In this thing called life, there is no time to procrastinate! You cannot get back the minute that you lost.
It important to complete Part I: De-cluttering your space (yesterday’s post) before you try to tackle this part.
Next step after de-cluttering:
Organizing. After you have completed your de-cluttering process, you are ready to move onto the organization stage. Don’t feel overwhelmed. You can do it! Just break down your task into small ones and tackle one part at a time.
This step is very important, as you will have a much easier time finding things after you have organized everything. You will not need to buy multiple hammers and screwdrivers to replace those that you cannot find, etc. This translates to time, money savings and less environmental waste.
Step #1:
Gather. Collect all the items of one group -so in this case, toys. I collected every single toy from upstairs, the main floor and basement and poured them onto the floor. My son says, “Wow, that’s a lot of toys!” and I say, “Yes, too much.” By gathering everything, I have effectively cleared up three areas of the house at one time – my son’s bedroom, the TV room, and basement.
Step #2
Sort. Get ready your empty sorting containers and begin sorting things into groups. In this case, plastic train tracks in one box, wooden train tracks in another, etc.
Step #3
Procrastination. NO! NO! NO! You are almost there. Don’t give up yet. In my case, the floor is looking better. But it doesn’t help that my son has built a train track while I am sorting.
Step #4
Purge again. Now that you have sorted the ‘good’ stuff that you will keep, take a look at the rest of the items. Honestly, they are 1) landfill garbage; 2) recycling or 3) donations. Make a split-second decision on the rest of the stuff.
Step #5
Decide where to put things. Then put everything away. Tah Dah! Organized at last.
Step #6:
REPEAT STEPS 1-5 IN EVERY AREA OF YOUR HOUSE.
Here is my spice cabinet. A couple of tips for spice jars – 1) it may be way more expensive to buy individual jars. I bought a spice rack that came with spice jars at a lower price. 2) the Starbucks mug boxes work great as a level for the second set of jars. Re-use, reduce, recycle!
How did you do with your purge and organization? I would love to hear from you…