A friend of mine recently admitted that she hates organizing but she loves it when her home is neat and tidy. Her strategy is to live with piles of things haphazardly around her home until she can’t take it anymore. Then, she told me, she spends the day or maybe the entire weekend working through her piles. My friend calls this binge organizing. Have you ever done this? I know I have done some binge organizing in my office from time to time. I’ll talk more about that in a minute. First, I’m going to talk about the appeal of binge organizing.
Understanding the Appeal of Binge Organizing
Binge Organizing turns what may be a huge mess into an organized space in a day or two. This method appeals to people who are motivated to turn their messy space into an organized haven.
Binge organizing can work if:
- the person is ready to make decisions quickly
- the person does not have hoarding tendencies
- the person can stay focused on the task for long periods of time
The Pros of Binge Organizing:
In my mind there are three clear pros to binge organizing:
Immediate results: When you decide that you want to spend the day getting a space organized and follow through you achieve immediate results.
Makes you feel pride and joy in your accomplishment: knowing that you walked into a messy room or zone and are now leaving it tidy and organized the way you want it to be can fill you with pride and joy.
Can provide motivation to organize another area: this feeling of accomplishment can extend to other areas of your home, providing you with motivation to schedule another organizing session.
The Cons of Binge Organizing:
There are probably more than three cons to binge organizing. These are the three that are on the top of my mind and reasons why I don’t generally recommend this strategy.
The Danger of Overcommitting: Attempting to organize a messy and disorganized space in just one or two all-day sessions can be exhausting. You run the risk of taking on too big a task and leaving it half-way completed.
Sustainability Concerns: Why Binge Organizing May Not Last: All the professional organizers I know will tell you that organizing is not a once and done solution. You can spend hours getting a space organized and then watch it return to a disorganized mess unless you change your habits.
The Stress of Tackling Too Much at Once: It can be overwhelming to even think about walking into a filled-up and overflowing room (even a small space) and creating order. The thought of deciding where to start can make a person press pause because that in and of itself is a difficult thing to do.
Situations When Binge Organizing Works Best:
Here are a couple of situations where I believe binge organizing works best.
When There is a Hard Deadline: Let’s imagine the homeowner has been given a set number of days or weeks by a leasing agent or an inspector to make the home more organized so that they can safely live there. This is a reason to work on organizing until that result is achieved. I’m thinking of someone whose home may be hoarded, and they may be evicted if they don’t comply.
Another situation is when a home is being sold and there are only a couple of weeks to empty the home before turning it over to the new owners.
Pairing Binge Organizing with Long-Term Strategies:
I referenced above that a person can derive benefits from binge organizing if they also plan to incorporate maintenance strategies. Nothing ever stays organized because we live in our homes and use our things.
If a person works hard and gets a room or the entire home organized the only way it will remain organized is if they change their habits and create strategies to maintain the organization.
Conclusion:
Finding Balance: How to Make Binge Organizing Work for You:
I said at the beginning of this piece that I sometimes engage in binge organizing in my office. My habit is to let project papers and files accumulate on a table beside my desk. This works for me until the piles become mixed together. When that happens, I will take a couple of hours and work on that table to create order. It’s true that I know how to prevent this from happening. However, my firm belief is that each person needs to be comfortable with the organizing strategies they use. This is why I work with my clients to create strategies specifically for them.
Is Binge Organizing Right for Your Lifestyle?
As a rule, I do not recommend binge organizing as a strategy. This topic came up because a friend was talking about how she consciously allows clutter and piles of things to accumulate until she can’t stand it anymore. Then she spends time (an entire weekend) putting things away, tossing things, and returning things to shops or to the library.
Is this a good idea for you?
I don’t know.
I’m always happy to have a conversation about different organizing strategies and solutions. The best part of talking about this is that together we can create an organizing strategy specifically for you. Send me an email to schedule a time to talk. You can reach me at: dnqsolutions@gmail.com. I look forward to talking with you.
Diane N. Quintana is the owner of DNQ Solutions, LLC. She is an ADHD Organizing Specialist, a Hoarding Specialist, and a Chronic Disorganization Specialist. Diane is also an ICD Master Trainer, Certified Professional Organizer in Chronic Disorganization, Certified Professional Organizer and co-owner of Release Repurpose Reorganize LLC based in Atlanta, Georgia. She specializes in residential and home-office organizing.
Your post reminds me of when my son moved into his apartment. He set everything up but still had about a dozen boxes to unpack. He said he was waiting for the mood to strike to make decisions about the hardest stuff in those boxes. He just needed the extra motivation.
Thank you for sharing this, Janet!
I’ve often noticed the psychological difference in approaches to cleaning between men and women. For the most part, women prefer to do maintenance cleaning — get it clean and keep it clean with small daily efforts; conversely, I’ve found that men prefer to “conquer” a cleaning task, waiting until something is demonstrably icky and then pummeling it with all manner of implements of destruction and products. Women are generally satisfied seeing that nothing gets or stays dirty; men want to power-wash/clean things to see a demonstrable difference.
Is this gender difference statistically provable? Surely not. But I suspect that preferences for binge organizing are correlated with preferences for binge cleaning. (While I don’t like things to be “dirty,” I’m OK doing a day’s sink of dirty dishes rather than stopping to hit each glass or fork immediately, and while I’m good at maintaining organization, I feel most inspired when I’ve tackled a huge backlog. I’ll take filing and shredding a few months of papers over spending five minutes daily, when it’s my own stuff.
I wouldn’t generally recommend binge organizing for my clients; after all, they’d experiences all the cons you mention, which is why they’ve usually sought support in the first place. But I’m not ashamed to admit that I’m more delighted when I binge organize than when I maintain. Thanks for raising this topic!
It’s interesting, isn’t it? I like to make some piles in my office – no where else in my house – and then tackle them when I’m tired of looking at them. Thanks, Julie, for commenting.
Thanks for describing another way to declutter and organize. The more tools I have when I am working with clients the better. I know a lot of people that don’t enjoy the continuous long term nature of organizing. They don’t like to do a little bit every day, declutter seasonally or set aside some time each week to get everything back in place. Binge organizing would work well for them. Do a lot all at one time and forget about it for a long time. Get it off your to-do list.
Thank you, Julie!
Excellent point, Diane! It’s like going on a binge diet. It never lasts. A well-thought-out plan is essential when organizing. If a DIYer wants to do it themselves, they can always hire a virtual organizer to create a plan so that the area stays organized longer. While we always have to modify areas as life happens, they don’t need to be changed as often if a system is in place.
You are so right, Sabrina!
I was having a similar conversation with a client recently. She didn’t term it “binge organizing” but more of her ability to hyperfocus. She encounters several problems with that approach. First, she foregoes her other needs, like sleep, nutrition, and movement. So, while she will get a lot done quickly, it burns her out. It compromises her energy and motivation to do anything else.
We floated the idea of using her hyper-focusing abilities with some time boundaries in place. She’s experimenting with that approach.
Thank you, Linda. I think there are many more problems to this strategy than those which I identified in this post – as you pointed out – sleep, nutrition and more.
I am more of an “organize as I go” person, while my husband is definitely a binge organizer. Over the years I’ve learned to let his “mess” accumulate, because I know it will eventually get to him and he’ll tackle it. This very day, in fact, he organized his mudroom drawer which was overflowing, mostly with golf stuff. I think it is a victory for both of us if I just let him act in his own timeframe. That takes a bit of biting my tongue, but ultimately it works out. We’ve negotiated some shared spaces where we try to keep things in order, but in his spaces, it’s up to him.
I love this! It’s important to let people (in spaces that are theirs alone) organize in a way that works for them.