Do your bad organizing habits follow you to work
People that are organized in their home life are normally organized in other areas of their lives, such as, at work.
Once you are organized in your home life, you will find that this will tend to excel in all areas of your life, at work, in organizations you belong to etc. We tend to become more efficient, waste less time and energy, have control and live with less stress and anxiety.
Such as, a messy home that is full of clutter and a place where you can never find what you are looking for often times is a copy of your office setting. Your desk is a hazard in itself and you can never find the file that you are looking for or the notes you wrote for a client. Debris, clutter and excess junk take over your lives.
Usually the way that you take care of your home is the same method that you use to take care of your office and in many ways, to every area of your life.
This can create a mental imbalance in your life.
You are overwhelmed, do not know how to correct it and when you do you tend to go to the extreme of trying to correct it all at one time. Thus creating a circle of messes that all need to be cleaned up in one way or another. This gives you a feeling of discontent and lack of confidence in yourself.
You now have feelings of guilt, failure and total inadequacy because you know that you could have everything organized and in it's proper place. This is usually when you decide that you have had enough of living like this, it is time for a change and that you need a system to help you change.
Organization is having a system to live by in which you set a routine to have everything in its own place.
It is a habit that you are creating for yourself to help you live life to the fullest and be able to do the things that you enjoy. With a little planning you can change your routines (or habits), have everything organized in your life and gain pride over your accomplishments. Organizing in life is what gives you back your life; your control to live it the way you want to without feeling guilty.
With a little planning and goal setting, it can become a reality.
Look at all of the things that upset your life such as not being able to find things when you need them, never having room to store things or having a closet that is so packed full that everything is wrinkled when you put it on. Now take a look at your office setting and I bet that you have the same problems. You can't find things when you need them, junk is laying all over because you don't know where to put it but you want to keep it handy and your file cabinets are so full that the papers won't slide out anymore without pulling ten more papers along with it.
See what I mean?
Disorganization overlaps into all areas of your life, but you can correct it. Start by looking in your home, this is a place that you should feel comfortable in, relax in and want to feel welcome in. Take one room at a time and write down all of the things that bother you that have to do with that room.
Such as: using the bedroom for an example: Dresser drawers that won't close because they are too full, clothes in the closet that are always wrinkled, junk under the bed that you haven't seen for years and dressers that are full of old perfume, after shave cologne's etc.
Now that you have written it down and taken a good look at the words, you know where you are going to begin to organize.
- Eliminate the clothes that do not fit or that you have not worn in over a year. That will be a big improvement!
- Now eliminate everything that you do not have anything that matches it or that you really do not like the way it fits. Aha! More room!
- Now where and how can you condense what is left? Can you use storage boxes on shelves or put two things in one drawer?
Now do your office filing cabinets in the same way.
- Eliminate all of the papers in a file that are no longer needed
- Put on to disks anything that can be saved in this way and eliminate the papers
- Color code and label all files
- Put notes on the outside of file folders if there are papers in another folder that pertains to this file.
See, you are on your way to Organizing your life the easy way and soon you will have every room finished, your office will be immaculate, your vehicle will fit in the garage and you will have a smile on your face because you are in control of your life. The plus is, you managed to do all of it because you decided to create a new habit in your life called organization!
Jan Hayner offers tips hints and shortcuts to home and office organizing and house cleaning problems at Easy Home Organizing. Get her free pamphlets and monthly newsletter.