Okay, now that you have purged all of the old paper and
clutter from your rooms it is time to organize them.
The best way to get organized and stay that way is to zone
your rooms and assign a home to every object.
Sounds like a lot of work, but it isn’t really. So, for example in the family room, common activities may be playing video games, watching t.v., reading and relaxing. Objects you will need to contain are video games, DVDs, books, remote controls, wraps and throws, etc. Start one room at a time and find a
home for everything. Once you have a home for EVERYTHING then literally it should take less than 10 minutes to pick up several rooms in your home.
The harder clutter to contain is paper because it can quickly become overwhelming and look worse than it is if it isn’t processed every day. Know the pattern of the paper in your house and have a home for each category – bills, regular files, resource/archival files, magazines, action, etc. As I wrote about in my first New Year’s post, have a paper command center in the hub of your home to corral everyday paper and then have a resource/archival home…probably a home office where you have a filing cabinet to hold paper you don’t need as often.
My gym has a motivational message on the door entering the gym, "the hardest part is showing up" and I feel this thought can be applied to
organizing. Organizing is a process, like exercising, that you can’t just do once to see results. Once the hard part is done (the zoning and
assigning homes), then the regular "showing up" part becomes the daily
processing of stuff that can be done almost in auto pilot. I smiled reading the inspirational message leaving the gym yesterday "know you’ll be back tomorrow" and I liked the simple message that progress is in small steps, many times repeated until it becomes like second nature.
