How To Avoid Organization Arguments

Happy Weekend! I hope you had a productive week. So this past week Ed and I got into an argument… about ORGANIZATION!

When it happened I knew I had to share the story because there’s an important lesson at the end.

So this past week (I forget what day it happened, but it was around 9PM-ish) I was getting ready for bed, doing my whole routine – brushing my teeth, washing my face, etc.

After I got myself ready for bed, I did my nighttime ritual of putting things away on the bathroom counter since this is one of the first places I see when I wake up in the morning (there’s nothing like waking up and seeing calm instead of chaos).

So one of the things I put away in the bathroom happened to be Ed’s electric razor he left out.

He keeps his razor in the medicine cabinet to the left of his sink (we each have our own sink and his side has the medicine cabinet and mine has nothing. But, it’s a fair trade – my side is nice and open, while his side has the door in the way. So all in all, it’s an even split in that he gets more storage while I have no obstacles in the way!).

Anyway, I put Ed’s razor away, continued to clear the bathroom counter, said goodnight, and went straight to bed as usual.

Well, the next morning was a different story.

Ed woke up, began getting ready for the day and quickly noticed I had put his razor away…. in the wrong spot!

Here’s how it went:

Ed: “Why did you put my razor away on the dental shelf?”

Alejandra: “I didn’t know it was the dental shelf.”

Ed: “Didn’t you see you put the razor next to the dental floss?”

Alejandra: “No, I didn’t realize. I thought I was doing you a favor by putting it away.”

Ed: “No. You can’t combine hair stuff with mouth stuff. That’s just gross.”

Alejandra: “Okay. But you never communicated your system.”

Ed: “Can’t you tell everything is sorted into categories by shelf?”

Alejandra: “No, it’s not labeled.”

End of story.

Okay, so apparently Ed re-organized his medicine cabinet shelves recently and didn’t tell me.

That’s okay though. It’s his space with his stuff on his side. And if it’s functional for him (since he’s the Functionalist), it’s functional for me since I don’t use it.

However, since I’m helping maintain the system, I need to know where things belong so I can help keep his system in place the way he wants it.

Had I known he had just re-organized the shelves into a clear system, I would have gladly put the razor on the “hair” shelf instead of the “dental” shelf. It just didn’t occur to me.

However, I did notice that the cabinet looked a bit different when I put the razor back. I just didn’t notice his system changed completely.

But now that Ed explained his system, it all makes sense.

Anyway, all of this could have been prevented with a little bit of communication on both of our ends.

Ed should have communicated something like this: “Hey babe, I just reorganized my medicine cabinet. Let me show you where things go now.”

Or…

He could have communicated via a jumbo label on each shelf. After all, labels are like reminders that keep reminding us where things go!

On the other hand, I should have communicated when I noticed the cabinet looked a bit different. I should have asked where something belonged if it wasn’t clear.

The point of the story is this: In order to have our organizing systems in harmony, working with everyone, we must communicate how to use the system with others. We can’t expect things to be obvious to other people. Because what’s obvious to us might not be clear to others.

Adding to that, if we don’t know where things belong, we need to ask! Especially when it’s not our space or our stuff. A little bit a communication now goes a long way to prevent issues from arising later.

 So that’s what happened. And by the way, Ed and I have arguments too 🙂