The Pottery Barn Kids Catalogue is Mom Porn.

Some women fantasize about sex. Some women fantasize about food. Some about shoes. I, however, fantasize about being organized. This means that I don’t have orgasms. I have organazms. Pottery Barn Kids catalogues are my porn. It’s a recent development for me, actually. I used to be firmly in the shoe-fantasy camp, but then I had kids, and suddenly my structured, type-A, everything-in-it’s-place life began to fall apart at the seams. Now, instead of drooling outside the display window at Barney’s, I find myself lingering in front of The Container Store.

The problem, primarily, is with the piles. Well, ‘problem’ is kind of an understatement; my husband and I have practically sought couples therapy over the piles. He doesn’t seem to understand why the piles exist in the first place (when you bring something inside, just put it away where it belongs), and he certainly doesn’t understand why they keep multiplying and spreading across the kitchen countertops like a fungus. I’ve tried explaining to him that it’s not my fault. I have very few things in the piles. A few loose phone numbers here and there, scribbled onto scraps of paper while balancing a screaming toddler on my hip, some bills, maybe a magazine or two. I’ll take responsibility for half of a pile, tops. It’s my kids who are to blame for the other forty three of them.

Now granted, I will admit that I created the kid piles, but if the stuff wasn’t in piles it would just be spread out all over the floor, so actually, the piles are a form of organization, albeit a primitive one. Some of the piles are legit: things that I just haven’t gotten around to filing or putting away, like the handprints that my son brought home from his Grandma & Me class, the piece of paper with my daughter’s height and weight on it from her four year old checkup (which was in May), or the toys that migrated north from the playroom to the den. But, as I have explained to my husband, the majority of these kid piles should not even qualify as real piles at all, because in reality, they’re comprised not of real things that I am waiting to file, or put away, but rather, of things that I am waiting to throw out, just as soon as a sufficient amount of time has passed so that my children won’t notice. Another rainbow flower picture drawn by daughter. A birthday party goody bag filled with plastic, age-inappropriate choking hazards for my two year old. A handful of business cards that my daughter swiped from my nail salon. None of these things will ever have a permanent home anywhere in my house, and so therefore I can’t just put them away, as my husband likes to suggest in his I-am-a-husband-and-therefore-have-no-freakin-clue-what
-it-is-to-actually-deal-with-a-four-year-old-whose-eighty-seventh-
rainbow-flower-picture-this-week-has-been-tossed-in-the-recycle-
trashcan-by-her-mother way of his. I’m perpetually stacking and restacking these doomed piles, and I do toss them out, eventually. It’s just that every time I manage to clear a bunch of them, ten more appear in their place. They’re like cockroaches. Or Gremlins.

This post is SO me! (Except my husband is more understanding than the one in this article.)

But the lack of organization in my kitchen, really, is just another metaphor for how my life has morphed into a flimsy, gaseous cloud of barely manageable chaos. I used to stare at fashion magazines with disgust – “That is so unrealistic,” I would complain about the airbrushing. “Nobody’s skin looks like that.” Now, I throw home décor magazines across the room in frustration. “Oh, please!” I find myself screaming at the sight of spotless, pile-less counter tops. “Nobody’s kitchen counter looks like that!” I hit rock bottom the other day when I picked my poor dog up from the groomer’s. Upon receiving a lecture on how I really need to make more regular appointments for her, I found myself apologizing, almost in tears.

“I’m so sorry,” I explained, trying not to bust out into a full on sob. “I just can barely manage myself and my kids and my job, and the piles, you should see the piles. The dog is just….” I let my sentence trail off so as not to offend her with it’s inevitable conclusion, and she (who is clearly childless) got offended anyway. As the words were coming out, I wondered how this teary, unorganized, unfit dog owner woman could possibly be me. But it is, and short of running away and starting a new life somewhere in a remote, undisclosed location, there’s simply nothing that I can do about it. I think it’s time to break out the PBK catalogue. I definitely could use the release.

Addiction to Organizational Porn.

by Sarah Welch & Alicia Rockmore

Negative self-image. Fantasy-induced over-spending. Marital tension. A new kind of airbrushed fantasy-land is wreaking havoc on our homes and our psyches: org porn. “Org porn is that glossy, airbrushed fantasy world where everything is pristine, serene and perfectly in order, sort of Playboy, but with chore charts and name-plated cubbyholes,” said Sarah Welch. “It’s everywhere you look these days: in magazines, coffee table books, advertisements, and TV shows. And when consumed in excess, it can lead to feelings of inadequacy, binge spending on organizational products, and even marital discord.” The authors have interviewed hundreds of women on the topic of organization and an astounding 80% of them feel they fall well short of the mark when it comes to getting organized.

“Don’t get us wrong, gazing at beautiful images of meticulously organized rooms, perfectly displayed collections, color-coordinated closets, flawless family schedules, pristine kitchens, tidy mud rooms, and picture-perfect work spaces can be titillating – even meditative. There’s a reason we call it ‘org porn,’” said Alicia Rockmore. “But when they become the primary yardstick by which you measure your own general state of organization is when it becomes unhealthy. An airbrushed land of perfect organization cannot be sustained in this messy, unpredictable world called real life.”

Chasing perfection fuels something the Buttoned Up co-founders call “organizational inertia,” a type of paralysis that makes it virtually impossible to get started. Nearly every woman surveyed for our recent book, Everything (almost) In Its Place agreed that the most difficult part of getting organized was knowing where to start. If perfection is the objective, that paralysis makes sense. Keeping your house, work and schedule magazine-ready requires a superhuman effort to achieve and constant, superhuman vigilance to maintain. The goal of getting organized isn’t necessarily to have everything picture-perfect, but rather to eliminate inefficiency, so that you have more time to do what you actually want to do.

Instead of holding yourself to an impossible org porn standard, the authors advocate ditching perfection and instead focusing on why you want to get organized in the first place. Remind yourself that org porn is merely entertainment and an escape that few if any actually achieve. Reality is something entirely different. If it helps you, use those org-porn images to focus on the benefits you are trying to achieve: calm, efficiency, etc. Once you are clear on the real objective, then you are free to define your own rules for achieving that end goal (and what that end goal will look like for you).

If you’ve been poring over a few too many glossy images and feeling that you’re falling short of the organizational mark, consider the following.

And here's part of the remedy....

#1: Focus on the Fundamentals

Having everything perfectly in order is not essential, in fact it may be detrimental to organization. What you really need to have buttoned up are the three basics: schedules, important papers (financial/medical), and major project plans (task lists). As a rule of thumb, you should spend 80% of your organizational energy staying on top of the three fundamentals. Having these core elements of your life in order will give you the peace of mind that you are on top of what matters. When these things are disorganized, they can wreak havoc on your life. A perfectly put together, color-coded closet may be nice, but it’s not essential.

#2: Learn to See Perfection as an Illusion

Organization is not an end state, but rather an ongoing fact of life; it’s a process. The notion of perfect organization is an illusion because it can only be achieved fleetingly. Life is too messy and unpredictable to be able to sustain it for any length of time. It’s called real life, and sooner or later, it will wreak havoc on “perfection.” When you’re pressed for time, there’s no need to waste energy worrying about those toys strewn on the living room floor, the dishes lingering in the rack by the sink, or the unmade bed. If you’d rather live an organized life, not a life of organization – you’ll need to embrace a little imperfection.

We are the co-founders of Buttoned Up, inc., a company dedicated to helping stretched and stressed women get themselves organized and co-authors of “Everything (almost) In Its Place.” We welcome your thoughts! Please send ideas and questions to us at: yourlife@getbuttonedup.com or visit us at www.getbuttonedup.com

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