3 Ways to Simplify Your Lifestyle for a More Organized Home
Everybody loves the moment they achieve a freshly organized space. It feels so good. You feel accomplished, things are neat, and it looks great. You may feel lighter if you offloaded a bunch of useless things. It is the maintaining part of organizing that people struggle with. A few months later, the space you worked so hard to organize is a mess again, and you feel defeated.
But maintaining an organized home can be easy if you treat organizing as a process rather than just a one-time project. I am sharing 3 tips for keeping a well-organized home throughout the years.
1. Transform Your Thinking
You need to look at keeping a well-organized home from a long-term perspective. Like a diet, once you reach your goals, you shift into maintenance mode. Otherwise, you’ll go back to your old ways and gain all the weight back—in our case, you will gain the stuff and the disorderly chaos back before you decide it's time to organize (or diet) again.
I always talk about a mindset shift that must occur in my clients for them to keep up with the organization systems that we have put into place in their homes. Everyone loves the beautiful, tidy spaces they gain from our organizing services, and of course, we all wish they could look as perfect as day one all of the time! But the truth is, life happens as it should, things get messy, and we always seem to need more time. But if you make small changes in your thinking, it will go a long way in maintaining the system.
First, you must change your thoughts about what is entering your home. When making a purchase, or bringing home freebies, take a minute to stop and ask yourself: “Do I need this? Do I already have this?” and "Where am I going to put this?" If it ultimately does end up in your home, make a designated spot for it right away (where you won't forget about it) and get rid of something else that may already be in its place, that is a duplicate, or that is no longer needed.
Secondly, reevaluate what is taking up space in your home over time—whether it has been there for years or just a month. This means daily decisions about what enters, less impulsive buying, and more periodic choices about what stays (making time to edit what you are collecting). Evaluate your things to determine if they are still being used, needed, or wanted.
You can donate, recycle, throw away, or otherwise repurpose an item to create space for the future. This can be done seasonally or on any schedule that makes sense to you, for example, before a big holiday, while packing for a trip, or while preparing for back to school. Even if you start thinking about what is coming in and going out of your home just 10% more than you did before, you will stay 10% more organized than you were before. Keeping up is easier than catching up!
2. Arrange for it in Advance
If you have a problem area in your home where the system (or lack thereof) you currently use just isn't cutting it, make a plan to solve it, but don't make it a big deal. My number one tip is to keep it simple! If you plan to solve things simply, you will be less overwhelmed by the prospect of getting it in order.
For example, if you are constantly frustrated that the mail is piling up and essential things are not getting taken care of or are lost, resolve this problem. Don't organize your entire home. Just resolve to fix the mail problem. This way, when it's time to bring the mail in, you have an easy way of sorting and identifying the important things instead of throwing it all down in a heap. Also, you haven't attempted to organize every problem area in your home (and not finishing it)---you've accomplished the mail problem.
For this example, get some sorting horizontal paper trays or vertical magazine-style folders and label each "to sort," "to handle," or maybe "to file," or label them by each person in your family. Whatever makes sense to you. Place this mail area in a spot you will likely visit to be reminded of its existence, like near the kitchen or the entryway/mudroom. Have a trash can close by to immediately discard the junk mail and empty envelopes.
Chances are, you are motivated by solving this one small problem, and it snowballs into solving other problems one at a time. Creating simple solutions and systems in your home increases the chances that you and other family members can keep up with it - don't make it too hard!
3. Practice Makes Perfect
Practice makes perfect—or at least it makes progress! Practicing your new organizing routine over time will become a habit, and you can keep up with the orderly home you dream of.
Besides being more mindful about the physical stuff in your home, tackling problem areas one at a time, and keeping simplicity at the heart of any organizing challenge, you must practice the actual actions that your new system requires. Using our previous example, now that you set up this mail sorting system, you need to commit to using the system before the mail piles up again, is put in the wrong place, and you start losing things again.
A trick to help make new habits stick is called "habit stacking." I came across this idea from James Clear when reading his book Atomic Habits. It involves identifying a current routine that you already have and simply stacking your new desired habit on top of it. This means that instead of creating an entirely new habit with a place and a time, you are pairing it with a habit you are already doing.
His formula is simple: "After/Before (current habit), I will (new habit)." For our mail system example, this would mean, "After I bring the mail in, I will (immediately) open and sort the mail into the "to do" and "to file away" bins and discard the trash.” You are not creating another day and time to handle the mail you are throwing wherever. You are handling it right after your daily habit of bringing it into the house.
Other habit stacking and organizing examples (keeping this simple for illustration):
"After I pour this bowl of cereal with milk, I will put the milk in the fridge and the cereal box in its proper place." You can continue to habit stack as you create new habits and add, "I will (immediately) make a note to add milk or cereal to the shopping list." You are not waiting until later.
"After I enter the house and remove my shoes, I will immediately put them in their designated spot." You are not leaving them haphazardly and waiting for a pile of messy shoes to clean up later.
"After I finish the laundry (it's dry and folded or ready to hang), I will (immediately) put it away." You are not leaving piles of folded laundry in every room to be put away a week later. Disclaimer: we all (including me) struggle with this. Who can keep up? But habit stacking may help.
"After I wake up, I will (immediately) make my bed." If you want to be organized, start by making your bed in the morning :). It can do wonders for your psyche.
Staying organized
Staying organized requires mindset shifts and periodically re-organizing for "refreshes" or "tweaking." Our lives change, our children grow, our tastes change, and our homes change. Applying the same thoughts and habits over and over consistently can help you transition through these changes in your home throughout the years. Try to tweak the system when it needs updating or purging before it gets out of control, or commit to hiring professional help if you cannot keep up.
My favorite principle to apply in my home and those of my clients is "a place for everything and everything in its place." This may sound like organization means perfection. It does not. It means that when it's time to tidy up, it is easy because, ultimately, everything has a place where it belongs, and you can quickly put it there.
The second principle is mindfulness. This takes the idea that everything has a place a step further by only dedicating areas in our home to things we need, use, or want and ridding ourselves of the excess. This way, we are not just organizing junk. We want easy access to the things that are meaningful to us and our daily lives. It's within all of us to simplify!
Bonus tip: Place a box or container out of sight to hold items you are unsure about getting rid of. Place the items in that bin, then set a calendar reminder on your phone 3 to 9 months ahead (the deadline depends on the seasonality of the item), then see if you (a) even remembered it was there and (b) still want to keep it. The answer is likely NO, and your conscious will be free to get rid of it.
If you're ready to hand off your initial organizing to a Denver area home expert (before you take over the maintenance), I've got your back! Join our mailing list to get inspired and grab your behind-the-scenes guide to working with a professional organizer here.
Sending you organized vibes,
Meg
