The advantages to living an organized life goes beyond saving time and money. Being on time and prepared for the day ahead is a sure sign of being in control, which promotes self confidence and reduces stress. In essence, an organized life improves the quality of life by promoting harmony, while reducing stress and increasing productivity. What it takes to achieve this, is an investment of your time and effort to make your vision for your home or office a reality. With positive energy you will be delighted by how smoothly your life comes together.
Five Key Mistakes which lead to a space being cluttered and unorganized.
1. Items do not have a designated, permanent home. When an item has a home, it’s much easier to return it to its rightful place and prevent clutter.
2. Other family members or co-workers do not know where items belong. By continuously returning an item to it’s home reinforces and teaches household members and co-workers where an item belongs.
3. Items are not stored close to where they are used, which leads to them not being put away promptly. Consider storage space as prime real estate, commonly used items should be stored within arms reach, while items that are not used as often can be stored higher-up or lower-down. If you subscribe to magazines and routinely read them in the living room, provide a decorative basket under an end table or the coffee table, to keep them in. You are more likely to put the magazine away in the basket when you are finished reading it.
4. Appropriate storage solutions are not in place. Disorganization starts when an item is stored in a space too small to accommodate it. With a variety of appropriate storage options, it’s much easier to assign a permanent home for each item.
5. Seasonal items are not stored separately. Pack seasonal items away in plastic totes, freeing up prime cupboard space for everyday use. Avoid cluttering the countertops and tabletops by temporarily removing regular decorative items to effectively display your seasonal items.
TOP TIP
The format to organize your items is to gather all like items together and assess how much space is required to store them. For example, let’s take a dresser with drawers stuffed full of T-shirts, socks, underwear, gym clothes and much more. Remove each item and ask yourself, do I still wear this? If the answer is yes, fold it and place it in a pile on the bed. If the answer is no, donate or discard the item. Each category may have a sub category such as t-shirts a) everyday b) gym c) team shirts d) cleaning out the garage. Continue until all the drawers are empty. Now you have a visual on how much space is needed to store all the clothes. Return the folded items to the dresser drawers.
This organizing format, placing “like” items together, can be used for just about every drawer and cupboard in your home and office.
My Five Favorite Organizing Tips.
1. Reduce Paper clutter by sorting your mail into categories on your walk back from the mailbox. Recycle unwanted items straight away. Place mail into an expanding file that is sorted into five categories: Pay, File, Read, Call/Write, Coupons/Offers.
2. Whenever you remove an item from a hanger in your closet, put empty hangers together on the rail. When doing your laundry, bring the hangers to the laundry area for easy “dryer-to-hanger” action, eliminating folding laundry and ironing.
3. Learn how long it really takes to do routine tasks and chores. Getting ready to leave the house in the morning for example. This will help you manage your time and stay on schedule. If you assume it takes you 10 minutes to get ready but in reality it takes you 30, you will always be running late.
4. Reduce the time spent planning meals and grocery shopping by building a weekly menu around the grocery store’s weekly specials and what you have on hand in your fridge and freezer. By creating a precise grocery list you will save time and money when you go shopping.
5. Never go up or down the stairs, or from room to room, empty handed. Be on the lookout for items that need to be returned to their rightful homes.
Easy Living Solutions, by Ginny 