A new year is a blank slate to transform your home and make life simpler. According to a recent Huffington Post article 12 Surprising Ways Clutter Is Ruining Your Life, clutter “has proven, tangible effects on your mental and physical well-being.”
What better way to improve your quality of life than to create a clean and orderly environment? Here’s a few questions to consider:
- Are there specific rooms that constantly need to be organized?
- Are you organizing or purging certain item types like furniture, knick-knacks, or kitchen utensils?
- Are there specific life events you are preparing for like moving or the birth of a child?
These are all reasons to get organized and bring order to the chaos. It may even be beneficial to visualize how you would like to see a particular room, routine or your home as a whole.
We have 10 simple suggestions to jump-start your new organized year.
8 WAYS TO GET ORGANIZED AROUND YOUR HOME
Create a Clean Routine.
Decide on a routine that best fits the time you have to be most effective. This can be done by assigning specific tasks to certain days or doing a quick clean daily in small time increments.
Simplify your To Do List.
Set aside small chunks of time to tackle each room in your home. Some industry experts suggest spending between 15 and 30 minutes in each room to keep your work concentrated with less temptation for distraction.
Designate a basket or bin for mail.
Use a basket in a convenient area to hold your recent mail. Clear the container once a week to stay clutter free.
Clear outdated and rarely used spices from the spice rack or cabinet.
This is definitely a task many of us forget to do. Whether it’s been years or months, you find you have extra space after those spices are removed.
Clear the counter of rarely used appliances.
Appliances tend to take up large amounts of space. One way to quickly give any space a facelift is clearing the counters by removing appliances that are rarely used to clear clutter.
Clear the medicine cabinet of expired or irrelevant prescriptions.
Look online or as friends for recommendations on safe outlets for your outdated medications and over the counter products. Most police stations and pharmacies sponsor “take-back” programs.
Recycle newspapers or catalogs that are more than a month old.
Make a habit of removing old newspapers and magazines from display. With newspapers try removing them weekly. Magazines can be recycled and replenished once a month.
Inventory and discard old makeup.
Pay attention to when cosmetic products change consistency, color, or scent. According to Reader’s Digest, you should discard mascara after three months and products with SPF after six.
2 WAYS TO GET ORGANIZED WITH YOUR TIME
Pre-Plan
Creating a plan gives clear goals for the mind to work towards. Expert Lee Polevoi, author of 8 Tips for Effective Time Management suggests two simple options for creating a plan:
- Take 15 minutes at the end of the day to create a list of “the next day’s most pressing tasks.”
- OR Create a “prioritized to-do list,” first thing in the morning.
Prioritize Properly
Did you know you could even organize your to-do list? Stephen Covey, co-author of First Things First, suggests organizing tasks into 4 categories:
- Important and urgent — Tasks that must be completed that day.
- Important but not urgent — Tasks that are important, but lack the urgency of “right now.”
- Urgent but not important — Tasks that are necessary to complete but have “little or no lasting value.”
- Not urgent and not important — Low-priority tasks.
Organizing your home does not have to start after your home is overflowing with clutter. You can start the process now before it’s a necessity and reclaim your space and time.
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