Secrets that will help you get organized and stay organized!

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We all love a good secret. You want to know the secret?

Well… there aren’t really any secrets. Just some habits that we need to form over the next few days, well, okay, maybe it will take the next few months. My point is we can get organized and stay organized. We just need to apply these habits to each area of our lives in order to get organized and stay organized.

SO… if you are living in clutter and disarray, and feeling overwhelmed, let’s get started today by developing a few habits that will help us get organized and stay organized in every area of our lives!

Remember!! We need to start by doing a little at a time. How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time, of course! Don’t try to do it all at once. If we try to do it in a weekend we will probably continue to feel overwhelmed and give up. We need to work a little each day until it is second nature to us and then we won’t have to work at it, it will just come naturally. We are going to start by setting aside 30 minutes to one hour each day for organizing.

Don’t forget this may take some of us months. Are you ready? I am!!

Today's post will be the first of several posts on getting organized. Please leave comments and let's support each other.

Here we go:
1. Research and Plan

It is important to know where you are going and how you are going to get there. I bet someone has been where you are and can give you some insight. The internet has a world of information (not all good, but none the less it is there). I hope that this blog of mine about getting organized will contain all the information you will need, but after all I am human, and may not have thought of everything.

Plan ahead. Planning ahead will save you time, frustration, and stress in the long haul. Think about what you really want when you are “organized”, what you might need, any issues that you think may come up, things that you already know will hinder you so you can proactively work around those things, etc.

Make a list of everything you can think of that needs to be done in order for you to be organized.

Make a decision - determine how much time you can devote to getting organized each day. Set aside the time and tackle the task. Some time set aside to get organized is better than no time.

Purchase a day planner to help you stay on schedule.

Plan daily and stick to the plan.

I like to plan each morning while I have a cup of coffee, or tea. Having a planner works hand in hand with reducing and de-cluttering your schedule, which is under secret 2? Set aside time to plan your day each morning. While you are planning your day read back through the things you wrote down yesterday and incorporate your thoughts, ideas, and needs into your daily plan, your calendar, and most important list so you don’t forget. Incorporate your to-dos into your daily tasks list.

Don’t try to do more than 6 most important tasks. If you try to do more than 6 most important tasks you are setting yourself up for failure. More times than not, trying to incorporate more than 6 most important tasks cannot be accomplished in a day and will only frustrate your efforts.

Prioritize your tasks from most important to least important. Try not to beat yourself up for not completing a task today. Move all your uncompleted tasks from today's list to tomorrow's list and start the process anew. You will find that some things you thought were important today aren’t really that important to you after all because they keep getting moved until tomorrow. If you keep moving a task forward, it is one of two reasons. You are procrastinating, because you don’t want to do it yourself, you don’t know how to do it, or you are overwhelmed by that particular task. OR you it is not really as important to you as you originally thought and that particular task may fall off of your 6 most important tasks and move to your to do someday list.

Delegate. Yes, we are wonder women, but we can’t do everything and stay organized. When we delegate we achieve more than we could on our own. Delegate some of your daily tasks to family members or hire someone to complete tasks that you cannot or do not want to do yourself. Just a little note to self… may not want to “delegate” to hubby… maybe we could work together on getting some things done rather than me just “delegating” to him.

Follow through on your to do list. Why go to the effort of making a list if you are not going to complete the tasks. Don’t procrastinate. Remove or ignore as many distractions as possible. Dive in and get it done. You will be glad you did.


This gives us something to think about and a starting point. I will post secret 2 in a day or two.