From Chaos to Clarity: Mindful Organization Strategies with Junko Matsushita

For organizational coach Junko Matsushita, getting the house organized is about creating clarity, balance and better headspace. Drawing on both practical techniques and Japanese mindfulness practices, she coaches her clients to untangle the mental clutter that often gets in the way of living fully. In this interview, Junko shares simple strategies on how to sort through our things.

How did your journey into coaching begin?

I lived in Canada before I moved to New York. I had a lot of experience teaching Japanese language at college and broadcasting. With that experience I raised two bilingual children and also wanted to learn more about teaching and life coaching techniques, so I got certified. I was coaching this particular client for 10 sessions or so and she asked me to coach her on organization skills. Coaching itself is about organising the mind and when it is all messy in your mind, you need to know what you want to do and what you have to do. That is how it all started.

How do you integrate Japanese mindfulness practices into your coaching? Can you give us an example of how these practices help your clients find more balance?

There’s a word in Japanese for knowing and understanding that you have enough. Tarushiru. Quite often people just keep buying things in search of something better. But take a moment to look at what you already have. Are you using them? Are you liking them? I ask people to look at what they already have.

I understand that sometimes if you see something is better than what you have right now, you might choose to use the latest version. But what do you do with what you have right now? It is still sitting here. You can have three new versions of it but do you have enough space for it? I encourage people not to throw away everything, instead look at what you have and whether you have the space to keep them. If you love them, keep them but bear in mind that you have to live with them. Just like your body, how much can you carry with your hands?

How do you advise clients on how to choose what to let go and what to keep?

With each item, ask yourself “Are you using it regularly or are you loving it?” If your object belongs in the category that you are using regularly then that is the one to keep. If you are not using it or loving it then that thing has to be gone. If you are unable to decide right now, that is okay. Our life has many gray areas and in order to speed up the organization process, create a gray box or bag and put everything you are not ready to say Yes or No to. Then put it bag somewhere that is not in the living space or your closet. You can look at it later again and then decide which category it belongs to.

The other rule I have is that all the things you want to use must be placed within reach. At most, it should that you not more than 10 seconds to find it. This also applies when you need to put things away. The 10 second rule is especially important because just as you spend lots of time searching for something there is the worst case in which you keep buying an item because you cannot find things already in your house.

What’s one piece of advice to anyone reading who wants to start incorporating your strategies immediately?

The 15 minutes method. When I am with my clients, we spend about three hours together but usually if my clients do not have me around and they need to do their own organization. I tell them to set a timer for 15minutes and then decide what to clear. It could be just one box, but as soon as you set the timer, your brain will just go “okay I’m going to do it.”. It becomes a game of how much you can do in 15 minutes..

This can be applied to any kind of work and this was something I introduced at the Kokoro event. I got the participants to organize the apps on their phone within the time limit. 15 minutes is the time your mind cannot say no to. It is not quite long and allows you to stay focused on the task because you have very limited time.