. Germs are mostly overrated, so you buy more detergent and make a chemical company rich. If the plate just had bread on it, it’s probably okay to eat a curry off of. Bread crumbs don’t bite your ass or stop you from breathing.

All your stuff has a place

Put things back where you got them. If something doesn’t have a place in your home or office, then your organization system is broken.

When I buy something new I agree with my partner where it’s going to belong. Once the agreement is made, unless in use, we both expect to find it in that place.

The best place to store things is in cupboards.

If you need more places to put things then you can invest in draws, cupboards, cabinets, etc. I have a bunch from Ikea so that the mess is stored away rather than making me feel visually impaired.

Guard common surfaces from clutter

How you take care of common surfaces is a sign of how organized you are. I find if I start leaving things on the kitchen table again then the kitchen table quickly starts to look like a messy garage.

Less clutter removes micro-decisions that drain your mental energy

Clutter creates excess decisions.

When you make an agreement with yourself about clutter, you have a system and set of pre-made decisions you can utilize.

I hate clutter because it makes me think about useless decisions that don’t serve my goals. Without clutter, you have energy to make more important decisions in your life.

Take organized actions in the moment, not afterwards

The best time to clean up a mess is when you create it. The best time to put something away is right after you use it.

Once a month cleans never happen. Spring cleans are a cleaning fantasy.

You stay organized moment to moment. You make your life easier when you think about clutter as it happens, not after the fact.

Final Thought

Being super organized is a system. A system takes the effort out of staying tidy and keeping your mind free of unnecessary distractions. When you systematize parts of your life, you introduce automation.

Auto-pilot the dumb stuff so you can focus on the tasks at hand that bring you meaning and fulfillment.

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Disclaimer

The original version of this story was published on another platform.

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