Organize + Energize: 4 Ways to Maintain Your Organized Space

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Monday, September 28, 2015

Kristin MacRae, GoLocalPDX Organizing Expert

You’ve just completed an organizing project and you stand back and admire what a great job you’ve accomplished. You’ve worked really hard to complete this project, but now the real work begins. Decluttering, itemizing, categorizing and setting up your working organized systems are only half of the process when you are getting organized. The real work occurs when you need to follow through with your systems and maintain your organization. How many times have you completed an organizing project and failed to maintain it? 

Here are 4 ways to maintain your organization.

Be mindful. You walk into your home with a handful of mail. Are you going to throw it on the table with the rest of the unopened mail? You’ve just arrived home from shopping and have receipts in hand. Are you going to shove them in a drawer?  When you walk into your home, be mindful of what you have in your hand and take one minute to think about how you are going to process it. You’ll walk in your home, drop your keys and phone in their designated spot and have a process to handle your mail and anything else you need to handle. 

Tackle it now. Would you rather spend hours tackling months’ worth of mail or would you rather take one minute to handle it and not have to look at it again? I hope you said the latter. You will make your life much less complicated if you take the time to tackle it right away than spend countless hours on it down the road. The more you accumulate in the form of paper and clutter, the more overwhelmed you will get and you’ll get further away from maintaining your organization. Don’t let the piles get out of control. Handle it in the moment and you’ll have a handle on maintaining your organization.

Simple systems. Create a process and a system for everything you do in your home. The simpler the system, the more likely you’ll be able to follow it. People think they need to create these elaborate systems. The more complicated the system, the more likely it will fail. You want to be as efficient and productive as possible. If it takes you 5 steps to tackle a project when it can be tackled in 2 steps, why not simplify? You’ll be more likely to maintain your organization if simple systems are in place. 

Choosing the right organizing products. You have to have the right organizing products in place if you are going to maintain your systems. You don’t have to spend hundreds of dollars on organizing  products. How much money have you wasted on products you didn’t even need or products that didn’t work well with your system?  You can’t maintain a system, if the organizing products don’t work. It’s impossible to function with a broken system. Function with a simple system using the right products and your system will be easy to maintain. 

There are many reasons why you don’t follow through with your organized systems. Call it laziness, lack of motivation to keep it organized, or you are too busy to keep up with it. You’ve worked so hard to create those working organized systems. Make a plan and put it into motion and strive to maintain that organized space. 

Kristin Carcieri-MacRae, the founder and owner of Organizing in RI, has always enjoyed finding creative ways to streamline the environment around her. She has appeared on air on Patricia Raskin's Positive Business Radio and her articles have been published in the Rhode Island Small Business Journal and New England Home Life. Kristin's CD, Organizing Basics, is a 1-hour guide for the person who wants to get organized but doesn't know where to start. She is also available for organizing workshops. Tune into her weekly radio show, Organize, Energize! on talkstreamradio.com.

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