How To Be Organized

Being organized takes work but if you spend the time in the beginning to set up a system or plan that works for you, you can get your life in order. Whether it is your home, your kids’ activities, your work or your life in general that feels disordered, there are steps you can take. Follow these suggestions and you can be organized.

1. Slow down. The first step to getting organized is to slow down and take a breath. All of your running around between your commitments is making you crazy and disorganized. Stop for a minute. Now take a look at your life.
2. Prioritize the chaos. If your entire life is chaotic, you will need to set priorities before getting started. Choose the most important place to organize – your purse, your calendar, your desk or your living room – whichever needs the most work. Start there. You can follow the process one step at a time for each of your disorganized spaces.
3. Sort out the clutter. Clutter collects when you are busy. You put bills onto the counter so you won’t forget to pay them, then two weeks later you get a late notice and check the counter, but your bills are buried in two weeks of mail and clutter. Be brutal when attacking the clutter. Sort everything into piles. Try three piles of keep – toss – need to review, but remember that your work isn’t done until the review pile is also sorted into the keep or toss. Once you know what you are keeping, move on to the next step.
4. Develop a system. After the sort, you should have a good idea what types of items are now in your keep pile. Is it a stack of bills or paperwork? Maybe you started in your closet and you are looking at a keep pile of clothing. It doesn’t matter what you are organizing, once you have sorted, you need to create a system. This can be a filing system for your bills or a system for storing off-season clothing. If you need help, write the system down so you can remember your plan.
5. Keep only what you need. While putting things away using your new system, you will come across things that you put in the keep pile earlier that you really don’t need. It’s time to be brutal again. Set a rule. Keep financial records for as long as your accountant requires. For manuals and warranties, keep them as long as you have the item. For everything else, keep only what you need. If you haven’t touched it in a year, you don’t need it.
6. Use a planner or calendar. Start keeping track of your time and commitments by using a planner. If you are working on office organization, use your planner to make to-do lists and organize projects and appointments, all in one place. Write things down when they happen. Don’t count on your memory.
7. Schedule a wrap-up every day. In order to keep your organization, you need to maintain it. Schedule a daily wrap-up with yourself and at home with your family. Make the last fifteen minutes before bedtime a group effort to put the house back in order and clean up what was used during the day. At work, take the last half hour to review your day and plan for tomorrow.

Organization seems overwhelming but with a few tricks, you can get started. Once you get your life in order, you will just have to maintain it.