Sunshine and warmer temperatures have us all thinking about fresh beginnings and looking to restore order to our homes. Do you have a few areas around your home that need to be better organized and more functional? Try this easy method.
ORDER on Purpose
O stands for Objective. We all know that you can’t get too far into a project if you don’t know what you hope to accomplish. Are you having problems getting an area organized? This can happen when we don’t take time to name what the space will be used for. Consequently, entire areas or rooms become one large junk drawer. Decide what you want the space to accomplish for you.
R is for roadmap. This is simply determining what steps need to be taken in order to go from chaos to calm. Will you need a system installed so that everything has a home? How will you label and identify where items are to be stored?
D stands for divide and conquer and E is for edit. These are the elbow grease stages of organizing where the magic happens. Break each large project into smaller, doable tasks. Then purge and move items that don’t belong.
R is returning things where they belong. The things that are to be stored in an area are returned, in systems that make sense and in a way that is easy to retrieve.
On Purpose means maintaining the area. If you want to keep the ORDER going, this piece is probably the most important. Without purposefully keeping the area under control, you’ll soon be back to square one. This piece requires the D word – discipline. But as one of my favorite actresses, Julie Andrews, says, “Discipline… is a kind of order that sets me free to fly.” Being disorganized very often represents delayed decisions. We may know where things belong but consciously or unconsciously decide not to carry through and put things back where they belong on a consistent basis.
The end goal in organizing our spaces is always peace of mind. How a day begins, can drive the rest of the time in it. A relaxing, expected start helps begin the day with confidence. Confidence comes from having power over our surroundings.
Here’s to Fresh Beginnings!