The Designing Order: Getting Organized to Attract Abundance

By Rita Brown and Raymond Aaron

Out with the mess, live more with less, reclaim your home and free up space for abundance to flow in.

The Designing Order - Getting Organized to Attract Abundance shows you how organizing to clear and simplify your living space reduces stresses and frustrations, and releases energy so that you can focus on the things that matter. Rather than whittling time away on possessions that bog you down, just by busting clutter and restoring order, you get life-changing results: more hours in a day, more satisfying relationships, a clearer headspace, and a home that is a sanctuary, not just a shelter.

Your home is part of your story. What kind of story are you telling when you live with a mess? Understanding that organizing can be overwhelming and daunting, Corporate Project Interior Designer and Professional Organizer Rita Brown offers easy, inexpensive and effective solutions for you to take back your life. Having recently gone through the tumultuous process of suddenly losing a partner, a job and her mother, at a time when the world was shut down by a pandemic, Rita discovered first-hand that organizing restores order from chaos, and ushers in unexpected opportunities and freedoms.

Ready to put an end to the mess? This book will get you quick results, from banishing clutter while creating a freer, more abundant and meaningful life.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: May 25, 2022
• ISBN: 9781772774955

Book preview

CHAPTER 1

When Life Throws

Curveballs at You, Organize

Change is the only constant in life.

—Heraclitus

Over the space of six months, in pandemic year zero, I buried my cat; lost Jeff, my boyfriend of 7 years, to Covid; came down with the virus (but was fortunately asymptomatic); discovered Jeff had been cheating on me; lost my job, while I had no medical insurance; and lost my mom two weeks later.

Over the subsequent three months, I packed up and sold my 1800 sq. ft. condo, moved with all my possessions, including 40 boxes of books, into my mother’s house with its menagerie of domestic and wild animals, grimaced as my Martha Stewart custom-made king bed was broken down to be taken away by Junkluggers.com, donated a total of 35 garbage bags of clothes and carried out two massive garage sales.

The Universe had served up Big Life Stuff for me to deal with; and for a while, I tamped down my emotions and just got down to it, because I had to. My mom had been ill for a while when I made the decision to move into her house to take care of her, while still maintaining my condo. During that time, I had to figure out how to blend two households. With the help of our mom’s caregiver, my brother and I spent the next 2 1/2 months packing, sorting, recycling and disposing of stuff from my two homes.

I was dealing with so much when Mom was still alive, running her household and mine, and even more after she passed away since I was the trustee of her estate. I was handling tremendous grief and anger from losing Jeff so quickly, and then discovered, while I was planning his memorial service, that he had cheated on me. His death was a tragedy that could have been averted.

His refusal to consult with doctors even though he had been feeling unwell for some time, and having undiagnosed Covid, pushed it over the top. On that fateful day, he collapsed at home and insisted that I pick him up so that he could stand up and brush off the incident. But I could see he was in a bad way and, instead, I called 911. The ambulance took him to the hospital but, the next day, he coded. The doctors put him on a ventilator, placed him under sedation and assigned him to ICU. A week later, he never woke up again. Just before he passed away, he coded twice, and I guessed his heart couldn’t take it anymore.

While this was unfolding, I was also feeling overwhelmed every time I got to my mother’s dated California house. There was just so much stuff, and I was floored by what I needed to do with her possessions, which included several mobility aids, duplicates of pots and pans, countless bed linens and tea towels, her collection of mugs and the well-curated selection of cast-iron pans that I couldn’t bear to part with.

I had no choice. I just had to purge and clear out. But unknowingly and unexpectedly, something happened within me with every piece I sold, gave or threw away. It was as if something old was breaking and falling away. And with every decision I made, to take care of myself and to begin anew after losing my partner and my mom and my job, I felt stronger and more decisive about creating a new me. Taking clutter and unnecessary junk out of Mom’s house helped clear the head space to deal with the sad stuff. Simultaneously, as I came to grips with the new changes in my life, and gradually discovered the life I really wanted, I felt more energized about owning less and treasuring what I decided to keep.

There are scientific studies that show a link between cleaning and clearing and positive mental attributes, such as gaining more clarity and confidence. Conversely, clutter and mess can have a negative impact. A study by Princeton University found that clutter overwhelms a person’s visual cortex, making it tough to fully concentrate on finishing a project efficiently. Simply put, there is too much visual distraction vying for your attention.¹

Separately, in the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, researchers found that women who perceived their homes as cluttered or full of unfinished projects, were more likely to be tired and depressed than women who described their homes as sanctuaries in which to rest and renew. It was also found that the women with messy homes had higher levels of cortisol.²

Be Kind to Yourself; Start Small

Don’t get me wrong; the pieces didn’t fall together just like that. I had no idea what the next steps were; if anything, the events of the past several months upended my plans and changed the trajectory of my life. I am no stranger to seismic-sized shocks; I am a cancer survivor. This time, I had come to an abrupt halt in my love and professional lives. On top of that, I had a tremendous responsibility on my hands to take care of Mom, with my brother’s help, and prepare internally for her end of life, while maneuvering my own way in the world.

Admittedly, it was terrifying. So, I did what I could, one moment at a time, one cabinet and one drawer at a time.

Mom and I started with the medicine cabinet in the master bathroom. So as not to overwhelm her, we took on a small project. You will probably identify with this because organizing the medicine cabinet is one of the biggest headaches for any household.

Mom had one of those triple-door medicine cabinets, and it was cluttered with prescription pills, first aid supplies, nail polish, makeup, dental supplies, powders, soaps, mercurochrome iodine, half-used jars of Vicks, Band-Aids, bottles of lotions and countless things you find stashed in the