Get Organized!

January – the month that represents a fresh start for so many of us – is appropriately designated (though rarely celebrated) as Get Organized Month.   Because so many of us are homebound in January, it can be the best time to clear our nests of unwanted debris.  But being surrounded by our piles (or rooms) of clutter can make organization seem impossible – particularly for those of us who have found that caregiving introduces new forms of disorder in what were previously tidy (or spare) rooms.

Truth be told, many of us feel we simply do not have the time to undertake large scale downsizing or clutter-control projects when we are faced with overwhelming caregiving responsibilities.   Yet one estimate concluded that American women spend 55 minutes a day – or 14 days a year -- looking for lost or misplaced items (RealSimple Magazine survey).  Consider the benefits we could accrue if we retrieved even a portion of that “lost” time. 

The major impediment to home organization is far more likely to be the sense that our clutter overwhelms us.  What can we do to make our homes more orderly, and less like a bad episode of “Hoarders”?

·         Survey your worst spots.  Where is your clutter build-up occurring? Do you have piles of newspapers?  Mail?  Magazines? Laundry?  Is one closet or area the worst?  Pinpointing the greatest clutter culprits gives you a roadmap (and a clear goal) of where and how to begin.

·         Start small.  Start with one pile, one drawer, one closet.  Don’t imagine that you’ll achieve an orderly kitchen, bathroom, or sick room in a single day.  Devoting as little as 5 minutes a day to clutter control can make a tremendous difference.

·         Develop some tricks of the organizational trade.  You don’t need to hire an expensive professional organizer to adopt two of their most common recommendations:  store things where you use them (that way, you’ll be far more likely to put things away); and sort your mail over a trash or recycling bin (so that junk mail never even makes it onto your kitchen table or into your den).

·         Eliminate before you buy.  Organizing means that you must be prepared to get rid of stuff.  If you’ve been storing yarn in a closet for 20 years without ever once using it, that’s a good decluttering  target.  So are piles or unread books and magazines, or coupons that are massively out of date.   Before you invest in any new storage equipment (plastic bins, lazy Susans, drawer dividers), resolve to get rid of junk first.  You may find you don’t need to invest in any new organizers.

·         Inventory before you buy.  Taking 5 minutes to check your cupboards before buying more canned goods or spices is a simple way to keep your kitchen cupboards manageable.  The same is true of caregiving supplies; check your medicine cabinets before replacing things like rubbing alcohol, band-aids, or aspirin.

·         Enlist the support of your family and friends.  Caregivers may have many offers of help, so if a relative or friend asks what they can do, you might direct them toward helping you clear out a closet, or make weekly recycling trips for you.  Remember to set realistic goals for them (it’s more fair to ask them to attack a drawer or closet than the garage or attic) and be prepared to tell them the stuff you are willing to trash.   You can enlist their support in other ways:  if they are planning to bring you a meal, suggest to them what you need and how much storage (freezer) space you have.  If a friend brings you a stash weekly magazines, kindly suggest that you prefer their company to any new reading material.

·         Adopt one new habit.  Once we’ve created any semblance of order, most of us resolve that we will never again allow clutter to occur – only to find that it has crept its way back when we were not looking (smile).  Rather than making unrealistic pledges to ourselves, we might consider adopting one new habit at a time, and building on these small changes.  The habit might be as easy as confining newspaper reading to only one room of the house, or getting rid of recyclable trash once a week. 

Many of you have fantastic organizational schemes.  Please share….