7 Simple Organizing Tips To Keep Life Moving Forward
Life keeps moving. It’s moving fast and it’s easy to get bogged down, especially with our new normal. Your fatigue, anxiety, extra time spent resolving a challenge or a regular work week can get you behind in organizing and staying organized. Here are simple organizing tips to keep you organized on a regular basis.
Get through daily paper work and mail.
Paper is can paralyze us with so much paper coming in. Set up recycle and shred to easily sort the mail daily or at minimum weekly. It takes 5 minutes daily or 30 minutes weekly to do a quick sort and triage.
Have a grocery plan and a dishes plan.
Food makes everyone happier! It takes a few extra minutes to order online, however you are saving time and money in the long run. Make your grocery plan on the weekend so that it can arrive before the week starts.
Paper plates have a new sparkle if you are not getting your dirty dishes done each night. Create partnerships within your family to load, unload, and clean up each night after dinner. That includes taking out the trash. Your future self- that’s tomorrow’s self- will appreciate this more than you can imagine.
Check your calendar each morning and evening.
Our best plans can turn against us without checking our calendar each day. It’s a good start and end to the day to be organize, prepared and proactive. Add tasks, appointments and projects all the time to your calendar to keep it current in real time.
Have a donation bag available all the time.
When you try on something and decide it’s scratchy, the wrong color or too hard to keep from wrinkling is the time to drop it into your bag. We drive by drop off sites all day and simply bring the bag to your car and drop off when it is full. You will find it is much easier to do the laundry with fewer clothes too.
Keep laundry moving
I have seen loads of laundry washed and dried, yet not back to the closet or dresser. Break loads into smaller units to get that final step complete. Set up your laundry room for success!
Host a daily home and work reset
We wish we had a magic want to get all the items and papers back to where they belong. Since we don’t have that wand, we need a daily reset at both home and work. That’s where your family comes in to partner with you here.
Self-care is a daily priority
Self-care looks like a lot of different things in our lives. It’s going to be on time, exercising, eating healthy, taking a shower, reading a magazine or facetime with friends. Whatever self-care looks like to you, be sure you are keeping it a priority every day. We need to laugh, get outside and get to bed to be our best selves.
It is hard to keep all these organizing maintenance tasks going. If you find a lapse in one in particular, focus on that for a week. It is also easier once you have your family on your team too.
All of these are fundamental, basic, and so important. I reset all the time, in sort of on-going basis, but when I had a lot of family in the house, I tried to limit it to once or twice a day. I don’t want people to feel like they can’t enjoy the space because it has to look perfect all the time. As long as everything is back in place before I go to bed, I’m happy!
Thank you @Seana for sharing the value of the reset!
The daily reset is something I do intuitively, but realize that it’s not so easy for everyone. For me, I have reset twice a day- once in the morning, and again before bed. In the morning, it includes making my bed, putting dirty laundry in the hamper, cleaning up the breakfast dishes. The evening reset includes getting everything back to square one- desk papers away, dishes done, random items out of place returned to their “homes,” and fluffing up the sofa pillows. The reset allows me to begin my day with things in place and end my day knowing that the house is back to a calm state. The clarity of my space spills over into how I feel, how productive I am, and how smoothly the day flows.
Thank you @Linda! That is true that there is more than one reset a day that helps keep everything in order. Thank you for sharing your “why” as well. That recognizes the value of our resets.