Resign Yourself to the Inevitable

I had a meeting at a country club this week where they had the most beautiful ashtray urns I had ever seen flanking the front double-doors. I am not a smoker, but I noticed them because they had done a great job of making the best of a situation, and it illustrates a great point about successful organizing... working WITH people's behavior instead of against it.

Here's the deal...at some point way back when, that country club had a problem, like many other buildings. People were dropping cigarette butts by the door when they came into the building, and the resulting litter was an eyesore. They could have put up a big red sign that said, "HEY! Don't drop your cigarette butts here!" And maybe they did. They could have hired a guy to stand there and catch people throwing their cigarettes down and give them a ticket or fine, but that would be ridiculous. Neither of those attempts would have solved the problem, because people are creatures of habit and would just keep doing it. So, they resigned themselves to the inevitable and thought about how they could make the best of the situation.

By providing a designated place to put the cigarette butts and making it as attractive as possible, they got rid of the litter problem. They worked WITH the known behavior instead of fighting it, policing it, and getting angry.

In your home, does your family walk in the door and drop coats on the floor and kick off their shoes? Do they dump their backpacks and keep walking, leaving them right in the pathway? Instead of fighting it, create a home for those items and move right on to the next problem. Keep some shoe shelves by the door, put up some hooks for the coats and backpacks, and accommodate those behaviors in the most attractive way possible. What known "clutter behavior" have you been fighting and nagging about in your home that you could creatively accommodate and let go?

Comments

[Jon King]

I couldn't agree with this post more. This fall into "truly understanding the need" bucket (no pun intended).

[Janet Katz]

My kids leave lots of clutter around our family room. Papers, toys, jewelry, gadgets, brushes litter surfaces and I don't want to be the one to return these to their home. That would be a poor lesson in responsibility for the kids. I gave them both IN baskets that sit near one entrance to the family room. I chunk their stuff there to give the room a better appearance, but then they are responsible for cleaning them out. It's not a daily chore, but it does have to get done by them eventually. Works pretty well.