Do you feel like your life is always in chaos? It seems that no matter how hard you try, it’s just one thing after the next. When those days come around where everything is piling up, and there doesn’t seem to be an end in sight, it can be overwhelming. You know what they say, “Out of sight, out of mind.” The more you have on your plate, the less able you are to stay organized. The good news is that there are some easy ways to simplify your life and get organized without sacrificing too much time or money. Whether you are cleaning and organizing a physical space in your home or office, or your goal is to gain control of your schedule, organizing is a mindset. Once you start organizing your life and it becomes a habit, you’ll wonder how you ever managed life before!
Here are 10 hacks to start today for a more organized life!
1. Determine your “why”
The first and most essential question you need to ask yourself is why you want to be more organized. If you give an honest answer to this simple question, it will make organizing easier for the future and work with your current style of organization so that nothing is lost in translation from one area to the next. Consider what items you want to tackle first. Is it your family’s schedule, your finances, organizing a specific room, or something else? Once you have your “why” and your organization targets in mind, it will be easier to take the steps needed to find clarity in life, which brings us to the next point!
2. Set achievable goals
Measurable and achievable goals will help you make incremental progress towards finding peace in the chaos that is clutter, packed schedules, and this lifestyle change. Consider your “why” and the end goals identified from the paragraph above and break that down into smaller, bitesize chunks to achieve over time. Setting and achieving these goals will be the checkpoints that keep you on track in your organizational journey. When you set goals for each new day that comes around – whether they be small or big tasks alike – you ensure that what is important to you gets priority in your day and creates the path to where you want to be.
3. Use a monthly planner
“If you don’t know where you are going, you’ll end up someplace else.” – Yogi Berra
Planning is key to organization, and monthly planners are a tool of choice. Monthly planners exist to bring order to a busy lifestyle. But before finding and printing out a planner, you need to ask yourself what exactly does your ideal monthly planner look like? Do you have different appointments throughout the week and need one that will fit all of your needs? Are you finding creating consistent financial goals difficult to meet? Are you a busy parent who often finds yourself juggling work with parenting duties like picking up kids from school and taking them for their soccer tournaments on the weekend? Are you a working professional who will use your planner to keep track of upcoming Zoom calls and project deadlines, or use it to plan meals for your family? Planning out tasks is an essential part of keeping life running smoothly and can make a world of difference when it comes to organizing your schedule. Monthly planners allow you to see everything in one place and keep track of all the details of your life coming up. They also come with plenty of extra features like calendars that make it easy to store ideas or reminders and stickers for crossing off completed tasks! With an easy-to-read glance format, you will quickly gain control and simplify your life once and for all.
4. Schedule in FUN!
When it comes to discussing how to be more organized, fun is probably not the first thing that comes to mind, but it doesn’t have to be boring! Treating your responsibilities with the same level of importance as your leisure time will lead to a more manageable life. For instance, set reminders for important meetings and appointments on your phone so that they don’t get lost in the shuffle. This way, you can make sure not only work but also fun things are taken care of without forgetting anything at all along the way. The same goes for fun events and things you don’t want to forget, like birthdays, your favorite TV series airing again, an outing with friends, or tickets to an upcoming concert you’ve been looking forward to (you can even start a countdown)!
5. Say no to weekend projects
It might sound counterproductive, but rather than throwing yourself into an all-consuming weekend organization project, invest a little time every day to help your home stay on track. Working in small chunks of 30 minutes or less can go a long way towards making the mess look manageable and getting it under control for good. (Pro tip: consider downloading a motivating playlist, eight songs are typically 30 minutes, so when your playlist ends, so does your task)! The same point is also true for scheduling your calendar, don’t wait to tackle this task on the weekend; consider organizing your calendar a little at a time, so nothing is missed.
6. Make your space work for you
In our quest to create order and cleanliness in our home, we often put things where there is space, but this just means that tasks take longer. Instead, why not consider placing everything near what it does? The result would be a cleaner house with less time wasted looking for items. For example, when you put your keys by the door where they belong after coming home from work or school, it eliminates a lot of unnecessary searching for lost items. The same goes for other common household objects like clothes hangers near the closet, silverware next to the dishwasher, and more!
7. Scale back your options
How to make life easier: When possible, get rid of your options. Make everyday decisions ahead of time and stick with the same ones every day so that you can focus on other things without taking up any more energy than necessary. For example, did you know the average person spends 40 minutes a day deciding what to wear? That’s time that could be spent finding success in your career or building relationships with loved ones. To simplify your life, consider deciding what clothes you’ll wear for an entire week on Sunday – or even a month at once! Likewise, pick out lunches and meal prep and plan in advance if possible. This not only saves time but money (think about all those trips back and forth to the grocery store)!
8. Consider Outsourcing
Outsourcing options are endless. Services like taskrabbit.com, grocery pickup, personal assistants, and house cleaners exist to provide you with more free time to do what matters most to you. One person doesn’t have to do it all! Consider outsourcing the items on your to-do list that don’t bring you joy if budgets allow. If you’re feeling really overwhelmed, let a personal assistant take the load off. Personal assistants are used to wrangling loose ends before anything falls by the wayside or turns into stressful chaos- after all, one way or another, we ALL need help managing our lives sometimes; whether its financial management, running errands, or help with organizing a space to make it more functional for your family, let a personal assistant take the load off.
9. Reward yourself for organizing
Did you stay on track with your finances or finally clean out that overflowing hall closet? If so, reward yourself! Reaching goals should come with rewards, and staying on top of organizing is no different! The trick to avoiding losing momentum and slowly going back to old habits is rewarding yourself, not with things but by doing something nice out of the ordinary when you are done. Even if it means using some extra money or time from your budget on a new gadget that will make life easier- don’t do it right away! Instead, spend more time reorganizing first before taking this step so you can find what motivates you most and why. Remember, though: reward doesn’t have to be tangible; sometimes, simply spending quality alone time with friends does wonders for attitude.
10. Schedule time to organize
If you find it difficult and overwhelming to organize your space, consider scheduling a time on your calendar and going through each room in your home one by one, starting with the main floor and working up. The skills you learn from this process could get you through most rooms but for any added help, hire an organizer who has experience working specifically within those spaces.
Do you have a hack that’s not on this list? Are you ready to download your personal planner and start focusing on the things that really matter in life? Let us know in the comments!
