Sometimes when there’s too much stuff and too much to do, life begins to feel hectic. Stress and frustration set in. In those moments, it’s hard to make good decisions.
It’s even harder to get and stay organized. But that doesn’t mean busy people should just give up and accept their lives as being overly hectic.
There are strategies anyone can use to help make life easier. Here are five organizing solutions to stay on top of everything.
1. Organizing Solutions Should Be Used on an Ongoing Basis
Don’t expect to use a solution once and call it a day. For anyone to successfully get and stay organized, these solutions must be adopted as part of an ongoing lifestyle change.
Adopt whichever solutions work best and then continue to use them for life. Of course, as things change, it may require some slight changes to the current solutions, but that’s okay.
2. Do I Like It, Need It, or Use it?
Many people tend to collect things over time and then forget about them. They just become part of the decor and little thought is put into whether or not they are still useful.
Not everything has a long shelf life. Go through your items once a year. Not only will you be reminded of what you actually have, it’s a great way to purge what you no longer need.
While going through each item, it’s important to ask, “do I like this, do I need this, do I use this?” If the answers are no, then it’s time to part ways with it.
3. Keep Similar Things Together
It’s really hard to find things when they are being kept all over the place. The easiest way to keep track of everything is to adopt a system of keeping similar items together.
That way, if a wrench is needed, it will be easy to remember that they are with the other tools. It also makes it really easy to put things away after using them. Which means cutting down on excessive clutter that happens when someone doesn’t know where an item belongs.
4. Keep Your Organizing Solutions Simple
Stop over-complicating everything. Life is hard enough. Keep the organizing solutions simple and life will be too. The simpler the solution, the easier it is to use and keep using for life.
Using daily planners is a great way to keep track of everything in a simple, easy way. However, don’t pack in 50 things on your to-do list and then beat yourself up because you couldn’t get to them all.
5. Let Go of Negative Items
Sometimes people hold onto items for the wrong reasons. Emotions like guilt, shame, or fear force them to keep things forever. No good comes from this.
Like holding onto Aunt Ida’s China even though Aunt Ida wasn’t a nice person and no one in the family uses China anyway. Each time the China is brought out, all that happens are unpleasant reminders of awful Aunt Ida.
Perhaps a lot of money was spent on an item that was never used. Guilt around spending money for no reason comes up. Every time that item is looked at, you feel shame.
Many people hold on to these items because they feel guilty and hope to find a reason to use the item. It never happens. Let go of the item and let go of the guilt.
Finally, surround yourself with support.
One way to get and stay organized (and happy) is to keep coming back to read our newest blogs.
