To keep the organizing going, and the clutter at bay, every item needs to go back to its home. for a residential organizing project, next to purging and/or downsizing, much of the work is in establishing a home for everything in your home. Once an item has a home, it needs to return there when you finish using/playing with it.
Again, just a few minutes a day to scan through your home and put things away will take you a long way to a more organized existence. Teach your children from an early age to cruise through the house before bed and put away their toys/homework/books/video games. Assign them a time limit. Keep it simple and commit to completing this task daily.
Archive for Maintenance
I am committed to education. Yes, the formal kind our kids attend; for my clients I am committed to educating them with new behaviours and habits to adopt to keep their lives organized. I have heard it said that insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. If my clients continue to do what they have always done – their lives will once again be full of the clutter that I help them control/purge/manage and they will be no more organized then before we started working together.
This week’s posts will address basic, simple habits to help you keep the clutter at bay. Organizing does not have to be complicated. In fact, the less complicated your routines the more likely anyone – you, your spouse/partner, your children – are likely to follow them. Keep it simple and focused – keep the clutter away.
Habit 1 – Clear the floor.
Spend 15 minutes at the end of each day clearing away the debris off your floor. Start with your bedroom so that you can wake up each morning feeling in control of your clutter – if not your entire life. Put the clothes where they belong: dirty in the laundry hamper, clean back in the closet/bureau/shelf. Put the newspaper into recycling and the magazines/books back on their shelf. Finished with the magazines? Send them to a friend to read. Put away the shoes and boots. When in the kitchen, consider giving the floor a sweep to keep the crumbs and daily food litter under control.
If you have children, they can easily help with this exercise. Bear in mind, it does not need to be a lengthy one. Give the children 15 minutes to run through the house and pick up/put away their toys, books, homework items, sports equipment. Consider giving a reward when they are done like reading them an extra chapter of their book or a Popsicle.
There may be lots of clutter on the floor when your first start. That’s OK. Try this for 28 days without a break and I guarantee you that by day 29 your house will be tidier and you will feel more organized and in control of the clutter.
Last post we looked at goal statements and how they meet SMART criteria. Now let’s keep track of the results.
The first rule is to keep things simple. Start with the number of goals. Too many and you will spend all your time managing them and no time actually working on them. Too few and you will fail to reach you objectives. The number and complexity will depend on your business/department/project. There is no magic number. If you have none, try starting with the Shakespearean magic number of 3.
Second rule is to work backwards. If you want 70 new active clients by December 31, 2008, how many do you need each month/week/day to meet that goal. Tracking daily for this goal is probably too small a time frame and will produce data that takes time to process for very little return. Tracking weekly on this goal will give you information before the end of the month on whether or not any progress is being made. Tracking monthly may leave you fretting after month 3 that the goal is not being met and 25% of the year is up – the cycle time from identification to correction to results may be too long to permit timely correction when necessary
Thirdly, ensure that progress feedback gets to the people trying to meet the goal. If your sales staff are reporting weekly the number of new active clients, publish the aggregate data to all the staff each week. Meanwhile, you have an opportunity for intervention with any individual sales staff who is not meeting targets. At the same time, celebrate monthly accomplishments!
