I think I may be an organizing-device-aholic. I first noticed it right before I moved to Oregon. I had a yard sale of the things I wasn’t going to move across the county. Just before it started I looked out the window and noticed the entire lawn was covered with everything from boxes to shelving, baskets to all kinds of things that hold paper in various ways. Everything out there had to do with my eternal quest to find the magic device that will suddenly make me organized in a socially acceptable way.

Organizing anxiety

Here is my pattern. I am overwhelmed by stuff/objects/paper or if I am honest the emotions around feeling out of control. I’m like a shark with blood in the water. It starts my quest to make the feelings stop. Trolling from store to store looking for the magic device that will make all the overwhelm stop. I have a local circuit, and a larger one that includes the meccas of The Container Store and Storables. I’m not really fond of shopping, so I can only troll for awhile before I just buy some usually cheap option to try. I bring it home and attempt to stuff my life into the device of the day. A short time later, there is a worse mess around the device since it never really worked in the first place.

Last week I excavated my office by Dancing with the Space Monster and ended up with a divide. The half of the office that has transformed into my studio area was a breeze to set up. Things that I love and inspire me just fell into place.

On the other side where the ‘business’ stuff was supposed to go, I had no idea what to do. And what did I have there? The infamous pile of organizing devices. Only this time they weren’t offering salvation. Instead they were serving up a big dose of stuck.

Just tell me what to buy to fix it!

I had a session scheduled with Jennifer Hofmann  of Inspired Home Office. Perfect, she can tell me what to buy to solve my problem. Only, it didn’t quite go that way. No, she had other ideas about what might really be going on. Here was the turning point. Jennifer innocently asks, ” Christine, how many projects are you working on right now?” I have no idea. Not only do I have no idea, I’m not really sure how to think about it. She’s wondering how much volume I am looking at. I feel like she has just uncovered the core of my flaws.

Office as mirror of business

I have had an army of people trying to help me turn my business around. More than once it has been suggested I don’t really have a business model. Yesterday, a coach spoke the core truth to me- I don’t really understand the fundamental value exchange in business. I have an abstract understanding, theoretical underpinnings, but no real concrete understanding of how things get organized and actualized in the world. Other than product creation— I’m really good at that.

So now I think I am finally at the bottom of the pit, understanding the depth of my challenge. Ready to stop trying to find the magic organizing device, and starting to organize what really needs to be organized. Taking my strengths and using them to develop a structure for bringing my products into the world in different ways.

Remedial organizing

Jennifer helped me make a plan. Get rid of all the organizing devices for now and start with a clean table. Begin a discovery process to figure out what I am working on. Just how many projects do I have? Start with one container for all the paper I need to sort. How much current stuff do I need close by?

Seems easy. But I am an organizing device addict. I am fighting the urge to go trolling for new magic organizing systems.

Where do you put the cats?

One thing that is clear. I have to make spaces for my cats. If I don’t they walk all over the piles of paper, sit on what I am working on, and drink my paint water.

I have one extra chair, and have been fairly successful in training them to go sit on it when I tell them to. Problem is there are two who hang out with me. And the one on the right is relentless in sneaking up to lie on the laptop keyboard. Esp if the chair has the other one in it. Because they can’t come close to each other. No distance must be maintained.

So I am looking for ideas. I’m tempted to start trolling for cat furniture (they have a lot in other rooms, trust me), but I think that is probably just transferring my quest for organizing devices to a  new thing. Instead, I thought I’d try asking what other people do who have pets in the office. Especially cats who are a bit devilish?

Back to sorting

The table is almost empty. Luckily my sister in coming to visit next week, so I have no choice but to keep moving forward since the guest room has all the excess mess in the middle of it right now. The next lesson in The Gentle Art of Clutter Clearing arrives on Monday, and the Organic Business Manual class starts. It’s hard to change these life-long patterns. I am committed to it though. Piece by piece, deepening levels of insight all the time.

Meet my Space Monster. We just spent five days together wrestling dancing in my office. Just what does this little devil do? Torture me. Speak nasty messages in my ear. Get on my back and weigh me down so I can hardly move.

A couple of weeks ago in my post Letting go of Fossilized Dreams, I talked about realizing I had remnants of past businesses in the form of art supplies. In the comments, I got great suggestions about how to let them go. To make room for new things in my life.

Considering the possibility made me sick to my stomach. I’d think about it and tears would well up. This lovely space monster would taunt me, “Ha, ha, ha, see I told you we need all this. What if you someday figure out how to be good enough to be an artist? What then, if you only have a bunch of paper in files?”

What if I am really an artist?

I realize I have been talking about reclaiming my artist self for six months or more. Yes, I know I went to art school. I know I used to participate in craft shows and show in art galleries. I lived at a craft school. I call myself an artist fairly regularly. It’s who I am, what I do, but I have never been able to make enough money to support myself doing it. So part of me feels like a fraud and a failure. An artist, but certainly not one good enough to be a real artist. It’s not like I haven’t tried at various times in various media.

The Space Monsters taunts just weren’t helping. Annoying. Distracting. Finally one morning I just said enough, and said to myself, “OK, what if I AM an artist?” Instantly I got a vision of a gleeful little girl chanting, “Yea, I can keep my art supplies!” Which she followed with exuberant throwing away of every business file she could get her hands on.

Interesting.

What story was my office telling?

I’d been painting everyday on a section of desk surrounded the piles of business papers I had pushed aside. Everywhere I looked, I saw things that reminded me of what isn’t working. Really, it all comes down to a total breakdown of systems. If I ever really even had them in the first place. I’ve been stuck trying to figure out what to do next, and my office showed it. Jammed and disorganized, without places dedicated to specific tasks. It was all happening in a sea of paper.

I decided to just face it. Spend the gorgeous holiday weekend decluttering and reorganizing. Not only did I decide to keep the art supplies, I decided to move a bunch of them into my office. To integrate studio space with office space. To acknowledge both sides of me and give space to each.

Five days later

It’s been quite a dance. I’m scratched and tired and not done. I’ve hauled stuff off, and clogged up the spare bedroom and hall with things to be dealt with. It took two days just to pull everything apart. A day to do the slide puzzle shift of the large furniture. A day to set up art supplies and painting area. A day of starting intently at the business side of the office and having to recognize I just don’t know how to set up effective office systems I will actually use. No wonder I’m struggling.

I have one box of electronics, another of cords. Sure hope they match up somehow. Several boxes of assorted papers. Boxes of yellow pads with tons of scribbles on them. I know they made sense in the moment I drew them. Not so much after the fact. But there are written tidbits of information on the sides of pages.

Most of my file systems rely on my memory. Worked great when my memory was close to photographic. Not so much now that I am older. Makes it virtually impossible for someone else to find things. Not terribly scalable either.

Overall, the space monster is much quieter. There were some rough moments with everything ripped apart. At one point I just laid on the floor in the mess and fell asleep. I am loving my inspiration wall. Loving having art supplies around me again. Loving having a dedicated space to paint.

Next steps

Lesson one of Lisa Baldwins The Gentle Art of Clutter Clearing arrived. I’m thinking about what is trash, what are treasures, and what is in the dreaded not bad enough to throw away catagory. I have an appointment scheduled with Jennifer Hoffman of Inspired Home Office to help me think through what to do with the business side of the office.

Next week I start a ten week course called the Organic Business Manual with Cairene MacDonald of Third Hand Works. We will be digging into the whole range of business systems and seeking to develop a manual to document how things will work.

I realize I must go to this foundation level if I am going to rebuild on a solid foundation. I have new products in development, and the early testing is going well. Leaping into a new model and new products without doing this organizational work is an error I do not want to repeat. Even if I decide to start selling my artwork again, its still a business and needs to be run like one. That much I think I have learned this time.

I’m continuing to redesign my business and sort through things I no longer need to make space for new pieces of the business in my home office. Lots of attempting to tame the clutter, literally and figuratively. I’ve continued to paint everyday, and the more I am loving it, the more I am wanting more space for it and all the associated supplies.

Walking with the change is taking an army of support. As part of this process, I have intentionally reached out into new networks for fresh ideas and approaches. I’ve had a long term obsession with organizing devices (thinking if I just find the right ones, I will be saved from all the stuff) combined with a healthy fear of professional organizers. So I’m dipping my toe in the water, talking with some of them on twitter, asking questions, taking their suggestions and courses.

Where do I look when I think?

One very helpful blog I discovered is Jennifer Hoffman’s Inspired Home Office. When you sign up for her very helpful newsletter, you get an e-book Putting the Fun in Functional. In it she explains how becoming conscious of where we look when we think can make a big impact on our workspace. Following her instructions, I discovered I tended to put fresh flowers in this place, but I had an open closet behind it. Simply closing the closet door, and making sure I always have fresh flowers to put there, has made a big difference in how I feel in the office.

The Clutter Monster

I’m slowly beginning to admit I cannot have or do everything I want and lead a healthy balanced lifestyle. Something has to give, and I have to make some choices. I discovered e-courses with Lisa Baldwin at Divine Order, who helps with sorting out the connection between how I clutter my mind, and how it is reflected in the spaces around me. I may have to take these courses forever, it sinks in slowly. She has a new course The Gentle Art of Clutter Clearing starting May 25th, which I will be taking.

Not only has Lisa given me direction and guidance in how to approach the physical stuff, she has been particularly wonderful in helping me though the places where I feel stuck and overwhelmed by it all. Making changes in my space and big changes in my business at the same time, really stirs up all my resistance and stuck places. There are days where I feel like I am bouncing off walls trying to find a clear path.

Assessing whether things are beautiful, useful or loved

Organizers often suggest assessing whether a particular object is beautiful, useful or loved to decide to keep it or let it go. This keeps tripping me up. With household items, its pretty clear. But that’s not my most challenging area. The hardest places for me are in my businesses of past and present. I was lying on the couch with my cats in the room that holds many of my art supplies. Suddenly I felt like I was in a tomb surrounded by the fossilized dreams of businesses of the past.

There are the boxes of threads from when I made big underwater soft sculpture installations, the fabric and dyes from when I made clothing where size 14 was marked size small, the beads from when I worked alongside my friend Cheryl teaching beadwork, the boxes of slides of work from decades of craft show applications. Remnants from dreams long past. A series of reminders of the myriad of ways I have walked with being an artist in a world that only marginally supports artists.

So much of this stuff is beautiful, useful, and loved by me. At the same it holds the energy of struggle, and painful letting go as I have walked through a long series of entrepreneurial attempts at finding a way to make a living doing what I love.  It also holds the energy of hope that sometime I might have learned enough or the timing will be right, and I can return to make it work. Do I need to let this stuff go? To move it out to release the energy for new things? It feels really hard and painful to consider, but I wonder if it is like all the artwork I let go from my first marriage. It was beautiful, but it reminded me of times that were not, and carried the energy of something that no longer was supportive to me.

Is there something else to consider?

I’m running into a parallel challenge in my business. I have a lot of product in inventory. Luckily, it doesn’t go bad. I do find it paralyzes my thinking at times. Its hard to let go of focusing on trying to sell it, even when the market is suggesting other paths. And it too holds the energy of a particular dream, one that I have poured years of effort into. It is very painful to think about walking away, yet to fully release my creative energy, I think I have to be willing to.

Another person I am working with is Hiro Boga, The Fourishing Muse. She wrote a blog post about seeing my challenge as being at the tideline. In her post, Flourishing at the Tideline, she suggests I consider:

If you’re struggling to put your work out there and have it be seen and valued, here are some questions to ask yourself: What are the fluid elements, in your work and in your business? What has power and depth, like the sea, but lacks shape and form?

Then, ask your customers and clients. What keeps them up at night? What do they need?

Finally, ask your business: Where does your fluid, creative heart meet the shore of your clients’ needs?

Take some time to sit with the shape of this boundary. To feel it intuitively. Then map it out. Craft your offer to fit that shape.

I believe this is starting to happen. At least in some ways. But the shape is still amorphous and seeking form, and many days I feel like I am being tossed and rolled in the surf rather than gently being formed. Painting helps. It gives me a place to give these energies and shapes form. But I wonder if there are other things that would help? Any ideas or suggestions, or things you have heard about?