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Last updated on October 24th, 2022 at 06:40 pm
When your life is messy, it’s hard to focus on anything else. It’s vital to organize your life. As a result, when everything has its place, you’ll find that you can declutter your mind and focus on what’s important. Here are 7 simple steps to organize your life and declutter your mind!
Write It Down
By writing things down, you will remember more, feel less stressed, and stay organized. From to do lists, meal planners and habit trackers to post-it reminders, brain dumps and gratitude journals, writing it down will keep everything on track. Whether you enjoy the satisfaction of actually putting pen to paper or prefer tracking everything digitally or a combination of both, just be sure to write it down.
What do I need from the grocery store? Write it down. When is Aunt Donna’s birthday? Write it down. Lying in bed and a whirlwind of things to do come to mind. Write it down. Feeling anxious or stressed? Get a journal and write it down.
Don’t Procrastinate
Just don’t. In the end, procrastinating gets the best of you. We’ve all been there. As a matter of fact, putting things off only creates more chaos later and makes any situation more stressful. Create a schedule and stick to it. When you know what you need to do and when you need to do it, you’re less likely to procrastinate.
Procrastination Tip: The One to Two-Minute Rule
For simple tasks that take one to two minutes or less to complete, do it immediately. Tackle tasks like hanging up your coat, answering an email, or putting the dish in the dishwasher. Be consistent and you are bound to see results and reduce the anxiety and stress that results from procrastination.
Set Priorities
Just like setting strategic priorities at work, you must also set personal priorities for your tasks in order to organize your life. You can breakdown your priorities into critical, important, and desirable.
- A task that is a critical priority must be completed by a specific time, no matter what. Ideally, you should only have a handful of critical priorities at any given time. This could be something that must be done today like pay the water bill.
- An important priority is one that must be done, but doesn’t need to be done immediately. This could be a task that needs to be completed later in the week for example, cleaning the bathrooms.
- Lastly, a desirable priority is one that would be nice but there are no consequences if it is not done for example, watching The Bachelor tonight.
Figure out what tasks are the most critical and focus on those first.
Delegate Tasks
You may be better about delegating tasks at work, but you should be delegating tasks at home, too. Delegate tasks whenever possible. Ask your family and friends for help with tasks you don’t have time for or better yet, look for services that may be able to help.
- Household Chores and Laundry – Divvy these tasks up among everyone in the household. Whether you have a roommate or are married with kids, these tasks can easily be delegated. Another option is to eliminate household chores altogether and hire a cleaning service if the budget allows.
- Meal Planning, Grocery Shopping, and Cooking – These types of tasks can be time-consuming. If others can’t help and you are limited on time, there are plenty of services that will deliver fresh meals to your doorstep. This can eliminate your time meal planning, recipe searching, and grocery shopping.
- Errand Running – Save time with online ordering and pick-up services by delegating store employees to do your shopping. Have your significant other pick it up on their way home. If you have kids that are involved in crazy busy activities, network with other moms and create a carpool or pick-up schedule. This is a great way to reduce the amount of time in the car, and you will make a few friends along the way.
Take Breaks & Set Aside Time Each Day for Yourself
When you’re feeling overwhelmed, take a few minutes to yourself to relax and rejuvenate. By and large, you should be including self-care in your daily routine to nourish your body and soul. This will help you to recharge and be more productive. If limited on time, take a moment to listen to some relaxing music, take a warm bath or go for a brisk walk.
How Often & How Long to Take a Break?
Based on our biological ultradian rhythm, we should be taking small breaks after 50-90 minutes of intense, concentrated work. Ideally, you should target a 15-20 minute break.
Organize Your Living Space
When organizing your life, living in an organized space will help to reduce stress and create a calm environment. Declutter your home by getting rid of unnecessary belongings.
- Give everything a home. If everything has a place, there’s no chance of misplacing items or losing them.
- Get rid of the things you don’t need. Clutter can be a significant source of stress. Decide if it should be recycled or donated, but if you don’t need it, get rid of it!
- Maintenance is key. Once your space is organized, put items back where they belong, pick-up the clutter everyday (refer to the one to two-minute rule), and continue getting rid of things you don’t need.
One Step at a Time
If you are overwhelmed with organizing your space, start with something small like a drawer or a shelf. Go through one item at a time to determine if it is something you will keep, recycle, or donate. Spend 20-30 minutes per day and work your way up to build your momentum to tackle more.
Organize Your Digital Files and Photos
Having your digital files and folders organized will help to save you time and you’ll be more productive. Although it may be daunting to get started, you will feel so much better once you create your storage structure and you’ll be able to easily maintain it moving forward.
- Know where everything is located. In today’s world, you may have years of files spread across your laptop, your phone, your tablet and of course within the iCloud (DropBox, Google Drive, MS OneDrive, etc.). Take note of where everything is and what needs to be organized. Some areas may already be organized and other areas may be a disaster.
- Similar to decluttering your living space, start going through the files one by one. Delete items that are not important and you no longer need. Rename obscure files so you can easily search and find them later.
- Once you have weeded out the old stuff and renamed your files, start storing them. Determine where you want to store them and move them to those platforms. For example, keep all your work files on Google Drive, all your photos in the iCloud, and any current projects directly on your laptop.
- Create your file structure so you can store like items together. You can group together documents by projects or years and have sub-folders. Once you have this laid out, it is just a matter of moving the individual files into the various folders.
- Above all, once it is organized, create a routine for keeping your files organized.
You’ll find that when everything is in place, you can focus on what’s important and live a more more organized and stress-free life.
