mnmlist: minimalism is the end of organizing

The rise of clutter has given birth to a whole industry: organizing.

We now have legions of professional organizers, whole companies that sell organizing products such as closet organizers, magazines and blogs on how to get yourself organized, and of course, the hand-held notebooks we call organizers — and their digital equivalent, mobile devices.

And while I have nothing against professional organizers — they help people to find peace in lives of chaos — I don’t think they’re necessary … if you adopt minimalism.

Organizing is only necessary when you have too many things to easily find what you’re looking for.

Think about it: when we organize a collection of books, it’s because when they’re not organized, we can’t find the books we want. But if we had, say, five books, we wouldn’t need to organize.

The same applies to anything that needs to be organized:

• Closets that have a minimal amount of things don’t need to be organized.
• Tasks only need a complicated system or productivity apps for organizing if you have a lot to do. Focus on only doing a few important things, and you barely even need a list.
• Finances only need organizing if they’re complicated. I’ll write about minimalist finances later.
• Files only need to be organized if you can’t let go of this need to organize them. With search so powerful these days, you can find things with a few keystrokes.

There are lots of other things that need to be organized, if they’re not kept as simple as possible. I’m sure you can think of a few yourself. Consider making them as minimalist as possible, and the organizing will fade away.