Is your room filled with paper, the floor covered with clothes and sleeping on the bed means pushing things to the floor or foot of the bed? How much time a week do you spend looking for things? It has been estimated that the average American spends 45 minutes a day looking for things. Organizing your life will not only decrease your stress level but it will save you time and money. Three things that frequently cause a room to become cluttered are clothing, paper and electronics.
Clutter management begins with first identifying the space you want to work in. Your entire room may be too large of a project to tackle at once. Remember it took you a long time to become this disorganized, so it will take a bit to get things back into order. Once you have made the decision that you are ready to conquer your clutter, choose a
5’ x 5’ square in your room and work on it. Assign a home to all the items. Being indecisive is what leads to clutter, so create a space where each item is to be kept-its home. Clothing is hung in the closet or put in drawers, but you may find hooks or a coat rack helpful to find items that you frequently use. Keys and eyeglasses are easily lost. Create a home for these items in each room of the house by purchasing 3 or 4 matching dishes. Put a dish in each room. When not using your keys or glasses, they are put in this dish. When you need them next all you have to do is look in the dish. If it isn’t in the dish in the kitchen, it is likely in the matching dish in either the bedroom or family room.
Unless you establish a system to manage incoming paper it will overwhelm you. First identify what needs to be kept and what needs to be tossed. Create short term and long term file systems. A binder with plastic page protectors is an excellent way to keep track of frequently used items like take out menus, rosters, game or class schedules and phone lists. A desk top sized file box is an excellent way to keep track of ‘bills to be paid’, ‘events to attend’, ‘things to discuss with your spouse’, and ‘things to file’. Having a file for each of these creates a “home” for these papers that are often spread throughout the home.
Electronics are abundant in our lives. Keeping track of your phone, Ipod, camera and laptop computer can be difficult. A docking station is a perfect home for these items to not only get recharged, but to be kept so we can easily locate them when we need to.
By having specific spaces for clothing, paper and electronics your room will be a space to relax and be creative. By having an organized room, you will create more time to do the things you want to do.
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Cheryl Kaufman
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Cheryl@TheHomeAndOfficeOrganizer.com
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