Do you ever look at your computer or desktop and start to feel anxious and overwhelmed with the amount of disorder of all your gear? When you go to retrieve a receipt does it take hours? Do the toys lying around in your living room make you want to jump out of your skin?
If so, you need some organization, my friend, and quick.
Organizing your possessions isn’t simply a matter of moving items from one place to another. No, it means putting together an organization system you can use so the important stuff you need is where you need it to be. The unimportant stuff can be conquered in another way as you’ll read below.
Here are 6 tips so you can be more organized:
1. Doubt tossing – If you find yourself drowning in stuff, odds are you are being a “pack rat” and saving stuff you don’t need. It’s time to put a stop to this. Like when deciding whether to throw out food that might be bad “when in doubt throw it out.” The same applies with emails, files, receipts, snail-mail, and other items you are saving “just in case” you might need it. Make the decision that if you need it one day, you’ll buy a new one or learn to live without it.
2. Label locations for items – When you live and work with others, they may have different ideas about where things go than you do. To make it easy for everyone to replace items, pick up a label maker
But even if you live and work alone, you can reap a whole lot of organizational bliss by labeling where your own possessions go. We can’t remember everything, labeling gives us a roadmap.
3. 15 Minutes a day – What’s easier 15 minutes today or 3 hours Saturday? The reason you might have organization troubles is that you are letting it pile up. If instead you schedule the last 15 minutes of your day to organize, then the clutter will be held at bay – remember inch-by-inch anything’s a cinch.
4. Get others involved – Similar to #2 get other people involved with original organization. If they have ownership in where items go, then they are more likely to help keep it organized. If you are labeling where stuff goes, getting other’s input they’ll be able to help decide where it goes, they’ll see the label and then know on several levels that their Yu gi oh cards don’t belong on the aquarium.
5. Lead by example – Especially with kids, setting a good example leads to them being more equipped for organizing their own stuff. Like a smoker saying “don’t smoke kid”, how can you expect someone else to take you seriously if your home and workplace are cluttered? Besides, when you start working, others see it and tend to chip in and help.
6. Cut back – Maybe you have too much stuff for you to manage. Do you need all the doo-dads, software, CDs you don’t listen to, DVDs you don’t watch, files in filing cabinets, odds and ends in your desk drawers, and so on and so on? Take one of your 15 minute organize installments and tackle one of these “clutter centers. It might be slow going in the beginning, but after you get some of these done, it gets easier.
{ 1 comment }
I live by the credo that everything has its place and goes back to it’s home when finished with it. That way there is never a mess to clean up and the home is always organized.
Now if I could only train my wife and kids to do the same.
{ 1 trackback }