Think about your motivation. What do you stand to gain from getting organized? What do you stand to lose if you don’t?Ninety percent of organizing is getting out of your own way. Think about the beliefs and behaviors that are contributing to the chaos in your life. Before you can change anything, you’ve got to recognize and accept responsibility for your role and be willing to change the thought patterns and habits that are keeping you from achieving your goal. If you start to think and act like an organized person, you will become one. Fortunately, the more you act the part, the more natural it becomes.
Think about your motivation. What do you stand to gain from getting organized? What do you stand to lose if you don’t?
Create a one-month plan. Choose five things you most want to organize in the coming month. Number these items from highest to lowest priority. At the end of the month, if you have not yet accomplished all five tasks, create a new one-month plan that outlines what you hope to achieve this month—and what you are willing to do to make it happen.
Take immediate action. Pick a single organizing tip from this book and do it today. Or take 5 minutes right now to organize your sock drawer.
Make today the day you decide to get organized. Tell someone about it.
Start each organizing session this way: Choose a space to organize. Then close your eyes and visualize what that space might look like without clutter and how that would make you feel.
You don’t have to stop everything to get organized. You just have to START. Make organizing a part of your daily life. Do it first. Do it fast.
Did you used to be organized? Think back. What happened between then and now? Did you move? Start a family or new job? Get married? Divorced? Lose a loved one? Good news: If you were organized at one point in your life, you can get organized again. Believe it!
Start with the most visible clutter first. Seeing clear and obvious results will give you a boost of confidence.
Talk with your family about why you want to get organized. Ask for their help. You may have to provide some incentive. Ideas: Establish a bonus allowance or system of rewards for adhering to new household rules; plan a family night out after a big decluttering project; or agree to put yard sale money toward a family vacation.
Start with today’s mess. Do whatever it takes to keep up with daily mail, dishes, and laundry. Then set aside time to catch up.
Commit to spending a set amount of time every day on uncluttering and organizing activities. Schedule your organizing sessions for a time when you are mentally fresh. Make an appointment with yourself and write it in your daily planner. Then honor that appointment as you would any other appointment. If you absolutely cannot do this every day, try to schedule in two or three 30-minute sessions each week.
Decide in advance what your reward will be for completing each organizing project or room. Ideas: Plan to buy yourself flowers, treat yourself to a pedicure or massage, or invite friends to enjoy coffee and dessert in your newly uncluttered family room.
Tie your organizing goals into a larger life goal. Think about how getting organized will help you to save time or create space so that you can pursue your dreams or simply enjoy a more peaceful life.
Yes, organizing is work. But there’s nothing all that difficult about it. The hardest part is getting STARTED.
Give yourself a deadline. Offer to host a family dinner over the holidays, plan a party at your house, or commit to participating in a neighborhood garage sale.
Establish a daily organizing reward. You might, for example, allow yourself to surf the Internet, watch television, or chat on the telephone once your organizing time is up—not before.
Ask a friend to check on your organizing progress one week from today.
Without commitment, nothing gets done. Put your goal in writing. Post it on your bathroom mirror or put it in your make-up bag—someplace where it will be a daily reminder.
Keep the end in sight. Think about how good you are going to feel about getting organized. Try to remember that feeling whenever you are tempted to dump a pile of mail on the kitchen counter or buy one more thing you really don’t need.
Look at what’s working. If you have been successful in organizing one particular area, think about how you can apply that process elsewhere to create order.
Familiarize yourself with all of the organizing products available. You’re apt to find the perfect, ready-made solution for your biggest organizing challenge.
Can’t find time to organize? Make time by turning your television on 15 minutes later than usual or turning it off 15 minutes earlier.
Be realistic about what you can and can’t do. You can’t unclutter your home overnight. You can unclutter a countertop or drawer in as little as 15 minutes.
Get organized while you watch television. Pull out a drawer and dump the contents on the coffee table or floor. During commercials, sort the contents into four piles: throw away, put away (because it belongs in another drawer or somewhere else altogether), give away, and keep. Put back only what you love and/or use.
Start right now. Spend the next 5 minutes picking up five things and putting them where they belong.
Get your brain in gear. Complete the following thoughts:
I am disorganized because...
The top three things that keep me from getting organized are...
What really contributes to the clutter around here is...
Clutter makes me feel...
I could get more organized if...
I want to get organized because...
If I could get organized, I could...
Our experience is driven by our beliefs. If, for example, you believe that nothing you do makes a difference, that will be your EXPERIENCE. See if you can pinpoint one belief that may be limiting your ability to get organized.
Set a simple goal. Example: “Tonight I’m going to clean out my junk drawer, and then I’m going to stop.”
Tackle one room at a time. Organize that room one shelf, one drawer at a time.
If you’ve never been organized it’s very likely that you never learned how to get organized. You can learn by reading organizing books, attending workshops, and watching how organized people do things. Schedule time to learn organizational skills.
Plan your approach. Random acts of organizing are all well and good, but if you really want to speed up the process, make a plan. Where will you start? How much time will you spend each day?
Find an organizing buddy—someone who wants to get organized as much as you do. Decide to do it together. Make a standing weekly date to show off your accomplishments or discuss progress and share encouragement over the phone.
Ask a friend or family member to help you organize your closet or garage in return for babysitting or help with his or her yard work. Or offer to help with an organizing project.
Organize a progressive cleaning party. Invite a few local friends or family members to spend a Saturday at your house, decluttering your basement or garage. Make it fun with food and music. Continue the party next Saturday at the next house.
Consider hiring professional help. Find a local professional organizer through the National Association of Professional Organizers (www.napo.net). A few hours with a professional organizer might be just the jump-start you need.
Keep a daily journal of your organizing activities. Take a few minutes each day to jot down how long you spent organizing, what area or things you organized, how you felt afterward, and your goal for tomorrow.
Make organizing time more fun. Turn on the radio or play your favorite CD.
Schedule a personal victory celebration for three months from today. Write it in your calendar.
Keep track of your progress. Use a colored marker to mark an X in your calendar for each day that you spend at least 5 minutes on uncluttering and organizing activities.
Use the two-pass approach to organizing your entire house. Start by gathering and getting things to the rooms where they belong. In the second pass, you can begin to organize the contents of each room.
What are you doing that contributes to the clutter and chaos in your life? Pick your single worst disorganizing HABIT and work on changing that behavior over the next month.
Tackle large projects one step at a time. Start by making a list of all of the steps. Then rearrange the steps in order of importance. Working backward from your project deadline, create due dates for each step and incorporate them into your daily calendar. If you don’t have a project deadline, create one.
Set a ticking timer for the length of your organizing session to help keep you focused on what you are doing.
Give organizing your full attention. Let your answering machine or voicemail take calls during your organizing sessions.
Did you ever try to get organized but gave up, thinking you were a failure? You didn’t fail. Your plan failed. Maybe you tried to do too much too fast. Think about what happened and what you learned. Do it differently next time, and you will get a different result.
Make a list of organizing projects, such as filing, photographs, recipes, kitchen, garage. Select one. Break down that project into mini projects. In the kitchen, for example, mini projects might include countertop, under the sink, cutlery drawers, pantry, refrigerator/freezer, recipes, and coupons.
For 5 to 15 minutes each day, work on one mini project at a time until the entire organizing project is done. Then check it off your list and move on to the next one.
Resist the urge to get creative with your organizing systems. It just makes the job harder. Channel your creativity into other areas.
Five ways to motivate a family member to get more organized:
Gently communicate what is bothering you and why.
Change the way you are asking (negotiating vs. demanding).
Offer your support in helping to make the change.
Be willing to make compromises.
Be willing to accept that it might not be done exactly as you would do it.
To make getting organized a priority, tie it to a financial reward. What will you do with the money you make selling things you no longer want or need? Use the financial reward as your incentive: The more you get rid of, the more cash you’ll have.
Organize your purse. Empty it completely. Throw out the trash. Remove items you don’t need to carry with you. Make it easier to find things by minimizing the number of units in your purse. Use zippered plastic bags to contain like items, such as lipsticks and other cosmetics.