I love being organized. I have a knack of being organized even in the middle of chaos: I know where everything is; I can remember each piece of clothing I own and Forrest owns; and even if everything is a mess, I can find everything. In a perfect world, my house would be as gorgeously organized as a fancy lifestyle blog. The reality is, sometimes that's not always practical. I have no own methods of staying organized. Here they are.
1. Find Your Own Way.
There is lots of advice out there for getting, and staying, organized. But the truth is--some of it won't work for you. Some of it will. And some of it, you might need to alter to make work. Don't worry about sticking to the way someone else does things.
2. Throw Things Away
Throwing out things I don't need or use is the number one way I stay organized. At least once a week, I go through my kitchen and office and throw things away--junk mail, magazines, catalogues. One thing I often have to force myself to do is throw away notepads and notebooks that are just cluttering up my house and getting in the way. I like this checklist.
3. Declutter
Put everything in its place. It's easy for stuff to pile up--my china cabinet in my kitchen is the most cluttered, awful space and, a piece of advice, don't open the drawer. Step number 1 for getting organized is decluttering: get things put away, put in bins, and organized and cleaned up. Get rid of anything you don't need.
4. Start a filing system to clean up your important documents.
I used to keep everything in binders--but those rapidly take up space. Now that we have Forrest, a house, and two cars, I have all kinds of stuff I need to keep track of, especially of the paper variety. I use a simple, place filing cabinet, but I know soon I'll need to expand to something larger.
