Once again Des Walsh, one of my wise Linked-in Blogger friends has provided some great advice. Writing and speaking about any subject plainly and clearly is a challenge, but especially when writing about technical subjects such as RSS feeds. Even though I've read a lot on RSS, and Des provides an excellent resource in his post at Thinking Home Business :: For RSS as For Anything, Sell the Benefits not the Features, I still only understand enough to respect it and take advantage of it. That's really all I need to know! I don't need to know all the details of what RSS is, I just need to understand what it can do for me in making my blog accessible to people.
This is true of organizing as well. You can't just tell people they need to be organized. You have to show them how it changes their lives. 95% of people who have difficulty getting and staying organized have been told that many times. They already know many organizing methods. They may even have been given organizing supplies and tools as "hints" to get organized. For example, several of my clients have been given label makers by well-meaning people who told them they should use it to get organized.
But they never understood the benefits so they never used it. Often people just don't get how spending time organizing themselves will do anything but take up their time. Many people have an underlying belief that being organized means being rigid and uptight and following lots of rules, or that it's bureaucratic, or stifles creativity and spontaneity...or that if you are organized you must spend all your time doing it and never have fun. They think that labeling (and other organizing technique) will take a lot of time and just be "overkill."
So for me, a big part of helping people get and stay organized is to help them overcome these self-limiting beliefs and change their perspective so they can see that organizing is not "all" or "nothing" and that there is real value in becoming "reasonably" organized. They can save time, money and have less conflict with their family, less stress, and more creativity!
Every time I explain and demonstrate the benefits of labeling, how easy and inconspicuous it can be, and how labels can be used to solve actual problems they are having, a light bulb goes off. They wipe the dust off their label makers and start labeling all kinds of things! Once they see that labeling strategically is a way to communicate with their family, teach their kids, support their memory, save time, and have their family, babysitters and even cleaning people support their efforts to get organized, they see it in a whole new light. 
In the picture shown, we used labels inside the dresser drawers so that my client's children and the cleaning lady would know where things go when putting laundry away. Not everyone wants or needs their sock and underwear drawer this neat, and that's fine, but it solved a problem for her, so we did it and she loves it.
I don't try to make neurotic perfectionists out of people who have a visible label on everything they own or never have a thing out of place. I just try to help them see they how we can solve specific issues in their lives by applying organizing skills and concepts. Once they are "sold" on the value of being organized, making simple changes in the way they do things, like labeling, is easy.
For more photos of organizing makeovers, see www.neatandsimple.com/gallery
If I don't feel they are important enough to organize, after I read them, I drop them in my recyle basket which I keep handy under my desk. This system is actually easier for me than getting out 6 books and copying what I need from each on my copier.
It's a very warm feeling when 13 talented and accomplished bloggers take time out to write about and link to your blog all in one day. It's like a great big hug. Very hard to describe. But also very humbling. Their blogs are all so clever, witty and interesting. I learned a lot from them and will do my best to live up to the standards of excellence they have put out there.
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