The Clutter Connection: How Your Personality Type Determines Why You Organize the Way You Do (From the host of HGTV’s Hot Mess House)

Copyright © 2019 Cassandra Aarssen

Published by Mango Publishing Group, a division of Mango Media Inc.

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Illustrations: Alice Jones

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The Clutter Connection: How Your Personality Type Determines Why You Organize the Way You Do

Library of Congress Cataloging

ISBN: (p) 978-1-63353-856-6, (e) 978-1-63353-857-3

Library of Congress Control Number:

BISAC—PSYCHOLOGY / Personality

—HOUSE & HOME / Cleaning, Caretaking & Organizing

Printed in the United States of America.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, without written permission, except by a newspaper or magazine reviewer who wishes to quote brief passages in connection with a review.

To all those who have felt messy and disorganized their entire lives. I got you.

Table of Contents

Introduction

Chapter 1

The Messy Myth

Chapter 2

What Clutterbug Are You?

The Science Behind the Clutterbug Philosophy

Is Organizational Style Related to Learning Styles?

The Logical Conclusion

Let’s Get Organized!

What Clutterbug Are You?

Chapter 3

The Butterfly

A Butterfly Brain

A Butterfly Breakdown

Butterfly Strengths

Making the Transition from Cluttered to Clean

Getting Started

Chapter 4

Living or Working with a Butterfly

Mission: Possible

Macro Magic

Chapter 5

The Bee

A Bee Brain

A Bee Breakdown

Bee Strengths

Chapter 6

Living or Working with a Bee

The Hustle and Bustle of a Busy Bee

Living with a Bee

Chapter 7

The Ladybug

A Ladybug Brain

Organizational Simplicity

Hello, Hidey-Hoarder

A Ladybug Breakdown

Ladybug Strengths

Getting Started

Chapter 8

Living or Working with a Ladybug

Feathering the Nest

Playing Hide-and-Seek

A Long Line of Ladybugs

The Secret for Success

Living with a Ladybug

Chapter 9

The Cricket

A Cricket Brain

Perfectionism Paralysis

A Cricket Breakdown

Cricket Strengths

Chapter 10

Living or Working with a Cricket

My Husband the Cricket

Piles for Miles

A Cricket Plan of Action

Compromising with a Cricket

Chapter 11

Leveling Up

Life Is (Kind of) Like a Video Game

Running Your Home Like a Boss

Structure Is Freedom

Today’s the Day

Acknowledgments

About the Author

Have you ever wondered why your children just can’t seem to put their toys away right or why your husband doesn’t put his dirty clothes in the hamper, no matter how often you remind him? Perhaps you yourself struggle with clutter, cleaning habits, or productivity and have resigned yourself to the fact that you are simply lazy or just a messy person.

Let me assure you, there is no such thing as a naturally lazy or messy person.

In this book, I will show you the real reason you struggle with clutter and simple solutions to overcome it.

I am about to take you through a system for decoding your organizational style based on your unique personality. I will introduce you to the four different Clutterbugs, unpack each one in detail, and help you identify which one fits you best. I designed this system through my own journey from cluttered mess to organized success, based on my failure to use traditional organizing methods. I believed, in my heart, that I was a naturally lazy, messy person, and that striving for anything else was pointless. I am going to show you how I overcame my disorganization, just by discovering my true organizing style, and how you can do the exact same thing.

My business, Clutterbug, was born from my own lifelong struggle with clutter and disorganization. What began as my determination to get organized transformed into a blog, then a YouTube channel and, before I knew it, I was working with clients in my community and helping hundreds of thousands of families from all over the world to get organized. It was during this journey that I discovered something that would change everything about how we organize our homes.

I had stumbled upon the clutter connection. This is a simple truth that is absolutely universal. It is true for both the neat and clutter-free people for whom traditional organizing systems are effective, and the chronically cluttered people for whom organization is a seemingly impossible dream. The clutter connection is simply this: your clutter has nothing to do with your actual stuff. It really has everything to do with your personality type and how your brain works.

This book, however, is less about how to declutter your home and life and more about discovering and decoding why you struggle with clutter in the first place. The key to success lies in developing self-awareness about your personality and organizational type. Once you understand why you organize the way you do (or why you don’t organize at all), you will no longer struggle with clutter and disorganization. You will easily identify organizational styles and strategies that complement your personality, rather than work against it. Knowing and appreciating what makes you unique will help you identify and resolve your clutter issues, from the inside out.

All our lives, we are told how we should organize our homes and, indeed, our entire lives. It is presented to us as a one-size-fits-all program for a neat and tidy space to which we are all supposed to be able to easily adhere. Even as children, we are told how to keep our desks, binders, and bedrooms neat and tidy and expected to conform to the one strategy for being clean and organized. When I was a kid, my mom was constantly telling me to clean up my messy room, despite the fact that I had sometimes just cleaned it. Clearly, my idea of clean did not match hers at all. My desk, binders, and locker were always a disaster at school. Over the years, I had countless teachers tell me that I was disorganized and messy because I couldn’t seem to conform to the traditional way of keeping my things straight.

As a result of that constant messaging, from as far back as I can remember, I became conditioned to think of myself as a messy person. Think about your own life for a moment; has your own inability to conform to traditional organizing systems similarly led you to believe that you are a messy person?

Our thoughts about ourselves shape our entire lives.

When it comes to organization, we’ve all been shoved into a square box, so to speak, despite the fact that some of us are very round.

It’s time to think outside the box when it comes to organization!

It’s time to stop trying to fix what doesn’t work and focus instead on what does!

I’m going to show you that, by simply knowing your organizing personality type, you will become happier, more organized, and much more productive. We are going to discover and identify your clutter connection.

Disclaimer: This book isn’t going to be the usual self-help book. I’m not going to pretend that I have some magic solution that will transform your life overnight, and I’m certainly not going to pretend that I have my own life together. I’m a total hot mess, but I’m an organized hot mess.

Here is my other disclaimer: I’m not going to tell you how to organize your home. I’ve never even seen your home—how could I possibly know how to organize it? You see, that is exactly the issue that you have been facing up until now. You have tried to organize your home and life based on other people’s and the general expectations of what organization should look like.

Here is what this book is going to do for you: It will give you amazing insights into your own strengths and abilities. This book will hold a mirror up to your personality and give you the gift of self-awareness. I’m going to be your own personal cheerleader, showing you all the things that make you the amazing, organized, and productive person that you are (even if you don’t yet believe it yourself). You are going to become an expert in organizational systems that work for you and your family. You are going to be a full-blown badass organizing boss.

I will give you some hints, tips, and tricks that I have learned along my journey to get you started, and then I will leave you to your newly discovered genius. You will amaze yourself with how fast your level of organizational mastery unfolds, once you know where and how to begin.

This journey is not going to be easy, but I guarantee it will be worth it. You probably have some bad habits that will need to be addressed and changed, but I will walk you through the process and make it as easy and painless as possible. You will have bad days; heck, you will have bad weeks. You won’t always do your dishes every night and sometimes your laundry will pile up. That’s just life. But this is my promise to you: this book will give you the tools, knowledge, and confidence to get back on track during those bad times.

Soon, you will feel in control more than you feel out of control. Your life will get easier. Making life easier is what organization is all about. It’s about simplifying and streamlining your daily life so you can be more productive, have more time, and, most importantly, feel less stress and more happiness. I’m not just talking about organizing your home; this is about organizing your entire life, and it’s much easier to do than you think.

How do I know this? I have been where you are. I would even bet that I was messier and more disorganized than you are now. I lived with actual paths carved into waist-high piles of clothing and trash from my door to my fridge, bathroom, and bed. Even when I attempted to control the chaos, my closets, drawers, and every other hidden space were stuffed so full, I could never find anything. I spent the majority of my life feeling messy, disorganized, frazzled, and like a total failure. I was always late, always broke, and always overwhelmed.

So what changed? How did I transform from Super Slob to Organizing Expert? How did I go from a stay-at-home mom with ADHD, living in a completely disorganized home, to someone running a successful organizing business helping over half a million people from all across the world? I stopped copying other people. I stopped trying to emulate systems and solutions that I saw on television or in magazines. I stopped trying to plan and organize my life the way I saw my friends and family members doing it. Instead of trying to replicate other people’s systems, I discovered the systems that work best for me and my personality type. I stopped beating myself up over my failure to adapt to the idea of what an organized and productive life looked like, and instead worked with my strengths to create an organized and productive life unique to me.

My home isn’t perfect, and I am absolutely not perfect either. The idea that everything needed to be perfect was exactly my problem in the first place. I’m embracing my good enough self, and guess what? My home is always clean and clutter-free, and I spend less time cleaning and organizing than I ever did before. My business is thriving. I am insanely productive, and I can honestly say that I love my life. I feel in control, and that is something that I never thought would happen for me. It is such a great and liberating feeling, I want the same for you.

If you gain nothing else from this book, I want you to leave understanding this one simple truth: you are incredible just the way you are. I am going to show you how you can have an organized and clutter-free home, without having to compromise or change one single thing about your personality.

If you are struggling to get your life together, drowning in clutter, or you feel as though you are lacking basic organizational skills, I want you to start by giving yourself a break. I want you to be open to the possibility that none of those negative statements are true and the real reason that you have failed up until now is that you have been trying solutions that are designed for someone else’s personality. Albert Einstein once said, If you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its life believing that it is stupid. You are that fish, my friend, and traditional organization is the tree. There is another way and there are other options.

At the end of this book, your home will not look like mine. Heck, I hope your home doesn’t look like anyone else’s. Your space will be a unique creation that you have designed, filled with the things you and your family love and cherish. It is organized in a way that works for your and your family’s unique styles.

So, my perfectly imperfect friend, let’s jump in and discover your unique organizing style and how you can work with your natural style to design the life you’ve always dreamed of.

Before we dive in headfirst, repeat after me: I am a hardworking, productive, and organized person. Heck yeah, you are! Say it again! I am a hardworking, productive, and organized person. Now let me show you how this is so incredibly true, even if you don’t yet believe it yourself.