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Does looking at other people’s neatly labeled storage containers and perfectly arranged closets make you want to organize your life? But then, no matter how motivated you feel in the moment, you end up right back in piles of clutter a week later?
You’re not the only one. Despite good intentions, most attempts to get organized fall apart quickly. But new research reveals an intriguing explanation for why organizing seems so unsustainably hard. And more importantly — the simple mindset shift to help you finally establish order.
Why Organizing Efforts Often Fail
Conventional wisdom says getting organized is purely about mastering tactics — use the right storage bins, shelves, labels and systems. So we seek more tips, tools and procedures assuming that’ll solve the problem.
But it turns out organized spaces have less to do with what methods you try and more to do with how you view your things.
Stanford psychologists discovered that people struggle maintaining order because of a mental gap — we don’t see possessions as connected to our potential uses for them. Items feel conceptually disconnected from their purpose and utility in our lives.
