Organizing for Your Personality

Whether you’re innately tidy or, um, not, find strategies tailored to how you think. 

Left-Brained vs. Right-Brained

Order is individual. Some minds are built to create pristine stacks, and others have a natural urge to sprawl and display. We’ve all heard about left-brained and right-brained people and the different tendencies associated with each. A quick review:

• Right-brain types are visually oriented. They tend to think in images rather than words, focus on the big picture rather than the details, and go through life in a somewhat seat-of-the-pants (a.k.a. scattered) way.
• Left-brainers are those who think in words (attention, list makers!), do a lot of advance planning, and approach challenges in a rational, linear way.

So why not use this information when implementing order at home? It could be the solution to the endless search for the right organizing gear and offer relief from the disappointment (and cost) of failed attempts. “The key to successful organizing,” says Melissa Picheny, principal of a functional-design company in New York City (declutteranddesign.com), “is to pay attention to your personality. Then come up with a plan that conforms to it, rather than trying to work within someone else’s system.”