January is National Get Organized Month
Many people don’t realize how much energy and focus they lose when they’re disorganized at work or at home. To keep a disorganized home or workspace from draining you:
• Assess your spaces. When you enter your work or leisure spaces, do they make you feel good and ready to achieve? Or, do they feel stale and burdensome? If it’s the latter, schedule time-limited get-organized efforts. Don’t try to get everything done in one day. Set aside 30 minutes one day or 90 minutes one week and tackle one space or organization challenge at a time.
• Categorize the clutter. Starting one zone at a time, sort items into categories such as trash, keep, donate, recycle, undecided and sell. Store “keepers” in clearly labeled bins, boxes and other such containers. Give donation items to charities or thrift stores, take loads to recycle centers, and organize a garage sale.
• Get a fresh start. Straighten your work spaces at day’s end so you can start fresh tomorrow. Longer term, completely rearrange your physical spaces periodically; this will refresh your thinking and creativity!
Here are Some Tips to Get Organized:
For the Office
• On a daily basis identify your 3 most important tasks, and make sure you do them before everything else.
•Take control of your email inbox. Create a system for getting your inbox organized and tasks completed timely.
• Clean off your desk. File things that you are not actively working on. We waste so much time daily looking for things instead of doing.
• Clean off your computer desktop. A ton of icons and a busy background will distract you from finding what you need.
For Your Home
• Conquer your snail mail. Create a designated spot for all mail. Set time aside twice a week to process.
• Make donating easy. Keep a box or bag in the basement or garage where you can put unwanted but usable items. As soon as you decide that you don’t want something, place it in the donation bag.
• Break out the labeler. Label storage boxes, shelves, drawers etc.