5 steps to organize your “Organizing”
The month of January is a great time to begin an organizing project in your living and/or work space. This month is usually cold or dreary or both and you often find yourself stuck indoors for hours/days/weekends at a time. This is a great time to turn off the Netflix and focus on your physical space. Your space may be in reasonably good shape or it may be so cluttered and disorganized that you fell you can’t deal with the mess. Either way, there are 5 steps you can take to help create more organized environments.
- Start small
Don’t be so ambitious that you think you can re-organize your entire house in one weekend; that plan sets you up for failure. Pick an area for organizing, even a very, very small area such as one drawer, one closet, the entryway.
2. Pick the place giving you the most pain.
Where to begin? If your whole house is a mess and you can’t decide which space should be your initial focus, my advice is to select the are that nags at you the most every time you pass. Does your overstuffed entry closet make you shudder? Does the stack of “to file” items on your desk weigh more than you do? Is the junk drawer in your kitchen so full it won’t even open?
Pick the one area that gives you the biggest headache and start there. Remember, if you complete this project and you can still resist the lure of re-watching Stranger Things for the tenth time, you can always move on to the next trouble spot.
3. Stay focused
Inevitably, some, or maybe a lot of, the things you find as you work belong elsewhere. You will also find some things that you forgot were there or that you may have been trying to find for quite a while. Don’t allow yourself to get distracted with these items. Make a quick decision as you pull something out and make stacks or piles of things according to what action needs to happen. For instance, if your current focus is your coat closet and you find the bag of beach towels and sand toys stuffed in there from last August, set it aside in a “storage” pile or a “garage” pile or wherever might be the ultimate destination. You may end up with “trash” piles, “donate” piles, “shred” stacks, or any number of designations. Group things together according to what needs to happen to the things.
The key is to remain focused on the area at hand and not allow yourself to wander off physically or mentally into other areas. Not yet anyway, you can tackle that other area next.
4. Clean
Once you get everything pulled out and piled around you, take a few minutes to give the empty space a good cleaning. The space will come back together much better if it is dust free and empty.
5. Attend to the close
The final step is to attend to all of the stacks you have made. Depending on the space, a lot of the stuff may need to go right back into the closet. However, now it should be grouped with other like items. If you live in a small apartment in Chicago for instance, this closet might be the only place you have to store beach toys. But put these things together towards the back. You don’t want to have to stumble over a beach umbrella every time you open the closet door from now until June; doing so will just irritate you when it is 20 degrees and windy for the next 3 months. When summer (finally) arrives, then you can rearrange the things and pull the summer stuff towards the front and push the snow boots to the back.
Do you have a “donate” stack? Deal with it immediately. If you don’t have time to take it to Goodwill or the food pantry or wherever, at least bag the items up and put them by the door so you can take these away the next time you leave the house. Got some items to throw away? Bag them up and get them out of your life immediately. Don’t let these things clutter your space any longer. Do you have 4 pair of jeans that you could wear but they just need to be hemmed? Bag them up, put them by the door and take them to the tailor asap. Don’t drape them over the back of a dining room chair and leave them there for months or until they are completely out of style.
Once you have completed the space assess your next goal. If you have a stack of clothes that should go in another closet, maybe that closet is your next target. Or you can just settle back on the couch with a mug of hot chocolate and resume your Netflix, leaving the pantry until next weekend. Either choice, you have at least begun to organize your space. You don’t have to tackle everything at one time. Keeping our spaces organized is a lifestyle rather than a finite task. Just stay attentive to your space and by all means, call for help if you are truly overwhelmed. Closets like the one pictured here make the heart of an organizer flutter!
Sarah Campbell is a professional organizer in the city of Chicago. She specializes in decluttering, organizing, preparing for moves and unpacking and setting up after a move for households and small businesses. Contact her at Sarah@anorganizedlifechicago.com for help with your organizing challenges.
