handful after handful of crabgrass. Crabgrass has a thick center section and multiple legs that shoot out in all directions, making it resemble a crab. The goal is to pull the crabgrass out by the root, but if you grab just a leg or two and pull, they snap right off leaving the root intact. The trick is to grab ALL the legs right where they come out of the center of the plant and pull straight up. This pulls the entire plant plus the root right out of the ground.
I was thinking that sometimes life's chaos is like the multi-legs of crabgrass and Professional Organizers are like gardeners and our goal is to help our clients remove the "weeds" of chaos. If we just address the "legs" of the chaos -- the physical space, the paper, the calendar, the laundry, the email, or the family schedule -- the root of the problem remains. So our job is to IDENTIFY the legs, and certainly address them, but without going toward the root(s) of the issue, the legs will just grow back over time.
The roots of chaos can be nearly anything, but some of the more common ones I've see in my eleven plus years of business are:
Inability to manage time
Lack of personal boundaries with family members / friends
Procrastination
Fear of making bad decisions
Poor physical health
Low self-esteem
Fear about the future
Childhood trauma / abuse
Unhealthy or unhappy marital relationships
And the list goes on. When you begin to examine the root causes of the chaos, you're able to help effect lasting change, not just short-term change. This is what we want for our clients -- to be able to help uncover the causes, help address the symptoms, and provide tools and skills to maintain the positive changes we've initiated.
