115: Little Jolt of Joy – The Illusion of Control

The Illusion of Control in Organizing

I’ve been thinking about the illusion of control that runs through so much of the organizing content we see online, the perfectly placed pantries, the color-coded closets, the flawless bathrooms, all presented as though this kind of order grants you more control over your life, and therefore more happiness and freedom. It’s a little ironic, since freedom is actually an antonym of control if you check a thesaurus. And often, that celebrated level of order comes at a cost: when something inevitably goes wrong, there’s more frustration and panic about getting it “back under control,” not less.

What’s the real motivation?

Worth asking yourself honestly: is the drive to organize your home really about chasing an illusion of control? I’d offer a different goal instead, aiming for the calm of a manageable life, meaning you’ve edited your belongings down enough that when chaos hits, whether that’s an illness, a tragedy, or even a wonderful last-minute opportunity like a spontaneous trip, you can still bring things back into order without it feeling insurmountable. Life doesn’t have to stay in a permanent state of pristine, it just needs enough breathing room that a temporarily chaotic season doesn’t spiral into permanent overwhelm.

A tangent about gender reveals

This train of thought actually started with gender reveal parties. My husband and I chose not to find out the sex of any of our four kids, we felt like there were so few genuine surprises left in life, and honestly, it didn’t change how excited we were to be having a baby at all. If you examine the reasons people give for needing to know ahead of time, clothes ready, nursery decorated, name chosen, none of them are actually necessary to prepare for a baby’s arrival. There are plenty of beautiful gender-neutral nursery styles you can accent afterward. The hospital’s actual requirement is a properly installed car seat, that’s about it. Needing to know in advance is really about wanting a specific kind of control over decor and planning, not genuine necessity.

The danger in that need for control

People often say they don’t care about the sex, they just want a healthy baby, and they mean it, until a reveal doesn’t go the way they secretly hoped, and it shows on their face, captured on video for that child to potentially see one day. But in the actual moment a baby is born and placed in your arms, none of that matters. There’s no letdown in that instant, only overwhelming love for the child who is there, exactly as they are. The disappointment some parents feel at a reveal is mourning for an idea of a child they don’t even know yet, not a reaction to the real one.

Bringing it back to your home

Nothing fundamentally changes in your house because you added the perfect containers, the labels, the color-coded bins. You can live quite happily and calmly in a home you’ve simply edited down to a threshold you can actually manage, whatever that threshold looks like for you specifically. That’s worth examining honestly the next time you feel pulled toward organizing purely for the sake of appearing in control.

Until next time, continue to choose joy.