To the creative, fun-loving personalities “Organizing” is a dirty word! They immediately think “type A”, boring, alphabetized and too much work! That is why I like to use the word “functional” so perfection is not an expectation. Even professional organizers don’t have magazine ready, perfectly organized homes because they live in them with families that include personality types that don’t like to be “type A” organized. 
I am married to a visionary man who doesn’t have time to organize because he is always working on the next idea. When he gets really cluttered he will ask me to come help him get caught up but we never get as far as I would like to because he is too busy. We have five wonderful children most of which care very little about being organized. Unfortunately for them, I am the home manager so there has to be a certain amount of functionality and order for my sanity (and reputation) ! I have found that helping them keep their stuff culled and pared down helps tremendously to keep functionality a reality.
What do I mean by functionality? Knowing the purpose of your home, rooms and space is the foundation for functionality. None of us want to live in a storage unit but many of us do because we don’t stop to think about the purpose of our home and we begin to give priority to “things” instead of life. A home is a place to live, love, play, create and sometimes work. To make this a reality, focus on what kind of “living” you and your family or roommates do or want to do in your home. Once you figure that out then decide which rooms you want to do what in and what items you need in each room to accomplish the purpose of that room.
For example, you have a nice dining room but you are not the entertaining kind of family. However, you do work from home and love the light in the dining room and the proximity to the heart of the home and gravitate there to work. Allow that room to become your home office and use pieces of furniture that function in that space for the purpose it needs to be instead of a fancy dinning room table that might get used once in 10 years! Stop storing furniture for someone else’s life style and use your home for what you need it for. You can set up a home office in the attic or basement but unless you want to be alone and away from the family you will tend to gravitate to the dining room.
Once you have decided what items you need in each space, it is easier to see the clutter that you are storing unnecessarily. Unless you love and need an item it begins to reduce the functionality of your space. Share your extras with someone who needs them or if you can’t bring yourself to part with them just yet, find the most unused space in your home to clutter or consider a short-term storage unit to give yourself time to detach emotionally from the items.
Once you give yourself a little time to enjoy your newly “functional” space, you won’t want to clutter it again! Enjoy your space and the ability you have to function efficiently without the storage unit feel! Make sure to re-asses each space once a year to make sure the “clutter” has not crept back in and don’t bring anything into the space unless you need it to be more functional or it is replacing something ( meaning one item in, one item out).
So get out some paper and a pencil and start jotting down the purpose of your home and space today!
