Organizing Creative Professionals: Sorted

Item! Two local desks get Sorted

I'm so excited: the magazine section of yesterday's local paper, The Virginian-Pilot, had a cover story about two volunteers who got one hour of coaching each to get their messy desks Sorted. The coach in question? Me!

Here's an excerpt from the story:

Whatever the cause, Lee knew there was a problem and cried out for help.

He agreed to a one-hour session with Catherine Cantieri, a workplace organizer from Portsmouth who runs a business called Sorted.

Cantieri approaches her task with the demeanor of a cheerleader, not a schoolmarm. Clutter, she said, "doesn't mean that you're a bad person. You just don't have a system that works for you."

She had a system rather early in life.

"I was a very creepy child," Cantieri confessed. "I always had to-do lists that were color-coded."

She swears she doesn't grit her teeth and tighten her stomach when she enters the world of mess. "I think, 'OK, I can't wait to see what it looks like when we're all done,' " Cantieri said. "It's like sitting down to a really rich meal."

I had a great time working with both Ron Lee and Sally Hartman, and I believe they've got systems in place now that work for them. Check out the whole article if you'd like, or if you want to get Sorted yourself, drop me a line!

What Halloween can teach you about getting Sorted

You wouldn't think trick-or-treating and costumery would have much to do with getting organized, would you? Well, you'd be right, mostly. But independent of the parties and the glucose consumption, there's an interesting aspect to Halloween that tends to underlie a lot of the celebrations: the idea of what it might be like to be someone or something else.

Some costumes are chosen for their topical nature (Obama or Octomom) or the ease of creating them (my personal hint: safety-pin some dryer sheets and socks to your clothes and go as static cling). But some folks choose a costume because it allows them to try on another point of view for a little while.

And sometimes getting a new perspective can teach you a lot. You can view your own life through someone else's eyes, and you might get a bit of insight into some new idea or habit or point of view you might want to try. Hell, being static cling might awaken you to how you tend to hold on to things even if casting them off might make you happier.

Another perspective Halloween can give you is that your present life probably has a lot to recommend it. It might be fun being someone else for an evening, but when it comes down to it, you're pretty good at being you, and you is a pretty cool thing to be.

What about you? What are your costume plans, if you have them, and have you ever had any kind of "aha" moments while pretending to be someone or something else? Let me know in the comments!

"Hoarders"

You already know I'm all about organizing and studying human behavior, but you might not know I'm a bit of a fan of reality TV (which can also be seen as studying human behavior). So the show "Hoarders" on A&E would seem to be the perfect storm of fascination for me.

But after watching a few episodes, I've decided that although the show's intentions may be good, its approach is almost doomed to failure in terms of reforming hoarders.

Each show profiles two hoarders whose lives are in immediate turmoil as a result of the hoarding: facing eviction, foreclosure, loss of a relationship or removal of family members. The show provides the services of an organizer or a therapist (hoarder's choice) and a cleaning crew—but they only provide them for two days.

Now, two days with an organizer and a cleaning crew would be fine for people who have clutter as a result of not knowing how to organize or consolidating households or inheriting a bunch of stuff. But while those situations can certainly apply to hoarders, they have an additional component in the form of an anxiety disorder that profoundly distorts the importance of items, making a keep/sell/toss decision that might be simple to most people into an agonizing test for the hoarder.

In addition to their anxiety, hoarders also tend to have an oversized ability to imagine uses for items, and this might be why creative folks can be at a higher risk for hoarding than non-creative folks.

One of the most awesome aspects of creativity is our imaginations: we can envision uses for just about anything. However, when that wonderful imagination isn't paired with the ability to recognize what's important to us and our work, it can lead to mounting piles of potential projects.

And when that generosity of imagination is combined with a genetic tendency toward anxiety and/or depression, you have the makings of a hoarder.

While the A&E show focuses on hoarders who are in dire straits for maximum drama, the greatest likelihood for genuine change comes when someone recognizes their hoarding tendencies early and seeks out counseling for anxiety, depression and/or obsessive-compulsive disorder (which hoarding is believed to be a form of).

Ironically, A&E ran a show this summer called "Obsessed" that followed people with OCD who were given three to six months of therapy for their disorder. Some of them were hoarders, and the slow and steady approach worked very well for them. I really wish A&E would use that format for the hoarders on their eponymous show, and I'm sad to see that they've chosen short-term makeover drama instead of meaningful help.

If you think you might be a hoarder (or you know someone who is), please consider counseling for yourself or them. Also, many medium-to-large cities have task forces on hoarding that can provide resources to keep hoarding situations from reaching the eviction/removal level.

(Note: I wrote a column for Inside Business magazine about hoarding at work, but I wanted to talk more about the human impact here.)

What about you folks? Have you been watching the show? If so, what are your thoughts? Have you had any personal experience with hoarding? Please talk about it in the comments.