Top 10 Organizing Tips to reduce clutter and stay organized

10. Take things one step at a time.  Set a small goal for yourself and committ to doing that one thing like clean out the junk drawer in the kitchen, or clean out a shelf in your linen closet.  You can find 15 minutes and when you accomplish that one goal it feels good and will keep you motivated to keep going.

9. Take baby steps - don’t expect to de-clutter your entire house in one weekend.  It didn’t take  you two days to get to where you are.  

8.  Go vertical - when organizing your garage, basement, office, craft room, kids room - take advantage of the vertical wall space by installing shelves on the walls or hanging things from the ceilings.   This is otherwise unusable space.

7.  Think about how you can help others, schools can always use extra office supplies or office furniture - think about donating to your neighborhood school.  Organizations that help women get into their careers are always looking for professional office clothing for women, donate to an organization that is helping women get on their feet.  

6.  Digitize - there is software now for everything - your photos, your will, your health care directive, your visa bill, your insurance listings your credit card bills, your grocery or gift lists.  Get rid of the paper and digitize.  Be sure to store a backup copy on a external device with someone at a different location.  Set up your bills for automatic payment or pay them online.  Go paperless with all of your utility bills, credit card statements, etc.  Shred any old paper copies of utility or credit card bills if you are saving them.

5. Keep it simple - develop easy processes for every day things like collecting the mail, putting away the groceries, putting away the laundry.  

4   Know what you have - use clear bins and labels so that you can see exactly what you have so that you don’t spend $ on redundant items.   

3.  Keep like items together - keep all of your gift wrapping materials in one place, all of your household user manuals in one folder.  The benefits for doing this is that you will always be able to find what you are looking for and it eliminates the random manual in the junk drawer in the kitchen, or under a pile in the garage. 

2.  A place for everything and everything in its place - Benjamin Franklin was right on this one.  If you have a designated spot for everything, and put things back in that spot when you are done using them you will always know where it is and things won’t accumulate on the table, or the drawer or wherever things pile up for you.  Put things you use everyday in the most easily accessible places.

1.  Regular purging - develop a habit of regularly going through your drawers, shelves, closets, and pulling out what you are no longer using.  Start a box for donations or sales and put these items in that box.   By developing a regular purging habit, you can stay ahead of the accumulation.  If you bring in a new piece of clothing, one has to go, when you switch over your clothes for the changing seasons weed out what you haven’t worn in the past 12 months.