STYLE Savvy: Getting to This Place

Lisa Hess considers the road she took to getting organized and helping others do the same.

A long, long time ago, the elementary school where I worked initiated a remodel of the front office space. This meant I had to move from a long, narrow, windowless office to a smaller, square room with windows and a bathroom. In some ways, it was a step up (Windows! A bathroom!) In other ways (square footage), it was not. And the fact that I was moving back to the space I’d once inhabited (am I going backwards?) only added to my cranky toddler response to the situation.

In other words, the window and bathroom did little to quell my “I don’t wanna” response.

Eventually, and in no small part because I am not a toddler, I decided to adjust my attitude. Maybe I could use the move to finally get myself organized in a sustainable way.

Indeed, I could. And, as it turns out, the move kicked off a love of organizing that helped not only me but also my students and, eventually, a whole bunch of grown-ups as well. I started reading and writing about organization, adapting the practices I discovered and creating the styles-based organizational systems I write about here.

When I set out to write a book, I didn’t want to just teach people about organizing. I mean, who was I, as an organizing work in progress, to teach anyone anything about keeping spaces tidy?

More than Just Keeping Things Neat and Tidy

Luckily, my mission was bigger. As a mom and a school counselor (at the time), it was about more than organizing. I wanted people to value themselves and everything they brought to the table, figuratively and literally. Only then would they believe that getting organized was not only possible, but sustainable as well.

By the time the book (Know Thyself: The Imperfectionist’s Guide to Sorting Your Stuff) came to fruition, I was working as a college instructor, which made the psychology behind the approach even more important to me. As I prepped for a course on positive psychology, I saw that my styles-based approach fit neatly into concepts like strengths-based planning and growth mindset.

Fighting Back

Eventually, I understood that being a work in progress made me the perfect person to write about this stuff. I was in the trenches, waging my own battles against clutter, wincing at the implicit (and sometimes explicit) message that I was somehow inferior because neither my home nor my workspace was a show place. Worse yet, not all of these messages were coming from outside the house. Surrounded by promises of magical organizing solutions, I sometimes bought into the message that I was the problem — that being disorganized was somehow an unavoidable part of who I was.

Three Truths About Organizing

Whenever I write or speak about organizing, I aim to combat all that negativity, focusing instead on the way each person thinks and the way she approaches her stuff. Amid any organizing ideas you read here, I hope you always feel three underlying messages.

1. You’re not broken, nor are you destined to permanently struggle with organization.
2. There is no one magical solution because everyone is different and needs to find the solution best suited to them.
3. Change is possible. It can be a slow and painful process, but it’s possible.

Still Going, Still Growing

As of January, Know Thyself is out of print (although it’s still available at Amazon as of this writing and you can comment below if you'd like to be contacted about copies direct from me), but I’m not finished yet. Thanks to the kind folks here, I get to keep sharing my ideas, for which I am immeasurably grateful. The more I do this, the more ideas I get because not getting mired in what doesn’t work frees me to explore what does.

I’m still not perfect, nor do I expect I ever will be, but I’ve grown to love organizing rather than dreading it. To me, organizing is a puzzle to be solved rather than an obstacle to overcome. Tidiness or the lack thereof is not who I am but, rather, a state of affairs that exists outside of me. I don’t have to own it, but I can do something about it.

And I hope to empower you to feel the same way.

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Copyright 2026 Lisa Hess
Images: Canva