Best Kept Secrets for Getting and Staying Organized by Barry J. McDonald - HTML preview

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Determining your Home-Style

As you begin the chore of organizing your home, it is time to determine the style you wish your home to have. If what you had previously was not working for you, if you had ample amounts of dust and clutter, it is time to begin anew.

Your home should be a place that you enter into with both comfort and joy. When you are properly organized, you feel pride in your home. Your home should smile back at you when you walk in the door, and give you a sense of serenity when you leave.

You can accomplish all of this when you have peace and harmony in your home. Your home environment will be tidy and purposeful and you will draw strength from this.

You will put the harmony in your space by making it look and function the way that best suits you. When you walk into a room, it should look vibrant and comfortable. When you walk into a room that is dark and messy you feel at a loss. This is not how you wish to feel entering into your own home and your friends and family will not want to visit either.

As you enter into a room, you want to feel space to move around. You want it to be free of mess and clutter. Clutter enters your mind and dampens your spirit. It becomes difficult to focus in any area that makes you feel in this way. All you can see is the mess and you cannot think straight. You feel annoyed.

A hassle-free lifestyle will not just happen, you will make it happen. You have to create certain procedures and methods in which to generate the kind of atmosphere and conditions that you want. You need to determine what you want, how you want it, and if you are willing to spend the time and energy to make it happen.

There are a number of important elements at play in streamlining your activities and getting organized. A system can be implemented on anything, just as everything has a sort of “flow chart” to it. Doing household chores has a method to doing them. You must devise that method to be most effective. Setting aside time with family has certain disciplines that work. It is all about how you manage your activity that makes the difference.

If you learn better time management, for instance, the result is more time to do those things that you want to do. The pay off is great!

Budgeting your time is like budgeting your finances. You need to allocate a certain amount of time to certain things. I think we all know what happens when one does not budget their money. We end up without any money (eventually), or we have to scrape up money from somewhere else to make ends meet.

That is what occurs when you do not budget your time. You will end up without any time to do the things you want. You run out of time to accomplish the things you really must do, like organize.

Every element of your life is affected by poor organization skills.

Time is not the only problem we all face. The worse enemy of any lifestyle is mess and clutter. If there is clutter, trouble follows close behind. The excuse that there is no time to organize your clutter gives apparent, reasonable justification for not taking care of it. However, it is one of the causes of not having time in the first place. There is no “catch 22” situation — one just has to make time to do it.

Visualize about what you want your area to look like. This is a good start. Pour through decorating magazines and cut and paste the designs you like best. This will serve as inspiration to get more organized.

Learn about yourself and what your requirements are. Every item in your home should be there because you dearly want it there, not because there is no place else to put it. Determine its value and how it helps you by being there. Do you enjoy looking at it? Is it beautiful to you? Does it have a function in your life? How does it make you feel when you spot it?

Too many personal belongings placed everywhere around your home will not provide a sense of harmony. It is the harmony you are after and not the “things.” Too many things creates an overwhelming environment that can be stressful, not to mention time consuming in having to clean then time after time. By lessening the amount of personal things in your space, you will achieve the harmony you need. You will have a pleasing combination of elements in a whole.

Creating an organized life at home works in the same fashion at your place of employment.

You need to be in an area that helps you to concentrate and focus. You need to operate with systems that help you to improve your efficiency and productivity. When these elements are in place, it keeps stress levels lower for everyone in your family.

By determining the kind of environment you want to live in, you will achieve the first step to having it that way.

Organizing for a harmonic lifestyle at home requires that you put things in order that are meaningful to you and your family. Remember to always keep it simple. Your home can be a place that you truly enjoy. It can be a showcase of where you live your life with purpose and meaning. Others will take note and will want to come over and share your home with you. It will be a pleasant place to visit, share, and make new friends.

Your well-organized home provides a harmonic environment. The harmony and peace will affect everything that you do. You will rest and play with new meaning and purpose. You will feel better about yourself.

Put the harmony back into your personal space by first defining your home-style. Next, have every room looking functional and orderly with no clutter. Do this and you will feel like a million dollars!

Clever Home and Family Management

For Better Organization

Have you ever stopped to imagine what your home and family life would be like if you ran it like a business?

If you look at the standard operating systems that are employed at work, you will see that there are certain procedures in carrying out various activities.

Take up methodical and organized procedures that help you run your family like an organization. Your household will run smoothly if you also involve other family members in sharing responsibilities. Engage everyone, in one facet or another. This is known as delegating.

What is involved in running your family and home like a business?

Each job assigned must be clearly defined. Depending on your child’s age and skills, they will be proud to contribute, and they will learn responsibility in the process. Children will even begin to take care of their rooms better when they are in charge of it. This may not happen overnight, but it will happen in time.

To establish a good working foundation, set up a home base of operation.

This will be the place where you administrate papers, schedules, telephone numbers, and other daily details. This can be located anywhere, so long as all administrative items are centralized. You will not find a successful business with some papers on a desk, other papers in a bathroom, and a few scattered throughout the lunchroom.

There are a number of organizational solutions to put into effect in the household. If there is a particular problem area, a system can be adapted to solve the problem. In other words, if something does not work well, fix it. Come up with a method or system that will keep the problem from reoccurring.

For example, if you keep running out of certain bathroom items, put a pen and pad on the towel rack for you and others to mark down items that need to be purchased at the

grocery store. If messages are not relayed, keep a message pad by each telephone to insure messages are recorded and placed in a certain rank. If you can’t keep track of family member’s activities and events, post a calendar and have each person (who is old enough) responsible for adding their new events.

Create organized procedures and methods in your home and you will become organized. Take a look at your needs as a family unit now.