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More Time for Fun- Organize Your Things 2008-01
Have you ever said to yourself, "I know I have it, I just need to find it"? How about you couldn't find something you needed, and went out and bought another one, than, found the old one? We spend countless minutes looking for things we know we have but can't find, wasting time and money.
These are extra time and money we could have used for fun.
Let's take a minute to analyze why we have to look for things in the first place. The most common reasons are we 1. Don't remember where we put it or 2. Someone else didn't return it to its original location. Follow three simple rules, and you will be on your way to a more organized life style, and have more time for fun.
First and foremost, do a house cleaning. Go through your house, room by room, closet by closet, drawer by drawer, look at each item. Assign one category to each item.
- Regular Use – thing used almost daily like car keys, purses, cell phones, shoes, etc.
- Occasional Use – things like tools, shoe polish, slower cooker, etc.
- Seasonal: Items like holiday decorations, winter / summer cloth, golf clubs, etc.
- Donate / Trash – out-of-date cloth, old trophies, gifts you will never use, old decorations you don't use anymore, old TVs, broken toys, etc.
When you go through this exercise, be brutally honest. The goal here is to REDUCE the number of items you have. Get ride of the Donate / Trash items! Give them to Goodwill, sell on ebay, or trash them. You don't use them, you won't miss them. Everything you "need" should be in categories 1,2 and 3. When you buy new items to replace an old one, get ride of the old one. This is the very important so you can keep your home clutter free.
The second step is to find a place for items in categories 1, 2 and 3. Seasonal Items, if these things are valuable to you, spend the time and money to put them in sturdy boxes, and place them neatly on shelves. Make sure you mark the boxes on the outside also. You don't need to spend hundreds of dollars on fancy shelves, you can use cement blocks and wood plank to make shelves for your garage.
Occasional and regular use items' home needs to be easily accessible and easy to use. For example, you can have a wall of keys. All the keys for the household, goes on that wall. Your wallet / purse ALWAYS leave it at the same spot.
Once you found a place for everything, tell everyone in your household where each item is. Then, tell everyone what benefits they can enjoy (not having to look for things) if everyone put things back to where they got it from. This rule needs to be re-enforced regularly until it becomes a habit for everyone.
To reduce time spent on looking for things or money wasted buying things you can't find, you just need to adapt the three simple rules.
- Donate or trash the old item if you bought a new one.
- Have a home for each of your needed items.
- Always, always put things back to where you got them from.
In a short period of time, these will become time and money saving habits.
Remember, these are life style changes that require commitment. If you are determined to have a more organized life, you will! Good Luck!
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