Are You a Butterfly?

Are You a Butterfly?

While I watched TV the other weeknight, a quirky female detective (What is with all the quirky female detectives lately?) rapidly declared a suspect a ‘Butterfly’ after seeing their piles of papers, newspapers, and books stacked on every horizontal surface. Her TV partner and I both said, “What?” The unconventional detective's explanation made me happy I was not a Butterfly, but curious about this colorful description.

Needing more information, I Googled it and found the e-book Clutterbug by Cassandra Aarssen. You might know Cassandra from HGTV, but I had never heard of the Clutterbug explanation of home organization. Here, I found the Butterfly, Bee, Cricket, and Ladybug all used to describe different mindsets.

Turns out, The Butterfly likes to see everything at a glance, very visual.  They know what’s in every stack, on every shelf or ottoman, and like it that way - just in case the information is needed. It’s hard to live with until you need tax paperwork in a jiffy or want a new book to read!  My Uncle Frank was a Butterfly. His garage was packed to the rafters with stuff, crowded, jammed, overflowing, but he could find a 3” deck screw if you needed! For that matter, he could locate a can opener, a newspaper from 1969, or any size paintbrush.

You’ve heard the saying, “Busy as a Bee”. Turns out Bees are so busy they keep their tools out until the job is done - saves time. The work area of a Bee can look messy and unorganized until the project is done, after which items are placed in specific, labeled order. Visual and micro-detailed! Sounds hard! If a painting project is interrupted by dinnertime, the paint, drop cloths, and brushes are left out until the wall is completed and cleaned up perfectly. I have a cousin who will stay up all night to finish recovering a chair, and when she’s done, she will clean and organize her tools before finally going to bed at 4 am. When The Bee finds time to put it all away, they employ a storage system of small, clear, labeled units. Unless a new DIY task comes to mind!

Are you wondering about your organizational style, yet? Look around and then continue reading.

Ah, The Cricket - logical, practical, and put away. Perfect. Wait, let’s do it again until it’s perfectly perfect. If items are in a pile, heaven forbid, it’s a model stack in flawless order. A Cricket might reorganize an organized filing system several times in quest of the best system. At work and home, visual simplicity, no clutter, everything in unseen closed containers in an orderly fashion, is the norm. Hopefully, time can be made for perfection! Some of us have a person with this style in our lives, and we’re either jealous or uncomfortable in their home. Mary Poppins might have been a Cricket keeping her spoon and sugar neatly placed in the carpet bag!

The Ladybug - beautiful on the outside. Visually, everything is crisp and clean!  A clean and decorated house, a desktop with a tape dispenser, a stapler, and a coffee cup on a trivet is a Ladybug’s goal.  But beware - red, shiny wings hide an organizational mess. I love Cassandra's explanation of The Ladybug’s home. “ You know you’re a Ladybug if your surfaces are clean and tidy, but your junk drawer is overflowing, and you would be embarrassed if guests opened your closet.”

My search for an organizational bug identity might end here. Excuse me while I go clean out my junk drawer…

 https://clutterbug.me/downloads/Clutterbug_Ebook.

Bit by bit, that’s all she wrote…