3 Steps for an Organized New Year
As we mentioned last week, January is designated as GO Month! by NAPO to help jumpstart your organizational resolutions & help keep you on the path towards a more manageable home & office. We also mentioned that it’s easy to make resolutions, but much easier to break by not sticking to your plan.
Most of the time, your resolutions dissolve into “best intentions unachieved” when you don’t set realistic expectations & achievable milestones to get to where you want to go. Particularly when you live in a busy household or office, we fall into old habits & get set up for failure, so it’s important to clear the path for success & develop habits which will pay off later in the year. That not only means organizing our spaces, but organizing our time to make our live more effective and frankly enjoyable.
Here’s part one of organizing tips for organizational success in 2015 from Clean & Easy Home:
1. Downsize
Consider instituting this post-holiday rule: for every new item (bathrobe, earrings, slippers) that arrives, three things have to say adios.
Call it the get-organized, one-for-three rule. Before anyone puts away presents, he or she must fill a minimum of three bags for donation to children’s charities.
Now move on to your holiday stuff. Any decorations you didn’t use this year? Chances are you won’t them next year, either. These go in the donation pile.
Yes, you want to keep a few cozy T-shirts and jeans for Saturday sports or painting with the kids. But you don’t need two dozen. Donation to children pile.
2. Divide, Conquer, and Label.
Label every box or bag you stash or store in the garage this year. It’s a key element to an organized new year.
When you take down the tree and decorations, label each box before it heads into a year of storage.
Next, find a corner or area in the garage…for storing these boxes.
Apply the same strategy throughout the house, starting with closets and drawers, and ending with neatly labeled storage boxes from each.
3. A Neater, Cleaner Home.
Now that you’ve decluttered and organized, cleaning should be a breeze. Often, clutter is what really makes cleaning hard.
Start your organized new year cleaning routine by setting aside an hour or so several days a week to tackle essential tasks.
For example: Laundry is Monday nights; bathrooms are Saturday morning; trash is Sunday nights, etc. This ensures nothing is overlooked. It also spreads the work out into more manageable chunks of time throughout the week.
