The Hidden Tax of Not Staying Organized: A Personal Journey

Small changes make a big difference

Have you ever had one of those days that goes sideways before it even begins? The kind where a single misplaced item sends your carefully balanced morning routine tumbling like dominoes? Let me tell you about my glasses day—a seemingly small incident that opened my eyes (once I could actually see again) to how disorganization was quietly sabotaging my daily life.

The Day My Glasses Disappeared

It started like any Tuesday morning—alarm blaring, coffee brewing, mental checklist forming. I reached for my glasses on the nightstand where they should have been, where they had lived faithfully for years. Empty space greeted my searching fingers.

What followed was a frantic 45-minute treasure hunt through my home. I checked all the usual suspects: bathroom counter, kitchen table, inside my purse. Nothing. With each passing minute, my frustration mounted along with an impressive headache from squinting at a world that had become frustratingly fuzzy.

"I can't be late for this meeting," I muttered to myself, now on hands and knees peering under furniture. My son needed to get to school, breakfast remained unmade, and the clock showed no mercy.

When I finally discovered them—wedged between couch cushions from my late-night reading session—I felt not relief but a wave of exhaustion. And it wasn't even 8 AM.

The Ripple Effect

That day stayed derailed. The morning chaos meant I forgot my lunch, skipped breakfast, and arrived at work frazzled and with a headache that pounded my head. I snapped at my colleague over something trivial. My productivity tanked. By evening, I was too drained to cook the healthy dinner I'd planned, so we ordered takeout—again.

All because my glasses weren't where they belonged.

In the quiet aftermath, once my son was asleep and the house still, I realized this wasn't just about glasses. It was about a pattern that had become my normal—a constant low-grade chaos that extracted daily taxes I hadn't been calculating:

• Time tax: How many hours each week did I spend searching for misplaced items?

• Energy tax: How much mental and physical energy went to managing disorder rather than things that bring joy?

• Emotional tax: How often did frustration from disorganization spill into my interactions with people I love?

• Health tax: How many stress headaches, skipped meals, and postponed workouts could be traced back to not staying organized?

• Financial tax: How much money went to late fees, replacement items, and convenience foods because I couldn't find things or ran out of time?

The Unspoken Mental Load

For me—like so many women juggling work, family, and life's endless responsibilities—disorganization wasn't just about messy countertops or misplaced glasses. It was about the mental load I carried.

I realized I wasn't naturally disorganized—I was simply overwhelmed. The systems I needed weren't in place because I hadn't given myself permission to prioritize creating them. Somehow, I'd internalized the idea that spending time on organization was less important than the thousand other things demanding my attention.

But that glasses day showed me the math didn't add up. The time "saved" by not putting things away properly was actually creating time debt with compounding interest.

Small Steps Toward Change

I'd like to say I transformed overnight, but the truth is messier. My journey toward organization began with small, almost embarrassingly simple steps:

1. I bought a key hook and placed it by the door. My keys now live there, nowhere else.

2. I created a "command center" on our refrigerator with a calendar, whiteboard for groceries, and folder for important mail.

3. I set aside 15 minutes each evening for a quick tidy-up, setting a timer to make it feel manageable.

None of these changes were revolutionary, but they created tiny islands of order in my chaotic life. And something unexpected happened: these small victories gave me confidence. Each success, no matter how small, proved that change was possible.

The Unexpected Emotional Journey

What surprised me most wasn't the practical benefits of getting organized—it was the emotional transformation. As my physical space became more ordered, my mind followed suit. The constant mental chatter of "Don't forget to..." and "Where did I put...?" gradually decreased.

I began sleeping better. My anxiety decreased. I found myself more present in conversations, no longer mentally cataloging all the things I was probably forgetting.

But the most profound change was in how I viewed myself. For years, I had incorporated disorganization into my identity—"That's just how I am!" Getting organized required confronting that limiting belief and realizing I wasn't destined to live in chaos.

A Work in Progress

I'd love to tell you my home now looks like a container store catalog and I never lose anything anymore. The reality is much messier. There are still piles that accumulate. There are still mornings of searching for library books and matching socks.

But now, disorganization feels like a temporary visitor rather than a permanent roommate. The systems may bend under life's pressures, but they rarely break completely.

Most importantly, I've stopped seeing organizing things as something I'm "bad at" and started seeing it as a form of self-care—a gift I give myself rather than another standard to measure up to.

Your Turn

If any part of this resonates with you, I want you to know you're not alone. So many of us are quietly drowning in our own stuff, our own obligations, our own mental load. We joke about being scatterbrained or disorganized as if it's a fixed personality trait rather than a solvable problem.

Your journey toward staying organized doesn't have to look like anyone else's. You don't need color-coded bins or alphabetized spices. You just need to find your version of the blue glasses dish—one solution for one pain point that matters to you.

What's your "glasses"? What one thing, if always in its proper place, would make your mornings smoother or your evenings more peaceful? Start there. Just that one thing.

Because you deserve to move through your days with more ease. You deserve mental bandwidth for things that light you up rather than searching for what's lost. You deserve the peace that comes from knowing where things are.

And you absolutely deserve to know exactly where your glasses are tomorrow morning.

Do you have a story about how disorganization has affected your daily life? Or a simple organizational solution that's made a big difference? I'd love to hear about it in the comments below.