2022 Fall Challenge
Chaos in our home management systems happen with transitions. You can read more about that here and here. If we can manage the transition from summer to fall/winter thoughtfully, we can save ourselves time and chaos.
That is why this year my challenge is for you to document how you use your home differently as the weather changes, and see how you naturally respond. If you like the natural response, by all means keep it. If you don’t like the natural response, try to figure out how you can make the smallest tweak possible to your natural response. This documentation can come in many forms. You may want to take pictures with your cell phone. You could do a journal activity. One of my favorite things is to send myself text messages. You could send yourself voice memos.
No matter the method, the goal is the same — join me in documenting and honoring our own path so that we can manage our home in a way that matches our path and honors our needs.
From October 30th to November 11th, I will send you prompts that will get you thinking about your path. We’ll take a look at different parts of your house. We’ll self examine everything from your mud room to your laundry room/pattern. You can sign up for the 2022 Fall Challenge here.
In the past I’ve done more traditional challenges wherein I prompt people to complete specific organizing and minimizing tasks.
But I’ve been at this longer now, and I’ve come to the realization that home more individual than this. It is really a custom experience that we all respond to differently.
You see, this really goes back to the roots of why I entered into the market of home organizing in 2020. For nearly a decade I’d been organizing my home in a way that worked for me. Yes, I read Martha Stewart, and I loved some of her little tips. But I took all her tips and made them my own. Essentially I crafted my own custom experience in my home that is based on my ebbs and flows. And this challenge is an opportunity for you to create your own path.
In the last 5 to 10 years I started seeing home organizers come on the national scene that are much more interested in teaching their own method. They suggest that we all needed to fold our clothes a certain way, and that we should all just live by this vague standard of “joy”. Others claim that organizing books by the rainbow is some kind of Biblical cannon. Both of these can be useful tools for the right person at the right time, but they are by no means the be all end all that we all must do.
So, this year, rather than lay out tasks that are cookie cutter, standardize organizing systems, I invite you to join me in exploring and honoring you own perfectly real patterns.
