How to Organize Your Home Without Creating Tension for Your Family

By Janet Levine

You are a person who likes your home to reflect who you are. Stately, formal, casual, or relaxed: whatever way you set up the spaces for your family it makes a statement about you. Your home is a sanctuary where the family can relax in a balanced and harmonious dynamic. This is the ideal many of us strive for, but often reality is at odds with this picture.

Your spouse or parenting partner has a different dynamic in mind, and your children as they grow older resent your restrictions. Remember when you were their age? Understand that they are not challenging your authority; they are trying to express their own inner sense of organizational harmony. It is extremely helpful to know what motivates your desires, as well as what motivates others. Knowing the behavior patterns that drive your personality may help you know why you are reacting as you do, and why others are reacting to you. In turn this information can help you manage more effectively your own internal balance and that of the family’s.

The Nine Types as Parents: How to Organize Your Home Harmoniously

1. Moralizer – is conscientious and moral, honest and idealistic. Moralizers focus on doing the right thing and avoiding error, this can lead to procrastination and a lack of spontaneity. Communications can be preachy and zealous. But they can be a true moral compasses for their children; they teach by example, and take on many causes. They motivate their children by striving for excellence.
   
   Organize your home harmoniously
   
   FBe aware that neatness and order are a priority for you. In the bathroom, combs, brushes, toothpaste and so on should always be lined up in a straight row; you desire to control all the details of life. If these are in order, you can make life "right" for you loved ones. Most other personalities need flexibility around details. Give them leeway to be creatively untidy.
2. 2. Helper – is empathetic, nurturing, relational, and can give of herself with true altruism. Helpers focus on giving to others in order to meet their emotional needs – for love, approval, and admiration – and to avoid rejection. Communication can be ambivalent as Helpers find it hard to hold a line. Helpers can come across as manipulative, to those who are wary of flattery and constant emotional neediness. Helpers nurturing qualities are unparalleled.
   
   Organize your home harmoniously
   You regard your home as a stage in which the family show unfolds in the nurturing environment you’ve created. You can flex into many roles: spouse, parent, and host, among others. Other personalities can see through these ploys and resent the manipulations. Try to be honest with yourself and others about why you do what you do.
3. Organizer – is self-assured, competent, and efficient, an accomplished team-builder driven to achieve “success”. Organizers avoid failure. They focus on results and are task-oriented. Image-conscious they often deceive themselves and others, and can suspend experiencing emotions. Children can feel they are a ‘widget’ as the Organizer parent manufactures the picture-perfect family. Organizers need to tell their children that they love them. Their positive energy is enlivening and infectious.
   
   Organize your home harmoniously
   Image is important to you: your home doesn’t have to be perfect, picture perfect will do. You may have the downstairs looking like "Homes and Gardens", while the upstairs is a chaotic mess. But if someone visits, the house reflects your persona of a successful homemaker. Your family however, sees the deception and may come to think of you as phony.
4. Dreamer – is individualistic, creative, sensitive, and able to experience the highs and lows of deep emotions. Dreamers avoid ordinariness. They tend to focus on what is unavailable: the glass is always half-empty. Melancholia gives an attractive edge to life but can lead to depression. They envy others who seem to have what they are missing. Connection is a key motivation for Dreamers, and they desire and seek after deep and intimate connection with their children. They want their children to always be happy.
   
   Organize your home harmoniously
   You want your home to reflect the deepest part of yourself. Wall colors, furnishings, and pictures reflect your passion and unique creativity. You desire that your home have emotional resonance. Other personalities shy away from this excess, and need stark spaces. Reach a compromise without feeling a loss of self-esteem. Remember you are not your home.
5. Observer – is private, measured, logical, and an intellectual seeker.
   Observers avoid (emotional) attachment. They focus on gaining knowledge as a way of making sense of the world. Observers can be retracted, overly self-controlled, detached from their emotions. Predictability means safety, no surprises please. Observers need to verbalize their love for their children and not trust that their (deep) emotions are known by osmosis or some other process. Their steadiness in crises is a valuable asset to their parenting.
   
   Organize your home harmoniously
   You are minimalist by nature and can live in small, sparse spaces. You value privacy highly. You tend to observe other families and see what spaces work for them, and then you can create a similar atmosphere for your family. It's not that you dislike comfort and beautiful rooms, but you can easily do without them. Engage your family in a discussion about how they want the home to feel. Learn to trust your gut feelings about this and other family issues
6. Questioner – is thoughtful, rational, loyal, dutiful, and responsible. Questioners avoid being seen as different, and try to blend in. They constantly scan for hidden dangers: to themselves and their children. They are fearful, scared of success and vigilantly doubtful; this can lead to indecision, procrastination and unfinished projects. Questioners are ambivalent about authority, and do not model authority well for their children. Yet they are fiercely loyal, and dependable towards those they love.
   
   Organize your home harmoniously
   Your home is your sanctuary; this is where you can pull up the drawbridge and keep yourself and your family safe within the moat walls. Once you have secured your home, physically and metaphorically, you can lower your guard and relax. The problem is that your family may feel the home you've created is a prison. Projection is your problem; rely on your family for reality checks. Let in the light and air.
7. Entertainer - is upbeat, enthusiastic, charming, spontaneous, and entertaining. Entertainers focus on being active, engaged with life, and having many pleasing options to choose from. They enjoy spending time planning and fantasizing. Entertainers avoid emotional pain. They have trouble making and keeping commitments. Entertainers can be self-involved and do not do well with the routine and mundane. They are positive, interactive parents, and are usually the first one getting sandy in the sand box.
   
   Organize your home harmoniously
   You don't mind much what the space is like, as long as you have a bed someplace. Large and opulent, small and cottagey, you'll adapt. What you find difficult is buying into the commitment that domestic space engenders around you. To be honest, less is more for you. Consult your spouse/partner on this one. Let him/her take the lead, but once you hand this over, support the efforts being made on your behalf.
8. Protector – is confidant, powerful, a take-charge leader, honest, direct, and protective of “turf”; those within their family are well protected. Protectors hate being dependent and avoid vulnerability. They can live “go-for-broke” excessive life styles. Their confrontational style can skew family dynamics for those of their children who are among the personality types that don’t do well with conflict. They are empowering parents, and use their personal force on behalf of their children.
   
   Organize your home harmoniously
   You live life with excessive energy, and that more is always better. Your home can be over-stuffed with furniture, or have too few spaces for the activities and projects you undertake for yourself and your family. Half-completed projects and all their clutter do not make way for new gear and equipment. Somehow everything fits, but be aware this may not be a comfortable way to live for others in your family.
9. Peacekeeper – is compassionate, energetic on behalf of others, noncompetitive, patient, and sees all sides of an issue. Peacekeepers avoid conflict and confrontation. They are reluctant self-starters and procrastinators. Peacekeepers find difficulty in establishing priorities and making decisions. They fall asleep to their own needs and agendas, so it is all too easy for them to take on the agenda of “the family”. They falter around authority issues because they can see all sides of an argument. But they love unconditionally, and are the best supporters to have in your corner – they’ll do anything for their children.
   
   Organize your home harmoniously
   Your inner sense of organization is diffuse. You don't see the sense of putting away the things you use on a daily basis, because you have to take them out again. To someone else your space appears cluttered with piles of materials and papers, but you know exactly where to find everything. Be aware that most other personality types need more visible evidence of organization to feel comfortable. Let the family decide on rules for organizing spaces, and make sure you adhere to them.