Scale Your Business, Get a Shoe Rack | Kasey Writes Day 9

If anyone knows me well, they'd be the first to bring my dark and dirty secrets to light. Don't worry, my sweet, dear friends. I'll spare you the temptation and tell on myself this time. 

I'm messy. Okay, fine. I'm a little more than messy—I'm a little bit of a slob and maybe a tiny bit of a hoarder. I consider myself to be resourceful, though. You never know when you might need that recipe box back from 1970.

If you walked into my house through the garage, you'd pass my mudroom area lined with mixed-matched shoes sticking haphazardly out into the walkway. Granted, these are not all mine, but nevertheless, they're there. To your left, you'd see my laundry room overflowing with four-foot heaps of mostly clean clothes. You know, I really do wash them. Swear. I just let them sit on the floor until they become dirty enough to rewash. 

I know it makes no sense, and it's by far not my finest accomplishment in life. It's never been anything I write home about. 

Mosey on down the hall and hang a right. There, you'll see the worst of it. It's my bedroom, AKA the gathering point of every human and animal creature in my house. It's a large room with a massive dresser and armoire, along with a king-sized bed held up by water bottles and two nightstands. Every piece of furniture in that room is packed to the brim with stuff. You'll also see two clothing racks on wheels, making a perfect 90-degree angle in the corner, holding what actually makes it from the laundry room into the bedroom—one step closer to the closet.

Beside the bed, you'd probably see the book I just finished by Malcolm Gladwell, Talking to Strangers. Here he reminded me of the concept of coupling. When you take a behavior, and couple it with a specific circumstance, the intended outcome is more likely to occur. When you couple my love of shoes and clothes, with the lack of time I have to adequately organize them, you get chaos. Match that up with the fact that my closet was not designed for a hoarding person like me; what you get is a perpetual state of disorder and dysfunction overlooking Lake Cumberland. 

What you get is my home life. 

I don't know about you, but I don't do well in this kind of disorderly environment, but I just keep coming home to it day after day. I could make time to fix it, but I don't. I have to pause to ask myself why? Why is it that something like this is so disruptive to my emotional state of mind, but I keep subjecting myself to it each day? Why is it that I pick up the shoes and wash the clothes, only for them to return to the exact wrong place in just a few days? Why is there no accountability? And why do I torture myself like this? 

Every few months, I'll have had enough. This weekend was one of those times. I decided that the root of my problem was my inefficient closet. It's long and narrow with many large empty spaces that actually work perfectly for my hats, but not my shoes. I told my husband to call a contractor ASAP and get a quote. I decided that I needed to blow out the wall, expand the room, and hire Closets by Design to fix me right up. 

This is God's honest truth; this was my solution. Why? I believe it was for two reasons. One, passing the buck to the contractor, buys me some time. I feel better about myself during this time because, at least for now, while I wait on the contractor, I know I have done my part. I've passed the buck, and it's out of my hands. 

But is it, really? No, it's not. 

Why is it we (I) overcomplicate the simplest things in our businesses and even more in our lives? Why do we take the simplest of things and overcomplicate them? Why do I need a sledgehammer and a contractor to solve my shoe problem? There has to be an easier way. There is, and this weekend I realized what it was. 

It's called a plastic shoe rack from Walmart. 

It's tall and slim, and I can fit three pairs of shoes per row. I bought two racks, and now it holds almost all of my shoes; more importantly, there are no more ankle breakers in the hallway. There's also no more in my closet. Do you realize how silly I felt when the shoe rack solved my problem, and I'd actually been considering knocking down walls to organize and systemize my life? I had everything I needed within me (my ability to problem-solve), and what I didn't have, I just needed to travel a few miles down the street to get.

As crazy as it sounds, we do this same kind of thing ALL the time in our businesses. We encounter a problem, make a mountain out of a mole-hill, and give ourselves twenty-eight reasons to procrastinate and pass the buck. We buy into the psychological pressure we put on ourselves, and we're afraid that if we get to diggin', we're going to find something or somethings we won't like. 

And the truth is, we probably will find things, and we definitely won't like them. It's a necessary part of the process.  

When we couple our desire to grow our business, with the lack of time we have to organize our systems adequately, we get chaos.

When we start to systemize to achieve a sense of confidence and peace, it always gets worse before it gets better. It's like unpacking the kitchen or cleaning out the garage. We question our ability to Adult when we see all the nonsense we've accumulated over the years. But the process is designed to be that way, so we will learn from our past and position ourselves for a more streamlined and straightforward present and future. 

Before we knock down walls to achieve efficiency and order, we should consider that something as simple as a shoe rack might do the trick. Where could you put a shoe rack in your business? I dare you to look.