photo credit: schnaars

Do you find yourself dreaming about the day your house is organized? You’re not alone. Everyone can’t have a team of people come in and do it for them (unless you are one of the lucky people who aren’t embarrassed to show the world their mess on TV). Quite frankly, if you let someone else get your house organized there is a high probability that the house won’t stay organized. Getting rid of the clutter is only part of the problem. Once the clutter is gone, you need a process to stay organized. This is why I advise the 15 minutes a day strategy.

You may or may not have kids but chances are that once your home is organized 15 minutes is all it takes to get it tidy daily. The key is to do it daily, every single day, whether you feel like it or not. If you and your family get into the habit of putting things away right after they use them then 15 minutes a day will be simple.

But what if your house isn’t organized now? Then you need to make the same 15 minute a day commitment to put everything you took out during the day plus take time to declutter the stuff you already have.

I just got laid off from my job and now I am working from home. I brought home everything from my job office and put it in my home office. What a mess. My goal for the first week was to take everything out of my office and sort it into keep, toss, donate or move to the right location. I sell a lot of items online and I tend to end up with tons of inventory in my office. I also love technology and never throw away the old stuff when I get new stuff. Don’t even get me started on how much paperwork I accumulate.

I got up last Thursday morning and decided it was time to get the office tidied up. I waited for my husband to leave for work (this is a must since I didn’t want him rolling his eyes or making comments while I was organizing MY stuff). Deciding to throw something you own away should be your decision, not anybody else’s. You don’t want to start a fight because your spouse doesn’t see why you keep the doll your grandmother gave you when you were five even though you never look at it. Tell them to go find something to do for the day so you can make your space beautiful.

After the house was clear I took everything out of the office and put it into piles in the living room according to what it was. Paperwork, old electronics, office supplies, books, photos, etc. were all sorted by type. I didn’t spend any time really looking at them; I just moved them out and sorted them by type. When the office was empty I quickly dusted and vacuumed. I was able to accomplish this in four hours. Now my office was empty but my living room was filled with stuff.

The next step was to get things put away. I started with the books since that was the easiest. My bookshelves were completely empty and I only put the books back on them that I wanted to keep. The rest of the books went out to my eBay / Amazon selling area in the garage. I even ended up with two empty shelves that I promptly made into filing areas. I put two stacks of in/out boxes on them; one for me and one for my husband.

I ventured back to the living room and sorted the electronics according to what I need to keep and what could be sold, tossed or donated. Most of the items were in great shape so I think I will sell them online. Now the pile of stuff in the living room was down to half the size it was originally.

The next pile to tackle was paperwork. I sorted the papers into three piles. One pile was things I needed to do, one pile was for things to keep and one pile was for thing to shred. I am not going to file anything right now since the goal is to just get the office organized and the living room back to normal before my husband gets home from work.

I grabbed a box and put all of the paperwork to keep in it. I put it in my office right next to my desk. Over the next week I will go through the receipts, scan them and shred them. I find it is easier for me to keep all of my files electronically rather than filling up file cabinets with paper. I put the items I need to follow up on in my new inbox on the bookshelf. Tomorrow I will tackle the inbox papers but right now organizing has to be finished. I took all of the papers to shred out to the garage and put them through the shredder. My shredder is a monster (three feet tall and will shred CDs and credit cards) and I found a place in the garage that it fit better than in my office.

Now all that was left in the living room were inventory to sell online and office supplies. I promptly put all of the office supplies away. The inventory items were taken back out to the garage and put away.

The total time it took me to get the office back into working order was eight hours. I find it is easier with a big task like organizing a room to devote an entire day to getting it straightened rather than do it in little chunks. I could have never left my living room a mess for more than a day so this was really my only option. Also, when you focus on one task rather than multi-tasking, you get more done in less time. Now my office is organized and fun to work in.

I spend 15 minutes a day, first thing in the morning, scanning my receipts and have them almost done. Another day or two and the scanning box will be empty.

Getting organized is a chore but the results that come from it are so much more rewarding. The stress is gone because everything is in its place and I am able to focus on working rather than worrying about the fact things need to be put away.

Let me know what works and what doesn’t work for you in the comments.

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