What's your "JUST"

There’s something so hopeful and uplifting about making a new year’s resolution (NYR). 

We want to do better, be better, feel better. 

How to make it stick, though? 

One mental shift I always encourage my clients to consider is to move away from the… 

“JUST” problem. 

“If I JUST go to the gym…” 

“If my kids JUST picked up after themselves…”

“If I JUST ate more healthy food…”

“If my husband JUST did this or that…”

There are endless versions of the “JUST” problem.

Here is a simple truth: when we say to ourselves and to others “just do this… just do that…”, it makes it sound like it’s an easy fix, like it IS easy to do. But it’s not. 

So the first step on the journey of positive change is understanding that it’s a journey. 

That it’s not an easy “fix”, or we would have done it already. 

And of course, what may seem simple or easy to us, might be a huge challenge for someone we love. 

So now what? 

In the book Atomic Habits, James Clear says that in order to change our habits, we must shift our thinking from “achieving a goal” to “creating systems that help us succeed”.

This is so important because a goal is something we either achieve or we don’t. 

But changing our systems would allow us to create healthier habits and make positive change. 

As a professional organizer and parent mentor, I help families create better systems that support the habits they want to improve. 

A common struggle families with young kids have is toy clutter, and kid-related items everywhere. 

Parents complain about their children never picking up after themselves, 

having too many toys, 

Not knowing how to store and display the toys,

Kids growing out of toys, books and clothes and not being able to keep up with it…

When I have an initial consultation with the parents, I ask questions to understand the current dynamic, the struggles, the ages of the children and examine the current set up. 

Usually the parents have a goal in mind of “a clutter-free space”, but they don’t know how to achieve it. My first step is to shift the parents’ perspective from “achieving a goal”, to creating manageable systems that support the life-style they want. Together we figure out what is in their way… and what I almost always find is that the parents never implemented a system that was right for their family. The parents (and children!!) actually had no idea how to tackle the clutter. 

You can see why saying “just pick up after you’re done playing” is not going to work if there’s no system… or if the children were never taught how. 

The next step is decluttering with the parents. This is an intentional process that requires time and focus. We must untangle the mess first, before creating a system. Once they’ve decided which items to keep, we create a system, making it as simple as possible, so others can learn it as well. There’s no one right solution here, as long as it works for my client’s brain - it’s good! 

You can do this on your own, too! You can learn more about the process of decluttering and organizing, and then get started. Make sure you dedicate time to do this, 30 minutes or 3 hours, anything you do is movement in the right direction. Remember to focus on the journey and not the end goal. Find the small steps you can take to make a positive change in your life.

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