In this episode of Organized and Productive, soon to be Organize and Cherish, we dive into the differences between organizing, decluttering, and tidying up. These three actions are often used interchangeably, but they each have distinct purposes and processes. We break them down, helping listeners understand when and how to tackle each one to save time, reduce frustration, and make meaningful progress in their spaces.
Listeners will walk away with a clear understanding of how these activities complement one another and practical tips to apply immediately to their own organizing projects.
Find all of the links mentioned in this episode at https://theorganizedflamingo.com/quicklinks
In This Episode, We Talk About
- The differences between organizing, decluttering, and tidying up, and why understanding them matters.
- Common pitfalls when tackling organizing projects and how to avoid them.
- Practical strategies to help you start small and stay efficient in your decluttering, organizing, or tidying journey.
Mentioned in This Episode
- The Organized Flamingo’s Keep or Toss Decision Tree, available on the Freebie Corner.
- The 7 Steps of Organizing Methodology (Episode 1 and individual sub-episodes).
- Tools for organizing, including bins, labels, and timers, to streamline your projects.
The Organized & Productive podcast is brought to you by The Organized Flamingo and hosted by Stephanie Y. Deininger! For those of you who love the thought of organizing & being more productive, but don’t know where to start or constantly up against hurdles that don’t let you advance the way you want to, this podcast is for you!
Review full show notes and resources at https://theorganizedflamingo.com/podcast
Join our weekly email newsletter for all-things organizing & productivity delivered right to your inbox https://theorganizedflamingo.com/quicklinks
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Review Transcript:
Stephanie [00:00:00]:
Question for you, have you ever stood in the middle of a messy room, not sure if you should start organizing, decluttering, or just tidy up? You are not alone. Today, we're diving into the differences between these three activities that often get mixed up and why understanding them can save you time, frustration, and even a little heartache. So here we go. Welcome to the Organized and Productive podcast with The Organized Flamingo. I am your host, Stephanie, a professional organizer and productivity expert. Ready to explore the right organizing and productivity solutions for you? Yeah? Well then, let's go. Hey, friends, and welcome to this week's episode here at Organized and Productive, soon to be Organize and Cherish, the podcast. I'm Stephanie, your host.
Stephanie [00:00:51]:
And on this episode, we're breaking down organizing, decluttering, and tidying up. Each of these plays a key role in managing our spaces, but they're not the same thing. So I'm breaking them each into 3 sections in today's episode so we can go over what they are, what they mean, and that way, you can start labeling your projects accordingly, saving you some time, heartache, and, hopefully, inspire you to get it done in a more efficient and loving way. So because when you're tackling them in the wrong order, it can feel like you're running in circles. So let's untangle it all together, shall we? 1st, I always like to give everyone a explanation of what the definition is of what we're talking about so we're all on the same page and or why does it matter so that we can all be on the same page as we discuss this today's episode and the definitions. So why does it matter? Because knowing the difference can help you work smarter and not harder when tackling your spaces. When you know how different these actions are, you can tackle the ones that are natural to you, the ones that you can easily do yourself without having to rely on others and make progress. So not having to halt your entire process because you can't get anything done.
Stephanie [00:02:18]:
So, hopefully, by breaking apart these definitions and helping you understand that each one is different will help you move forward faster. And instead of feeling overwhelmed, you'll know exactly where to start and what steps to take next. So what is the difference? Decluttering. With decluttering, it's all about letting go of things you no longer need, use, or love. It's a pretty universal definition that most people in our industry and most people that are not in our industry understand when you say, I need to declutter. The goal is to reduce the volume and create space in your area, physical, mental, and emotional. Think about clearing out expired pantry items or donating clothes that don't fit anymore. You are letting go.
Stephanie [00:03:08]:
So as an example, when you're decluttering a closet, you're asking questions like, do I wear this? Does this fit my current lifestyle? Decluttering is when you're making decisions, and, yes, it can be emotional, but you're making decisions, especially if an item has sentimental value. I know that it can be very emotional, but you're making decisions to let it go. So it's a it's a much easier yes, no type of process. I know that there's the emotional piece of it. Okay? So I'm not disregarding that, but the goal of decluttering and the definition of decluttering, it's it's more of a yes and no, black and white or it should be a yes and no. And if it isn't, then we need to put it in a separate pile or different project journey than just a decluttering journey. So some of the tools and strategies that I have for this that can help you through the process is to have a decision tree. We actually have our very own, so you can head on over to our resources page, which I will put in our show notes.
Stephanie [00:04:06]:
So you can do that. You can also have a friend or, like, a body double be there with you. They call them body doubles when someone is there kind of acting similar to how you would answer yes or no questions, but it's not you so that hopefully it's unbiased and they can help you move along much faster, so like a body double. You can have a friend there, family that you trust and that way you don't have to make all of the decisions yourself which often leads to burnout with that decision fatigue. So some of those strategies are really good to use when your goal is to declutter. Let's move on to organizing. Now, organizing is what happens after decluttering usually. Sometimes it has to be done before you declutter in a move, like, when you're doing a move relocation or something like that, and at that point then you would do sorting first, but most of the time, you organize after you declutter, and it's all about creating systems for what's left.
Stephanie [00:05:02]:
So, ultimately, whatever it is that you will be keeping, now you're trying to find a system that works for you. The goal is functionality and sustainability. So for example, once you've decluttered your closet, organizing involves arranging your clothes by category or season, then using bins or labels to keep it easy to maintain. So an another example here is organizing is less about letting go and more about designing a space that works for you. And if you've ever rearranged your kitchen to make cooking easier, you were organizing, which is why when you talk to your favorite organizer, some of them will have a better understanding of the design process and maybe they came from an architect background, a design background, a builders background, so they have the knowledge of how things operate functionality wise and if so, then that's wonderful. And some other organizers don't have that gift or that preference, which is okay because what can just happen then is if they have the brain to organize, they can work with a designer. They can work with your architect to merge the 2 talents together because not all designers and architects are good at organizing and and seeing the life, like, the life that the area plays. So even though some people are great at designing functional spaces, they don't understand everyone's lifestyle.
Stephanie [00:06:30]:
So some of those questions that I would have for you is to make sure that whoever you're working with, including if you're doing it yourself, for you don't understand that there's a functionality piece, organizing piece, and then there's the making the sorting and making decisions piece, and those two things are different. So here are some other tools that I I have when it comes to organizing. This is where picking a container, the dividers, the baskets, labels come into play. Like, these are the tools that we use when we organize and and remember just organizing isn't about perfection, it's about creating systems that fit your life. We have our own methodology or it's called the 7 steps of organizing almost anything. If you're new to that, we have a full episode and each of the 7 steps has its own sub episodes for where I explain how you can go through the steps on your own and make it work for you. Basically, for us, we believe that there is no right or wrong way necessarily to to organize. It's a matter of which step comes first depending on what your end goal is.
Stephanie [00:07:35]:
So if you're moving the order of events of how you're organizing decluttering and downsizing might look very different than somebody who is trying to redesign their space or someone that is merging a household with a loved one, like, maybe they're having their parents move in or their or their children are moving in, they're in their club sandwich generation. Right? Like, some kids have to or children, I shouldn't say kids, like little kids, but the children need to move back to their parents' house for whatever reason. And so now that decluttering and organizing and downsizing journey is going to look very different than if you're just trying to remodel a new house. So our 7 steps of organizing almost anything, which is episode 1 and then thereafter there's 7 individual episodes, we'll guide you towards figuring out what your priorities are and which one should come first so that you can be more efficient with your time. And now going to the tidying up functionality or word or action. This is the daily or weekly maintenance that keeps your space looking neat. The goal here is restoring order. Think of tidying as fluffing the pillows on your couch or putting away toys at the end of the day.
Stephanie [00:08:47]:
A couple of other examples are, if your living room is organized, but there's a stack of magazines on the coffee table, tidying up means putting the back in their designated spot, maybe the shelf, maybe the basket. It's a quick and and simple and it's satisfying, like, those are the steps that you the maintenance steps that come after you've decluttered and organized. Tidying gets put in clumped into the same pool of actions as organizing, and it drives me nuts. I will sometimes use the word tidy, tidying up for the sake of website copy just so that people understand what I'm I'm kind of talking about. But to be honest, this is one of my one of my biggest pet peeves. Couple of organizers and I talk about this all the time because tidying up is not the same as organizing, as decluttering, as downsizing. It's tidying up should be quick. It's it's just dusting off, cleaning up, making everything look, quote, unquote, you know, tidy.
Stephanie [00:09:43]:
If you are tidying up, you think you're tidying up, but you are taking everything out of your closet to rearrange it, you will be burned out in 0.2 seconds because that is not tidying up. You now have ventured into project mode, and you're now decluttering. You're now organizing, and each of those steps is its own timeline. So it's going to take you quite a bit more time if you were thinking that you were just tidying up. So I just wanna make sure that you know that, you know, those are the 3 different types of ways to make your space the way that you envisioned it, but they're very different categories, very different words and actions. So some of the reasons why knowing the difference matters is the 3 that I'm going to outline today are the ones I just I I talk about a lot and I think are the most important. So it's to avoid overwhelm. So knowing the difference between decluttering, organizing, and tidying up helps you avoid overwhelm.
Stephanie [00:10:45]:
If you try to organize before decluttering, like I mentioned in the example right before we started this part, you're just moving stuff around, and that's going to be exhausting. 2, you can avoid some of the common pitfalls. So some of those common pitfalls and mistakes I see is making tidying up for organizing. People will straighten things up and think they're done, but without a system in place, the mess just keeps coming back. So someone will shove everything in the closet, which is fine until you need something and you're looking for something and you can't find it. So you go buy it again, and now you have doubles, triples, quadruples. You might even not realize that you do have it in there, and you just keep shoving and shoving and shoving and things start to pile up. So those are some of those pitfalls that I see.
Stephanie [00:11:37]:
So somebody was trying to just tie the up, but they didn't organize. So they don't know what's even in the drawer wherever they stuffed everything, and then you just end up spending more money and spending more time and getting aggravated. They work together is that these all of these things, they complement each other. So tidying up, decluttering, and organizing. Declutter usually comes first because you want to see what you have, what you need, what you don't need. Then comes organizing, which is when you figure out what the system is. Where should the bin go? Where do you naturally drop off your stuff? Where will your kids be able to see what they need when they need it, but also be able to put it away, same with your spouse, same with your family members, anybody that you're living with, including in your office and professional life. So that's the organizing piece.
Stephanie [00:12:26]:
And then use tidying up to maintain the results. So this is just like the upkeep going forward. So think of it like cooking too. If you're a cook, gather the ingredients, you prepare the meal, and then you clean up afterwards. Right? It's it's a very similar family of actions that work in together. They don't they can't really live without each other, but they are very separate. So let me give you 2 quick examples of clients that we have had and how by us explaining these our 7 steps of organizing almost anything, which they could just use to interchange in the steps so that they didn't feel stuck, like, they had to do like, they had to go buy the bins first. Like, we we you were they were able to move around the steps so that it could work for them.
Stephanie [00:13:09]:
So how they use those 7 steps, but then also understood that decluttering, organizing, and tidying up were very different and how they ended up succeeding in their project. So they had, one of their closets was just overflowing. Very common for a lot of us, for myself included. So we first decluttered removing what they didn't wear. This was a, for the couple. Eventually, we did come back for the kids, but it was, like, a different project, which I will talk in a future episode about the differences between children and kids organizing and decluttering and tidying up versus adult versus senior actions. Okay? So because there's 3 chapters in life will are very different as well, so we'll talk about that. But anyways okay.
Stephanie [00:13:54]:
So going back to the example, we were, organizing and and doing their closet, lots of clothes. Everything was just piling up and coming out of every drawer. And this is for a man and woman. And so we removed everything that they didn't wear because time was we had to get it done in a very short amount of time. So we focused on just the immediate nose. The immediate nose are always the fastest because, well, easy decisions. Let's avoid decision fatigue. That's really should be one of your number one priorities when you start a project so that you don't get burnt out.
Stephanie [00:14:25]:
So we removed everything that they didn't wear. And then once we cleared that, we went ahead and organized it with what was left over because they were not able to try everything on. We sorted as quickly as possible, but they weren't able to do, like, any other steps. So we put everything back, organized it, and, we did it by color. And then they decided that they would go through the next step of figuring out what fit, what didn't fit. Like, some of those clothing that we put back was, like, in the maybe pile, essentially. They were not clear nose. So that is a really good example of decluttering before organizing without taking so much time in the maybe piles.
Stephanie [00:15:07]:
K. So just, like, make super quick decisions just to get through that phase and then continue to work from there. Another example was when we did when we do living rooms, but this one particular client, they needed to get their living room organized. And they did have a, you know, big family and everything. After every weekend, because everybody was home, it was just total chaos. So their struggle was on Sundays or on Monday mornings, when they would wake up, everything was just everywhere. And no matter how much they tried to put everything back, it just nothing truly looked tidy or clean. Everything just was looking messy all the time.
Stephanie [00:15:44]:
So in their case, we did a whole system, like a system for them, and they just had to work on the tidying up so that on Sunday nights, everyone knew exactly where to put things back versus guesstimating. So a 10 minute, 30 minute, you know, after dinner, everybody, let's go put the timer. Let's put everything back, but we know where everything goes became, again, like, a 10 to 30 minute action versus a 2 hour overhaul that they used to have to do because they would have to essentially start over. Like, it was, like, reorganizing week after week, and that becomes so exhausting for everybody. So for them, tidying up was the focus, like, learning to tidy after we found bins for everything. We organized, but their troubles were not that they needed to declutter, although that will always be part of the tidying up and the organizing and all the process, but theirs was just very light. They had no problem removing and throwing away stuff and giving away stuff and selling stuff. Their problem was that no matter what they did, it always looked chaotic.
Stephanie [00:16:53]:
So for them, it was a matter of tidying up. So some of those quick tips that I have for you when you have examples like this is to start small. We always talk about that. I mean, it's I know it's cliche. Everyone says start small, but it really is. But I'm gonna tell you why because your brain you need to you need to have your brain exercise that tidying, decluttering, and organizing muscles. We call them muscles, but around these neck of the woods, but you just have to have your brain practice that yourself, your the motion, the your body. I mean, some of it's very physical.
Stephanie [00:17:24]:
Right? You're bending over to get something. You're putting stuff away. So you want to have your body, yourself, your mind actually practice these actions. And by starting small, you can start with that practice little by little, eventually leading up to something that becomes very natural, not as painful, not you won't be a sore the next day because you try to do this only, like, once a year. So little by little will take you a long way. Set a timer. Set a timer kind of goes with starting small. Give yourself 15 minutes, 30 minutes, 20 minutes.
Stephanie [00:18:00]:
The Pomodoro method is a proven method for a lot of people, but it could be 15, 20 minutes, whatever your threshold is Or do we call them also sprints, like, the decluttering sprints so that if your focus is to declutter, but you hate it or it's overwhelming, then give yourself, a very small amount of time to make quick decisions. And by quick, I don't mean rushed. I should probably do an episode about that. When we're talking about quick, we we mean efficient. We don't mean rush like you need to be in this anxious state of, oh my gosh. I have 15 minutes of what you know? No. I it could be a very zen 15 minutes. It's it's all about efficiency, but the timer helps to stay on track so that you don't overdo it.
Stephanie [00:18:41]:
And then, couple of other tips is to always have a, some kind of station, like your organizing station. So it could be your donation to sell pie like a box that you always can put stuff in when, you know, they're they're really action boxes. I have some clients that have 2 return boxes. So anything that they need to return goes in that box, and then they tackle that project once a week. They take everything back that they need to return, including the library, including all that. I have a couple other clients who have the, of course, the donation and to sell piles to fix, to mend. I have quite a bit of those. We'd actually just put together one of those, like, boxes in a client's closet, and it says to mend, basically, when it gets filled up.
Stephanie [00:19:26]:
If it's filled up and you have not fixed the stuff in it, then it's time to either give it away, throw it away, or have someone else fix it or maybe go and hire someone to fix it, especially when it comes to, maybe collector clothing items, shoes, take it to a cobbler, something like that. Okay. So if I were giving you homework, which we normally don't have homework on this podcast, it's meant as inspiration, and for you to listen in the background to start the process of whatever project and get you inspired, get you to the finish line. Okay. So there's usually no homework. But for this week, I'm gonna give you a little mini task or challenge, and that is to really look at the list of things that you need to, quote unquote, organize and make sure that you're labeling it correctly. If you're trying to tackle your bathroom closet, bathroom under the sink areas, are you trying to declutter? And if so, the goal is to let go. Let go, like, throw it away, it needs to be a way you need to simplify.
Stephanie [00:20:27]:
Or are you trying to organize, find a new system? That's when you get permission to buy the bin, to, see if you should be using some pull out drawers to get to the stuff in the back much easier, to get some tiered bins, to get new labels, then that's when you start shopping for those things. If your goal is to organize, if your goal is to tidy up, it's because what you have in there is actually working, you just need to put it back. You just need to tidy it up. There's no need for you to reinvent the wheel, go get new drawers, spend more money on new bins and labels. It's fine the way it is. It's just that you need to work on the habit of, you know, tidying up every maybe every week, you spend 10 minutes to tidy it up, and then it it'll look brand new. Do a little dusting, get the vacuum, get the cleaner, and clean it out, and then make it look a little shinier, and instead of thinking that you needed to completely redo everything. So that's the homework for the week.
Stephanie [00:21:27]:
Go back to your project list and see if you are labeling your projects correctly. Alright, everybody. So until next time. Before I go, though, I wanna remind everyone that we will be uploading new episode I mean, these are all new episodes on Mondays, but we are changing the name of the podcast Organize and Cherish. So you will notice that change pretty soon, probably, maybe next week, at the end of January as we celebrate our 2 year anniversary. Most of the episodes will be fairly much the same. Like, some you really won't notice a huge, huge difference, except we are going to be improving upon what we have already been talking about, niching down a little more in the sandwich and multi generational topics that that community faces because that is really our focus, here at the Organasco Vinga going forward. So we will be tackling those projects.
Stephanie [00:22:23]:
But if you want to know more details to sign up to our newsletter, which I will put the link down in the show notes, and, of course, you can always get our free resources at theorganizedfamingo.com/resources. And, yeah, so you also know where to reach us over on the social media platforms at the Organized Flamingo. And until next week, happy organizing. Thank you for listening to the Organized and Productive podcast with the Organized Flamingo. If you enjoyed today's episode, I would love it if you'd leave a rating and review on your favorite podcast player. It helps with letting people know that we're here. For full show notes and resources, head on over to the organized flamingo.com/podcast. Happy organizing.
