Homebody Organizing
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Care Package Archive

Rejuvenating and practical frameworks for creating Clarity and Wellness in all areas of your life.

Coaching is sacred. This space is protected. Gates and paths open to our guides. Gates and paths closed to anyone who wishes to do us or our loved ones harm. Dedicated Protector.

Care Packages🤲🏽

You know when someone who loves you sends you a parcel with a bunch of goodies in it? I’m endeared to the care package (in whatever form it comes) as a way of making, way of caring, way of sharing. There’s no shortage of possibility as to how a care package presents, what it contains, what assortments are collected, how it’s delivered, how it’s received, and what it might mean to it’s recipients.

I value that this orientation toward making and giving can bring together items that you don’t always see together. You’re simply giving what’s needed and what might land as care. I like when a care package is a sweet collection of some practical stuffs and also things for pure enjoyment (maybe highlighting the functionality of joy and pleasure to our survival); a mix of things you can use in the long run plus some things to use right now. A box containing socks, a nice notebook, some chocolate, a bag of rice.

I like both mail and creating with the intention to give, so the Care Package holds a place in my heart. I send the people on my list a weekly (email) Care Package 🤲🏽. I write them with the intention of both holding space for all the positive possibility that you radiate, and to be of real tangible use. Ideas that you can grab onto, that make a difference in your life.

I created the Care Package Archive to collect these packages all in one place. Sign up if ya wanna receive em straight to your inbox.

CP16🤲🏽 You’re Too Smart For Organizing Content- most of it is way too superficial

Inspiration isn’t sterile. Life and energy are not sterile. Clarity (isn’t not) abundant.

I think artists, creative, intelligent, critical thinkers might not vibe with most organizing content because it’s superficial and lacks the meaningful capacities that we are needing right now:

  • The capacity to actually see and comprehend where people are at: their dwelling ecosystems; their inspiration, energy, directionality (or lack there of), and their struggles and challenges that go far beyond, and exist at a higher level of importance than, tidiness.

  • The capacity to connect with people rather than control them: as a facilitator, to build a relationship with individuals that seeds and models conducive environments they can create in their homes and other areas of their lives.

  • The capacity to show up and draw upon what is already alive in someone else’s world: to see and respect that as a responsible steward of their environments. 

  • The capacity to tolerate a healthy, productive mess because life, inspiration, well-being, and energy don’t actually need to look contained. (I’ll talk more about the container myth in a future care package)

  • The capacity to impact the deeper structural change that we are seeking in our societies, in our immediate communities, and (not least of all) within our homes and day to day lives.

We want real change!

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You’re smart and you’re probably excellent at what you do. Because you’re smart and excellent at what you do, you can tell when something just doesn’t hit the bar, even if it’s not your field of expertise. 

This is what you’re sensing with the organizing content you intake, if any. The organized fridges, and the labeled pantries. They’re great… 

They’re just not quite enough. Amiright? When you look at organizing content you might be thinking:

  • Ok sure, that looks INCREDIBLE but I don’t have a walk-in closet with custom shelves and drawers.

  • Yea, nice ideas, but I have so much to take care of right now, right in front of me, this feels like extra work. What does this have to do with my life actually?

  • Wait is it that I’m cluttered or is this apartment too small and are organizing articles bullying people with smaller living spaces.

  • I’ve done all the things and followed all the methods but I’m still anxious and don’t know where I’m going or what I’m doing.

You probably also get the feeling like organizing content is trying to squeeze you into a way of looking and living that is incompatible with what’s meaningful to you. 

You’re not wrong. 

I feel like a lot of organizing advice is trying to do that. Ultimately I feel that the majority of organizing content grabs the hammer at the wrong place, not properly leveraging its full potential. That’s why I don’t consume a lot of organizing content and I’m intending to do something entirely different with my work.

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The thing is, I know exactly what the issue is- organizers and organizing content lingers too long at, in my opinion, the wrong step in the phase: placement. 

And even while lingering in the placement phase, which has a lot of potential to be life changing if done well, most organizers can’t go that deep. Just as deep as it looks good, and often completely sacrificing functionality.

To run with this metaphor a bit- this is like trying to use a hammer by holding the handle right up at the neck, effectively disabling the potential that is heightened when you hold it at it’s grip.

All of your thoughts about organizers and organizing content are totally justifiable because most of what is out there simply does not have the intellectual rigor or precision we (the people alive today that care about things) are seeking.

Wanna know the real most powerful organizational action we can play with? 

Sorting. Sorting is the single most powerful, consequential, and truly life-changing phase of organizing that we can engage with. (Going further into this in an upcoming Care Package)

With organizing’s revolutionary potential in mind,

Loretta

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Images: Josef Albers possibly teaching about how the warm/cool paradigm is not a substantive or precise enough way to understand color; Josef Albers, Study for Homage to the Square; Screenshot of Walt Disney 1945 Industrial Cartoon.

Loretta Barrera