Are You Over-Organizing?

There’s been a lot of reorganizing going on in my house this summer. We’re putting a pause on homeschooling for the upcoming school year, which means it’s time to rejig how some of our spaces are used and store away a lot of materials. On top of that, we surprised our son with a new “cloffice” (basically a bedroom closet converted to a desk/office alcove) while he was at sleepaway camp. Since that closet was a long-lost storage ground from the years before it was even his bedroom, it took some serious decluttering and reorganizing.

Such projects can easily overwhelm me. But I’ve learned that the same principles that help make money manageable can do the same for the stuff in our house.

And that is macro-organizing is enough.

I need to know which drawer the office supplies are in, but I don’t need separate compartments for pens, pencils, paper clips, and rubber bands. I also need to know what our money spending cap target is, but I don’t need to portion it down into sub-amounts for groceries, entertainment, eating out, gas, or every other category.

The distinction between macro- and micro-organizing became clear to me through Cassandra Aarssen (“Cass”), who runs the organizing business Clutterbug. Her approach helps people discover their unique organizing type, based partly on whether they prefer macro- or micro-organization.

This finally explained why I can’t keep a paper filing system to save my life, but a single box full of “keep” papers seems to work just fine. Macro, not micro.

So if you’re trying to get on top of how you organize your money life, keep the same concept in mind: start broad, not deep.

People are often told to start with a monthly budget, allocating cash to all the usual categories: groceries, eating out, gas, clothing, entertainment, emergency savings, vacation savings, etc.

We take comfort thinking the more detailed and technical we get, the better job we’re doing. But, in reality, most of us don’t benefit from starting at that depth of organization.

Macro-organizing gives us an easier place to start. Then you can micro-organize from there if that’s your style.

For us, we have an overall monthly spending cap to guide our day-to-day spending. We use separate credit cards for gas and groceries, so those categories are effectively separated out, making it easier to keep tabs on the “everything else” spending. It’s a small degree of micro-organizing that suits our preferences.

To macro-organize your finances, start with the big-picture numbers on a yearly and monthly scale: How much do you earn in take-home pay? How much are you sending to savings? How much do you use for covering irregular and unexpected expenses? How much per month must you limit your total spending to keep those numbers balanced?

When you have those straight and the overarching system is fitting together, it’s much easier to go into more specifics in any particular area. You may want to get more detailed with your savings, or not. You may want to get more detailed with subcategorizing your spending, or not.

Just consider how well you have those big-picture figures honed before getting lost in the details.

Start with a simple foundation, then optimize from there.