FROM MARTHA

Plenty of advice has been offered in the past few years on the subject of organizing: organizing your life, your family, your daily routine, your schedule, your closets and drawers. Some of it attempts to simplify the process—just discard what doesn’t please you, fold everything into tiny packages or put it in small boxes, make lists and pin them to your door or place them on your desk. These are good starting points, but the subject is so much larger and so much more important than that might suggest. An orderly and organized life calls for creating and then sticking to clear rules, pre-set schedules, and to-do lists that are dictated by your own lifestyle and that of your family. This deliberate, individualized approach will save you so much time in the long run when dealing with life’s surprises. It will save you from disorganization and leave you free to spend less time on chores, more time for the activities that prove meaningful to you.

In this book we have arranged “living” and “organizing” strategies into a clear format to help guide you, concentrating on the items that have to be done on a regular basis. We begin by looking at the year, breaking down what needs to happen, month by month. I’m a big proponent of keeping a calendar and populating it with every task, appointment, and event, big and small, down to staking the peonies, grooming my dogs, sharpening my kitchen knives, setting up my grandchildren’s sailing lessons, and ordering the Thanksgiving turkey. This practice will help you live a more productive and fulfilling life, day in and day out. I certainly couldn’t have managed my busy schedule without it.

We then move through the home, room by room (even section by section, and, in the case of the kitchen, drawer by drawer), offering valuable tips you can easily apply to your own living spaces. Lastly, we outline the most common routines—such as cooking, gardening, and cleaning—into manageable steps, with checklists and schedules to help you handle each one efficiently and effectively.

I’ve shared a wealth of tips and techniques for getting and staying organized in this one book, the culmination of decades of research gathered for Living and my TV shows and online videos, as well as through my personal experience. I hope it becomes your own trusted source of organizing wisdom for decades to come.