A television crew is coming to our home this weekend. They’ll be filming my little family over a few days for a lifestyle show that airs in North America. Another interesting experience this blog has brought my way.

I am neither obsessively cleaning nor crash dieting in preparation.

I am not buying expensive throw pillows or mirrors to glam up our little home.

I’m not paying a professional cleaner to take a toothbrush to our bath tub.

I haven’t bought myself a new camera ready wardrobe.

I haven’t booked a make-up artist to beautify me each day of the shoot.

What am I doing?

Organizing.

Organizing is a dirty word to me. A loaded word.

“If I just got more organized my house would be _____, my kids would be ______ and my life would be ______.”

For so much of my life I thought the reason I failed at housekeeping or couldn’t find the time to write or couldn’t “do it all” was because I wasn’t organized.

I developed elaborate and time consuming systems for keeping my wardrobe in order. T-shirts stacked in perfect squares, underwear and bras placed in alternating rows in drawers and my closet divided into sections for work, casual and formal wear.

An afternoon of hard work was undone within a week. A few loads of laundry haphazardly put away and, once again, I was back to drawers that would barely shut and a closet that I had to weed through every morning to put an outfit together.

This same cycle repeated itself with so many areas of our home. The office, the kitchen, the living room. I’d invest in a piece of IKEA furniture that was going to “save us” and after a weekend of work our home looked fantastic. Books lined up by height, picture frames tastefully displayed and a few pieces of decor for fun.

It wasn’t long before opened mail was wedged in next to the picture frames, the books were dusty and out of order and the decor was hidden under leftover packaging from new electronics.

Until this week I had given up on organizing. Simplicity and owning less stuff has brought more order to my life than organizing ever did.

So why am I organizing now? There’s a process to this television shoot and a timeline. Our possessions will need to be moved out of our home and then quickly moved back in and unpacked. To make the process smoother and faster I am organizing.

Of course, I am organizing and doing some decluttering as I go. We have a garbage bag full of Chris’s clothing for donations and a small box of toddler toys to give away. Henry’s just had a growth spurt so I’ve put away all his 12-18 month clothing and transitioned him into 2-3 year sizes. I do love how we skipped buying a size – another reason to buy adjustable sized clothing.

The beauty of organizing when you own less stuff: it’s an easy process and the results last longer.

Tell me, are you still organizing or have you moved onto simplifying? If you’ve reduced what you have do you find it easier to keep everything organized?