When your Valentine presents a gift box, whether packaged in classic Tiffany Blue or lopsided funny papers, your heart fills with warmth. It’s the thought that counts. But other times, the people you love present you with clutter, and just the thought of it can add a wintry layer of permafrost around the warmest hearts.

Helping your loved ones get organized can be a touchy endeavor. You want to help them. (OK, sometimes you just want to help them not make you crazy.) The first key to achieving their goals (and yours) is to remember that disorganization isn’t a character flaw. It’s not a measure of a person’s maturity, intellect or value. It’s just a mismatch between the skills and systems already in place and the ever-changing demands of the world.

Making people feel guilty about their clutter doesn’t help  — and indeed, it can hurt their self-esteem and the loving bonds you share. Instead, create a guilt-free environment in which being organized is beneficial, fun and easy.

MOTIVATE

Start by knowing and talking about what motivates your sweetheart. Take time to focus on what enticements might make your loved one more willing to get organized. If someone is not already actively concerned with how things look, feeling pushed to declutter to make the house “pretty” is often a deal-breaker. Visual appeal just isn’t a huge motivator for many individuals, including a preponderance of men.

Instead of aesthetics, focus on the major tangible, temporal and visceral benefits of getting organized. Discuss how some new skills and systems will save money (which can be better spent on nifty items and meaningful experiences). Explore how a few tweaks may also save time, reduce stress, and increase overall productivity.

If your darling thinks of organizing as a chore, find ways to make behavioral changes an adventure, a challenge or a competition. Appeal to the big kid inside and document successes with points or rewards. Encourage trying to beat a “personal best”.

EASY-PEASY

Once you and your significant other are on the same page regarding the benefits of organizing, find out how you can make the process easier. Ask what makes the steps difficult in the first place.

Are they neglecting putting things away because they don’t want to be “made wrong” by putting something where they think you’ll say it doesn’t belong? Do they cringe at the prospect of feeling clueless or being corrected? Find ways to be equal partners, instead.

Ask your beloved if there are current storage areas that aren’t convenient – places where items are housed that don’t feel logical, or aren’t easily accessed – and rethink the placement. Perhaps the labels for the family filing system aren’t intuitive, leading to paperwork procrastination?

Everything should have a home, and if the storage place is conveniently located and labeled, it makes it easier to put things away.

Paint an outline of the tools that go on the pegboard in the garage to make it simpler to return them. Work together to label files or the edges of shelves in the linen closet so everyone knows where things should go. Sketch a fun little map of where items belong in the fridge or pantry and post it on the door.

Is time an obstacle? Build time into the family schedule (perhaps a nightly 15 minutes before dinner, or mid-morning on Saturdays) for everyone, kids and grownups alike, to tackle their organizing tasks.

If there are household and organizing tasks your darling just can’t stand, why not make a trade? Nobody says you always have to unload the dishwasher and your sweetie must balance the checkbook. Exchange the least-desirable tasks and you might both gain motivation in new areas.

OUTSIDE RESOURCES

Have patience, and recognize that not everyone starts from the same place. It’s pointless to yell, “You should know how to do this!” and it’s unreasonable to expect that everyone should have the same skills of pattern recognition or ability to conceptualize abstract solutions. Similarly, there are areas where there are no rights and wrongs, but merely where couples have differing organizing styles and retrieval preferences.

Even if you’re great at organizing yourself, consider the potential benefits of outside coaching and assistance. My mother is an excellent driver (insert your own Rainman joke here), but she recognized, after a few initial runs, that a driver’s education course and a few formal driving lessons might reduce my teenage stress level (and her own).

You wouldn’t set your own arm if it were broken, would you? You don’t expect people to be able to churn their own butter or prepare their own taxes. Think of organizing as a combination of skill and training. Can’t we all use a little help with some things? Consider a trainer for organizational fitness!

Engaging the services of a professional organizer allows both of you to benefit from the technical expertise of a neutral, judgment-free third party. A professional organizer can provide advice and solutions that neither of you might have even considered, allowing you to move forward as loving, equal partners. One might even say, as Valentines.

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About The Author 

Julie Bestry is a Certified Professional Organizer, speaker and author, who helps individuals and businesses save time and money, reduce stress and increase productivity through new organizational skills and systems. Although a generalist, Julie specializes in paper organizing, blogs as the Paper Doll, and publishes Best Results for Busy People: Organizing Your Modern World. 

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