Clutter steals your peace, limits productivity, and brings a lot of negative baggage with it. Declutter all areas of your life to feel better and work more efficiently, even before you start to organize and optimize.
Declutter first. Everything from emails to garages should be clutter-free. Get rid of the junk before trying to organize. When you see only what you have to organize, you can get the job done more quickly.
Keep clutter to a minimum. For each new purchase made, a similar, little-used or broken item must go. Before you get the new item, get rid of the old one. This keeps you from being tempted to keep both.
To declutter a room, make it a rule that when you leave the room, you must take something with you and put it in the appropriate place. You aren’t allowed to leave empty handed.
Place a trashcan in every room. Get creative to make it blend in or conceal the container’s real function. This makes it easy to toss things out, just make sure that food, drinks, or wet items always go to the kitchen trashcan.
Decluttering and organizing to makes things easier. Initially this can be time consuming depending on how messy things are. Once you begin to see a little progress, you’ll feel much better and you’ll be highly motivated to continue.
Tackle one room at a time. Declutter one room and finish organizing it before you start decluttering another room, unless someone else is responsible for doing another room. This helps you to stay focused and work effectively.
Once a room has been organized fully, it’s easy to do a quick run-through daily to tidy things up. However, if you make sure you put things back and tidy up before you leave the room, it may only take 5-minutes or less per day.
Declutter the kitchen first. This is one of the high traffic areas so it’s also one of the most important rooms to do first. Go through every drawer and cabinet getting rid of items you don’t use at least one time a year.
Once the entire kitchen contains only the things you use, start organizing the items. Group and store things by type/usage. For instance sort and place dishes close to the table or the stove. This optimizes your time and space.
Keeping things organized gives you less time to worry or over-think things. When you spend time organizing your life and all of the areas, you also feel better because of your accomplishments.
Make cleanup easy. In every room, have a consistent, preferably hidden, place where you store a dry rag, spray bottle, and/or wet wipes. This helps you to take care of quick cleanups, which is great when someone just pops in.
If you have stacks of unmarred magazines, remove any address label and donate them to the library, school, or community center. Unsubscribe from magazines that no longer interest you or serve a purpose.
Use a day planner to keep your day on track as well as your to-do lists. They come in all sizes including palm-size, billfold-size, notebook size, and larger. This makes it easy to keep a planner with you at all times to stay on track.
Get and use a family planner. When you know what other family members schedules are, you don’t have to put off decisions or activities until you can find out. Being able to make immediate decisions is a huge time-saver.
Consider using a 3-ring binder for the family planner and create a section for each person in it. Keep the planner in a work area or next to a phone. This allows you to make edits easily and quickly.
Create a schedule and plan for everyone in the family planner. Make a copy of each person’s weekly plan and place it on the refrigerator or whiteboard for all to see. This makes it super easy to see the big picture.
Use the COPE method to make people and task organizing simple. COPE is an acronym for Capitalize, Organize, Prioritize, and Energize. Using this method helps to make you a great family manager and keep on top of things.
Capitalize on the ability of every family member to help with age-appropriate household chores. Do more for your kids by doing less for them. Write chores on individual and family chore planners.
Organize your home to make locating and storing things simple. When you store things in a logical place that is close to where you use it, finding an item when you need it becomes a no-brainer, even for kids.
Organize and optimize your cooking chores. Incorporate meal planning and bulk cooking into your routine. When you do this, you don’t waste time trying to figure out what to have for dinner. It’s in the freezer just waiting on you.