My home is my sanctuary. For this reason, I like to maintain order in my space at home. Order gives me clarity, and with that comes a great degree of peacefulness and calm. By clearing up my physical space, I clear up my mental space. It helps me be more productive.
I believe you can tell a lot about a person by the way they keep their hidden spaces aka, their closets, medicine cabinets et cetera. Ideally, I believe we all want to live in a clean and organized space, but there arises one of two problems.
“It feels like there just isn’t enough time”
The first problem is that you may be so busy working and trying to find some semblance of joy, it feels like there just isn’t enough time in day. Some days I get home from a long day and I just want to fall face first into my bed. After a long day at work, it can be hard to get the energy to do even some of the smallest tasks.
Secondly, you may just not know how to organize and maintain order in your life. You may have just never been taught. In the age where it seems like just about every task can be outsourced, people who never learned to tidy up their spaces have even more an incentive not to learn.
I am not here to recommend how you can organize your space in twenty four hours or a week, but rather how you can make small changes to how you currently do things and develop positive life-long habits.
1. Write everything down
And I do mean everything. Visualization is the key, but also, you can’t depend on your memory to tell you what needs to be accomplished daily, so get a planner, a notebook, or calendar and write in what you would like to accomplish everyday. Saves you time and you accomplish more. I also enjoy going back to what tasks or goals I accomplished.
2. Snowball your cleaning
Just like you would tackle debt by working your way from the smallest to the largest, the same can be applied here. I separate my task into two categories: daily household chores and weekly ones. Not only have you allowed yourself a slow build, you develop a routine.
3. Do a little everyday
So everyday, you can commit to doing or maintaining the small tasks, and even reducing large ones to smaller manageable tasks. If you’re like me, I commit to the big ones on the weekend and do it all. To stay organized, you need to work at it consistently and continuously.
4. Delegate
If you don’t live alone, get everyone else to pitch in. If you can stand balanced on your feet, you can help. If you’re a parent, get your little ones involved. Make it fun for sure. You’re not only executing tasks, but you teach them the value of teamwork and interdependence. Do it regular and you’ll have your own little helpers. You will create good habits.
5. Purge
This is a very important process, because to maintain order, you need to have an “out with the old” mindset. Having too much stuff means more clutter. Keep only the things you need and a few wants, otherwise, you can trash, donate and/or sell the rest to help create that zen space. Purge at least every four to six months to reduce clutter.
6. Take stock of your accomplishments
Don’t get so task driven that you can’t take a step back to see what you’ve accomplished. Seeing what you accomplished by changing your habits is an excellent motivator.
Keep at it and you will develop a routine that you can maintain for a long time. It is not about the cleaning, but creating an atmosphere and a lifestyle of calm and clarity.