Swear you want to get organized but just can’t seem to manage to pull it off? Here are the top three reasons why I’m willing to bet that is, and, just for you, a lightbulb moment for how to beat each hurdle.

1. You Aren’t Being Thorough Enough

Despite your wishes and best intentions, it’s likely that your inability to get organized stems from the fact that you aren’t really digging in to the process. You’re merely grazing the surface by casually flipping through a rack of clothes and calling that a closet edit, opening drawers and shifting the contents around before getting distracted and moving on to another task, and other iterations of not really doing the dirty.

And I do mean dirty. Or, at least, messy.

The Clue: 

If you aren’t making a big mess somewhere in the middle there, you’re not on the right track.

The Fix:

You need to be thorough in your approach by being willing to remove everything from whatever vessel or area you’re tackling in order to consider them in a neutral environment, and so that you can sort through categories of your belongings comprehensively.

2. You’re Being Too Thorough

No, I’m not trying to trick you. Both 1 and 2 are true, but likely apply to different types of people. Just as not being thorough enough can severely squash visible progress, being too thorough can equally act as a deterrent to successfully establishing an organized environment.

Instead of making solid decisions easily, you’re squandering hours upon hours painstakingly sorting through piles of things, reading every word, flipping through every page, trying on every garment. This anxiety-ridden approach means that you’re expending a huge amount of time and in return you’re making little noticeable headway. This is likely only discouraging you to continue, convincing you as it does that your efforts are futile.

The Clue:

If deep storage items are taking you as long to sort through as your everyday essentials, your approach is far too rigid.

The Fix:

You need to devote all of your attention to whatever single item is currently in your hand, but you also need to not linger. You need to work on lessening your anxiety, trusting your inclination, and letting go. You need to abide by your frequency-of-use-cues. Those things you haven’t looked at or used in years should take very little time to process.

 3. You Don’t Get It. Yet.

“Getting organized” is a broader term that encompasses three major stages: 1. Editing, 2. Storing, and 3. Maintaining. Lots of people fail at “getting organized” because they assume the process starts at #2. They have another-bin-itis in a big way and that approach will always only end in overly cramped spaces and too much stuff.

Let’s put it this way: I have yet to meet a single person who doesn’t have stuff to shed. Not a single one. Almost without exception, they have a vast amount of stuff occupying their spaces and lives that’s filling absolutely no purpose but dragging people down under its weight. This means, also, that the vast majority of people must begin the process at step 1.

The Clue:

You own so many organizing products you could give the Container Store a run for its money, yet you still have no sense of actually being in control of your space, still have difficulty finding what you need, and definitely struggle to have enough space to accomodate everything you own.

The Fix:

You don’t get to go shopping for organizing supplies until you’ve evaluated what you have, what you’re keeping, and why. Then and only then can you turn to the question of how and where to store said belongings. Editing is not an optional step in Live Simply.

Image credits: unknown, Tabitha Simmons, photographed by Craig McDean for Vogue, unknown, HGTV