Organizing by Personality Type?

How novel! What a great idea! I was floored when I read this month’s Real Simple article on “Organizing for your Personality” and had to write about it right away. (How impulsive of me. How crazy and right brained!) But did they really figure it out? Is a major magazine finally joining the PixiesDidIt! revolution?

Nah. It’s just that old right brain/left brain standby. But PixieTypes DO cross paths a bit here. How? Because personality type theory is based on the reflections of bright minds throughout the history of reflecting bright minds — there is bound to be overlap.

Here’s how right brain/left brain synchs up to PixieTypes: “Whether you’re effortlessly tidy,” Yes! Funs and Classics are compelled by an internal clock to tidy and put away the details of their lives, as soon as possible, whether that’s mail, the dirty dishes, or the kids’ toys. This translates into VISUAL tidiness, which of course appear “effortless” if you’re someone watching the Fun or Classic phenomonen of instant clean.

Compare this to the “Perennial pile maker,” which would be Smarts and Organics, when something is filed away in a cabinet, or put behind a closed door or in a drawer it will CEASE TO EXIST, so they tend to leave things out in the open in those “perennial” piles. But for many of them, this IS their tidy, it just doesn’t translate into VISUAL tidiness…

The article also says that “Some of us are born to sort and label,” which is true for Classics and Funs, while “Others are prone to free-form clustering (and losing our keys.)” And this just isn’t true for all Organics and Smarts. Fun’s are right brained people, who were born to sort and label, but they’re just as likely to lose their keys as Organic Freedoms and Smart Freedoms, who are left brained. Organic Structures and Smart Structures who are also left brained just won’t be losing their keys because they have a structure in place (bowl, key hook, on the kitchen table) to keep their keys within easy reach.

When Real Simple writes, “You’ll find tailored strategies here to match the way you think — and help bring (natural) order to your keepskaes, jewelry, and photos,” it’s not really true for Organic Structures, Smart Structures and Funs. You guys are the inbetweens. You are what they call a “mix and can benefit from organizing systems designed for either type,” but this isn’t true. You’re not a mix, you are your own specific type and this is why the left brain/right brain is just too simple to actually be described as tailored.

Left brain/right brain is a general theory that  only describes the difference between those who like to put things away, and those who don’t because they’ll forget they are there — detail oriented people versus big picture people — that’s only one two parts of how the brain processes information. PixiesDidIt! uses three to describe their EIGHT home and life types, making it better equipped to actually tailor solutions for all the different types out there.

So for the rest of this week we’ll delve into this article — as you can see, they do offer beautiful visual renderings of the visual organizing differences between Classics, Funs, Organics and Smarts — and we will actually tell you how you can tailor this advice to your personality type. And perhaps for their next Organizing by Personality Type article they will contact MORE than one source, (ahem, yes go ahead and ask them why they didn’t contact us!) or if they don’t, perhaps (after everyone, yes including us, writes in) that one source will be us!