I recently read this comment posted to an article on Houzz. I thought it was very insightful. I think I’m mildly overweight. What are you?
All due respect to the ladies, but I am starting to believe after twenty years of helping people weed closets, garages and WHATEVERS as I decorate their homes, that organization is a personality type in the same way as fat or a general body type seems ingrained. 

The “skinnies” have a place for everything, and everything in its place. They retain not an ounce of anything they do not need or use. They are envied. Ask one of them if they have a yard of purple string and they run to it and even own a special bag for you to tote it home. They don’t read this stuff, as they think everyone is like them. They cannot imagine otherwise, and their spotless homes always have fresh flowers with clean water. 

Next we have the “mildly overweight”. They could shed some stuff, but for the most part it doesn’t interfere with a good looking home, or the life within. Occasionally, they “diet like maniacs” and keep the serious damage of clutter to a minimum. It is very safe to enter their homes at most any time. They even throw impromptu parties with a simple trip to the grocery. They are obsessed with making their homes even better, and are suckers for articles on how to do it, particularly those with really cute mud rooms. They are the strivers for perfection, and they never EVER give up. 

Alas and last,……. we have the folks who struggle with “serious obesity”. They keep the stores, the internet, and the professional organizers, and the container stores in business. It is a minefield within their homes. Their housekeeping issues rival the storage and organizing problems. There is no amount of time that will help them get, or stay organized, as they never plug the intake. Closets explode, they purchase multiples of everything, because “hey, ya never know.” They shop big box. They shop online. They shop. They are sentimental, so nothing can be tossed, and they save lint. They are depressed, or too busy, or they suffer from attention disorder, or they “need more storage”, but mostly they suffer from a lack of a routine, and an absolute inability to put a single thing in the same place twice. They are the “I will do it later” folks, and later never comes. They have had organizers at the home multiple times, always with the same result. A week later, they are in the same state they were before they started. They have baskets and notebooks and filing cabinets, and every system known to man. It all disintegrates to become part of the ongoing mess. Dishes go in the sink and remain, laundry piles up or remains tangled in a basket. Beds go unmade within the mess of clothes and shoes. …. and the bags of more clothes and shoes which arrived via UPS today, and unpaid bills on the nightstand collect as much dust as the catalogues they are hidden within…..and on it goes. And on, and on…. 

You are either laughing, or upset, or disbelieving of the three types. Ask any residential cleaning person/service if you don’t believe me. 
After a few people commented on her comment, she went on to say this:
Okay…. lets be honest here. I used an analogy in an earlier comment that some may have “missed”. The comment wasn’t meant to be in any way about body types, simply about how DIFFICULT it seems to change that type, and I related that to the very same difficulty many have with changing clutter for better in their homes. Patscats is correct in that there are reasons for this, they are often emotional ( I said that) and sometimes there are very sad deep seated problems beyond any we can imagine. BUT, and it is a big one ( one t in that ladies !!), a lot of the problems are just habit. Some are laziness, or even a refusal to acknowledge that work expands to fill time, junk expands to fill storage, and storage can expand to the point of crowding you out of your own home. Cookies eaten relentlessly will make you chubby and unhealthy, no matter the reason you eat them. Consumer goods of any kind, acquired and cared for with abandon, will multiply, and their condition will disintegrate. Over- acquiring will obscure the best in your home, and “clutter” the best of your mind at the same time. It will make simple cleaning tasks daunting, and daunting tasks herculean. That alone can make for strain in a household. We are talking simply of habits for the ordinary regular folks, not the very extremes. One “thing” set down for “later” becomes thirty misplaced things for many people. The habit you’re trying to change, must be replaced with a new and different one, just as a cookie must usually be replaced with a celery stick, or an apple. A cigarette with chewing gum or a mint. And it IS hard. That’s why there are distinct body types, and “levels” of clutter and housekeeping habits too! They cross all shapes and sizes of homes, and they cross all the shapes and sizes of the folks who inhabit them. Need proof? Bet that there are as many organizing books as diet and exercise books. I rest the analogy..(:
-Jan Moyer