Orderliness Goals

Keys, wallet, phone, glasses, and other essentials you use on a daily basis need to have a designated resting spot in places you occupy regularly. For example, at home, you might have one bedside tray where your phone rests, a particular drawer at work or your home office, or a specific phone pocket where your phone rests when out and about. This is the place to start because these are the items we look for most and can least afford to lose. 

It could be valuable to keep the essential Emergency supplies in your house & vehicle. Items such as basic first aid, rain & cold jackets & boots, car 2-week supply of water in the house, working smoke & CO detectors, bear or pepper spray, evacuation & meetup plan, and emergency food storage with long shelf-life (canned beans, fish, peanut butter, whole grains). 

At this level, you might be working on healthy eating choices, so organizing your kitchen and streamlining food routines could be helpful for your diet goals. Here's an outline that suggests ways to streamline the planning, purchasing, and preparing of meals: https://www.realsimple.com/food-recipes/cooking-tips-techniques/preparation/meal-planning-apps. You don’t have to tackle the entire kitchen. A high-impact goal could be to simply start keeping the refrigerator more organized. Or, you could start laminating washable labels that won’t get ruined by inevitable splashes.

If you're someone who spends the majority of your day in an office space or if you work remotely, decluttering and organizing your workspace should be a huge priority. Start by being selective on what items belongs in your workspace and create a new space for non-work related items. It can also be incredibly important to have an organized desktop, as a lot of distractions can arise if it is not. If you don’t have an office-type area, there are plenty of other places to start such as storage closets, sports equipment, and work or hobby tools. Back up computer files on a scheduled basis. 

A simple step to help keep your email inbox from constantly getting cluttered is to unsubscribe from the regular emails you get. You can create filters to auto-delete anything from the companies that refuse to unsubscribe you and make “if I can get to it” folders to put non-essential unopened mail. 

One easy start to having an organized closet is maintaining a consistent laundry routine if you constantly find yourself running out of clothes before the next wash. There are many suggestions online for getting your closets organized. Here’s one to try: https://www.thespruce.com/how-to-organize-your-closet-2648411 Another helpful idea is to lay out all your clothes and make sure all tops have a bottom to match and vice versa. You might photograph the combinations to remember them more easily when you can’t think of what to wear. Some productivity experts note that iconoclastic entrepreneurs wear the same “uniform” daily. You might consider some version of that, such as bottoms that are all similar. Even if you enjoy the self-expression of novel combinations, you might be able to cut back some of the inefficiency of having too many clothes or having them not in the right place at the right time. If you’re someone who loves novelty, you could consider buying items from the thrift store. Wear it for a while, then when you find you don’t love wearing it as much as you initially did, give it back. 

It’s easy to accumulate extras of personal care products, so bathrooms can easily get cluttered. If you can, combine half-full bottles of the same product. There are lots of trays, racks, and other products for organizing. Wire organizer trays are helpful for not getting dust and gooey gunk at the bottom. Clean them with a spray-down, without removing everything. Labels can be super helpful for remembering where to put things back. Laminated labels will be washable and not get ruined by moisture and goo that can splash on them.