Julie Morgenstern has finally set me loose on my living room, and I’m so excited and scared. She walked me through her acronym, SPACE: Sort, Purge, Assign a home, Containerize, and Equalize. One of the best, most practical pieces of advice for me was to be realistic about time. Over and underestimating time spent are both motivation killers. I get intimidated by the idea of too much time needed, and then I put off even starting.
This afternoon, I was realistic about the time I had between other activities and set aside an hour for sorting. In that hour I filled up a box with recycling, almost a bag of trash, and started making piles of stuff and where it should go. I have hours ahead of me, but I feel like it’s all doable.
I hope I can maintain this energy as I go. I was so eager to dive in that I forgot to take “before” photos. I have “partway into the process” photos, and this will have to suffice.
It’s hard for me to tell if this looks better or worse than when I started. Piles are forming all over the apartment, and I’m trying to clear things out and tackle each of them as best I can. It’s hard in a small space to try to sort and purge, since there isn’t an extra room to store things while working through that process. I’m excited to see improvement start to take shape.
Home, Messy, Home 
I started with Julie Morgenstern 20 years ago and what a process it has been! For a long time it seemed like I was barely making progress but then suddenly I was in a lovely organized living space and had the means to keep it that way. For me the most important concept was Dramatic Visible Difference. Putting the hours in and seeing no change was demoralizing and deflating, making sure I had a Dramatic Visible Difference kept me motivated. Good luck!!!
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Thank you so much for the encouragement! I’m finding that it’s so much easier to do the work when I can see a difference too. I’m turning the corner into seeing more of a change as I go and it’s great!
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