7 Simple Ways to Keep Your Home Organized in the New Year

We all make new resolutions each January about how we’ll get more organized. Have you already been thinking about this topic? Let’s make this the year you truly are successful with being an organized person. It’s going to be great when you know where everything is and don’t waste time hunting down important items.

Keep it Simple & Start Small

The common way to attack the New Year is to convince yourself that you’re going to get everything in the home organized immediately. You might start out strong by pushing through the first Saturday with 5 hours of focused work. However, you’re exhausted by Sunday and don’t want to look at the unorganized mess your Saturday shifting of objects made.

Don’t do this to yourself. Instead, start out small. Commit to shopping with a list instead of getting to the store and trying to do it all by memory. Find other small shifts like this so you have a few small wins under your belt quickly.

Get Rid of Multiple Calendars

Do you have a wall calendar, pocket calendar, cell phone calendar and a Google calendar? Commit to using one calendar for everything this year. Use it to plan vacations, set up reminders and anything else that helps you stay reminded about important matters.

Establish a Routine

It’s important to settle on what you must do daily, weekly and monthly. Create routines around mundane things that easily get missed. An example would be something like making your bed every day. Make it a part of your daily routine. Try to make cleaning the bathroom a weekly routine and planning the next month’s finances a monthly routine.

Set Goals

Take time at the end of each day to plan two or three goals for the next day. For example, write down that you’ll make your bed until it becomes a routine you don’t need to think about. Write down a goal for making sure all breakfast dishes are in the dishwasher before leaving for work the next morning. Small goals like this eventually become habits that keep your home organized all year.

Create a Place for Everything

Your house gets unorganized because you don’t find a home for all items. This makes it easy to leave things randomly all over the place. Mail gets thrown on the kitchen counter. Car keys get lost because they’re thrown on the coffee table and hidden by the pizza box.

Commit to changing these habits. Create a space for incoming mail on the desk in the office. Use a key organizer and place all your keys inside. Then, make sure the organizer goes in the desk next to the door that leads to the garage.

Ask for Help

Sit down with your family and explain how last year’s disorganization has affected you. Tell your loved ones that you’re committed to making your home organized and easier to live in. Then, tell them you need their help to make it happen. Give everyone specific organizing tasks to do every day, week and month. The best way to declutter a home is to get everyone involved and to take ownership of their individual responsibilities.

Create a Long-Term Commitment to Organization

This is an ongoing process that you and your family have entered into. You can’t quit after the first layer of unorganized items have lifted and you find more to do. Yes, it’s overwhelming at first. That’s why you need to remain committed. New habits must be created. For example, everyone needs to commit to putting items in their proper places the first time around, not after someone else points it out.

Getting more organized this year is attainable. It simply requires a plan, a commitment to changing habits, a group approach and regular check ins to stay on track with the objective.