213: A Hack to Jumpstart Your Action on Decluttering & Organizing

Rearrange and Stage First: The Backwards Organizing Hack That Actually Gets You Moving

Almost a thousand people have joined my free podcast community, and when they join, I ask what’s the hardest part of getting their home organized. The answer, overwhelmingly, is the same: getting started, figuring out where to even begin.

I want to share a hack that got me moving again after months of being stuck, and one I’ll admit any traditional organizer would tell you is completely backwards.

How organizing “should” go, and why I skipped the order

When a professional organizer works a space with you, the order is pretty consistent: discuss the space, take before photos, sort every item, decide what gets purged, figure out containers if needed, and only at the very end, make it look pretty. That sequence exists for good reason. But sometimes our brains blow a project up into something so large and daunting that we simply never take the first step, even though we’re completely capable of the whole thing once we actually start.

My hack: rearrange and stage first

Here’s what I did instead. If you can manage it, pull everything out of a space that isn’t a major piece of furniture staying put anyway, and start rearranging. Vacuum, dust, spray something that smells good, hang some art, make the room look like a real estate listing photo you’re thrilled with. What you’re left with afterward is a giant pile of mess sitting in an adjacent room or hallway. That’s the tradeoff, and it’s fine.

My own real example

About six months ago, I moved out of my old closet office, a cramped space over the garage with a sloped ceiling and one tiny window, into an actual bonus room with real windows and real ceilings. I was so excited about the move that I just dragged everything into the new space and told myself I’d sort it out later. Instead, I sat in that room for months feeling frustrated and uninspired, with piles shoved against the wall because at least they were in the right room now. That technically worked, but it definitely wasn’t ideal.

Yesterday, enough was finally enough. I hadn’t recorded a podcast in ages and just couldn’t get myself moving. So I pulled everything out into the hallway and rearranged the furniture that was left, again and again, getting rid of a few pieces entirely, until the room finally felt genuinely good. Clean, dusted, vacuumed, art on the walls, a daybed-couch setup. I even ordered curtains to help with sound, since losing my old closet’s built-in fabric sound barrier turned out to be the one real downside of the move. And the direct result: I’m recording again, for the first time in a while.

Why this actually works

Once the space looks and feels genuinely good, you become the gatekeeper of what’s allowed back into it. You’re no longer protecting a vague vision you assume you’ll get to eventually, you’re protecting something real that already exists and that you don’t want to mess up. I’m being far more discerning and honestly a little ruthless about what comes back into this room, always filtering through function first: only what the space genuinely needs to work as an office and occasional guest room, pared down and stored somewhere I’ll actually remember and actually use.

The bonus tip: give yourself a real but not too urgent deadline

Do this kind of reset when you have an actual deadline on the horizon, but not an immediate one. In my case, our first wave of holiday-season guests arrives next Friday, not this Friday. That’s far enough out that I won’t panic and shove the hallway pile into a closet at the last minute, the way we all do when guests arrive with no warning, but close enough that it’s genuinely motivating me to sort through it properly: keep what I need, and get the rest to the trash, recycling, or donation.

Your practical, actionable step

Pick one space you’ve been avoiding. Pull everything out that isn’t a major furniture piece staying in the room, rearrange and clean until it genuinely looks good to you, and set a real but not immediate deadline for dealing with the pile that results.

Until next time, continue to choose joy.