Mail: Have a basket, bin, or other decorative object to catch mail as it comes into the house. Locate this by the door where the mail comes in. If there's room, have a separate mail bin or baskets for each member of your household. It makes distributing information easier. Plan to review mail at a predetermined time in your weekly schedule.
Closets: Whenever you remove an item from a hanger, put the hanger in a basket. When you get ready to do laundry, bring the basket for easy "out-of-dryer-onto-hanger" action!
Time: Learn how long it really takes you to do your routine tasks and chores, like getting ready in the morning, driving to work, emptying the dishwasher, getting the kids up and dressed for school, laundry, grocery shopping, and so on. This will help in organizing your daily and weekly schedule. If you assume it takes you ten minutes to get ready and leave the house, but in reality it takes thirty, you'll be twenty minutes late for whatever is next on your schedule, and so on for the remainder of the day.
Photos: One way to sort backlogs of photos is to collect shoe boxes or plastic containers and write a year on each one, if the photos are on the computer sort the photos into digital folders labeled by year. This can be done in brief sessions- even fifteen minutes a night will make a difference by the end of the week. Along the way you can eliminate any duplicates, ugly photos, blurry images, and so forth. Once the pictures are sorted by year, decide how you want to sort them further. Chronologically? By event? Then you choose how you want to store and/or display them. You will have a better idea of what size album, box, or frames you'll need.
Family Meetings: Designate an hour a week to synchronize your family. Everyone brings their calendars, to-do lists, and schedules to the table. Spend the time reviewing the events for the upcoming week, expectations for dinners, chores, et cetera. The week will move much smoother!
Store it where you use it: The closer you store items to where you use them, the quicker and easier it is to clean up. For instance, if you knit at night while watching TV, create storage right near where you sit. It can be a decorative basket that slides under a coffee or end table. Whenever you put away your knitting, it goes into its basket and is stored immediately-instead of sitting on the coffee table waiting to be returned to its home.
"Lid-off" policy: When and wherever possible, remove lids and doors. It means one less step to putting things back where they belong.
Bailey is a Professional Organizer in Ojai, and Ventura and Los Angeles counties. She owns Serene Living Spaces http://www.serenelivingspaces.com
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