Is it ever ok to throw away everything you just organized?

It's common to declutter before you organize. This makes sense for a number of reasons, but it's not always the most helpful way to go about it. Rigid compliance with the declutter 1st approach can keep some people from making any progress at all. It's not always possible to see what should be eliminated until your things are grouped - sometimes painstakingly so.

This is especially true for paper. A lot of my clients consciously or subconsciously feel, "How can I toss my paper until I know exactly what I have?"

I'm currently working with a client who has twelve file drawers that we have meticulously organized over the years. Her filing system is one of my masterpieces. Two of these drawers are personal papers. (The others are professional research and history.) Now that she's lived with organized files for some time, she's starting to hint that much of these two drawers can go, with her eye mostly on medical and financial history. She's been living with the security of knowing she can quickly access any part of her medical and financial records.

She also knows that in a perfect world, she'd keep only a fraction of this collection. Having lived with a fine level of order long enough to know its utility (or lack thereof), she is now (and only now) equipped to make decisions about how much of this she really needs.

We're starting to have conversations like, "Is it ok to throw it all away even though we spent so much time organizing it?" Yes! The sorting and grouping process was an essential step on the way to letting it go.

Your takeaway: Organizing something (even meticulously) does not mean you're committed to keeping it forever.

Another client and I spent many sessions across years organizing her papers. A large percentage of what we organized together were files pertaining to her divorce. They followed her to three homes across those years. They were emotionally charged, as they represented a painful part of her past, yet still represented hope that they could bring her some financial resolution in the future.

One of the last times I saw her, she threw them all away. It was time. She came to this on her own with very little nudging from me. I think I even asked her, "Are you asking me to give you a final push?" She was and I did. Within minutes, we filled the bags pictured below. Their contents were masterfully organized.

Can you imagine how freeing this was? Picture your own albatross - the one you are clinging onto for dear life. Imagine it in trash bags by the front door...

Your takeaway: Sometimes you have to organize something and then let it simmer, in order to let go of it all.

If you relate to these two stories, you've probably had people ask you, "Why can't you just throw it all away?" What they can't see is maybe you're actually in the process of throwing it all away; organizing it all first is the process.

This is not a waste of time.

Organizing it first can be a necessary step that allows you to:

1. See exactly what you have, getting intimate with every inch of it.

2. See how much of it you have.

3. Address all the needles in the haystack.

4. Ask yourself how it serves you now.

5. Determine if the answer to that question warrants the space it takes up in your life.

6. Let it simmer if need be.

7. LET IT GO.

Let it go confidently. Let it go knowing you squeezed all the life out of it. Let it go even though there's a chance you'll wish you hadn't. Let it go because it's time.

What is your albatross that comes to mind when you read this? What papers do you feel like you need to sort before you can begin to know if their time is up? Please share in the comments!