Organizing Your Household Mail and Papers

Most people need to deal with paper on a daily basis. Some common examples are the following: bank statements, bills, pay stubs, newspapers, magazines, calendars, take-out menus, shopping receipts, and school permission slips. With an organized plan of action and some discipline, the paperwork can be conquered. 

Begin by taking a look at the type of paperwork that’s overwhelming you the most. Are you the most stressed by those bills that go unpaid when you can’t locate them? Or is it the amount of artwork your children have created and decorated your refrigerator with? Perhaps it’s the constantly changing after school schedules or meetings. 

Once you determine the most invasive paper culprits, next it’s time to line them up and sort them out. A successful filling system has three main components. A file for those things that need to be acted on immediately, one for those that are part of a household’s ongoing management, and one for those that are more infrequent but nevertheless crucial, such as tax records, insurance policies, and home maintenance documents. 

It is important to remember that when conquering the paperwork, make a good routine of dealing with each item the first time you handle it. Get out of the habit of looking through your mail and tossing it aside. Set aside time each day to open mail, go through paperwork in your inbox and sort and file appropriately. 

Decide if each item is something to be paid, something to be done, or something to be filed. At the end of each week, take out each file and respond appropriately by paying the bill, responding to the request, or moving items that need to be filed into their permanent locations. 

Of course, if you know something is urgent and can’t wait until week’s end, clip it to the front of your file box or place it in front in a folder labeled Urgent and act accordingly. 

Save telephone time by keeping calendars, schedules, take-out menus and phone lists into clear page protectors in a 3-ring binder. Flip through the household notebook to quickly check meeting dates or find phone numbers. 

Organize magazines and newspapers into baskets kept near couches and living room chairs for people to look at during their free time. Be sure to keep in the habit of sorting through this on a regular basis and filing those magazines you decide to keep and tossing old newspapers and magazines you wish you toss. 

Designing Your Own Organizing System

By reading my blog you are taking a step closer to getting your home and your life more organized. Have you been feeling the clutter in your life is getting out of control and more chaotic? Do you waste a lot of valuable time searching for items around your house? I know for myself, even with being home so much more throughout last year during the Pandemic, I feel like I don’t have enough time in the day to get things done like I used to in the past. I think a lot of the reason is because I am cooking even more now throughout the whole day, which means more meal preparation and clean up time afterwards. 

It seems like before the Pandemic, I had more of a consistent routine daily/weekly schedule. Do you ever think how much better your daily life would be if your house was really organized? I have read so many wonderful books and articles about organization throughout the past several years. 

Sometimes it is easy for life to seem to get somewhat out of control, such as with all of the changes in 2020. You may feel overwhelmed with so many daily responsibilities to accomplish, without enough time for you to relax a bit. You may even begin to feel anxious and depressed about the situation. 

Maybe you actually started to spend money on shelving units, bins and containers, hoping to bring order to counteract the chaos. Don’t lose hope or motivation. You can turn your situation around. Start with a small, manageable project that won’t take too much time. Be consistent and keep going with this reasonable project until it is completed. It could be cleaning out and organizing one kitchen cabinet or drawer. Successfully finishing smaller tasks will help to build your confidence to tackle larger projects. 

It is very important to understand that organizing is not all about throwing things out, but about identifying what is important to you, prioritizing and maintaining access to what you routinely need. Clutter control and finding the ideal storage area for your individual items are important keys to good organization. Home organization requires patience and consistent efforts. However, the end results are so rewarding.

By learning helpful organizing skills and techniques, you can begin to restore order and balance in your life. Organizing your home and cleaning may provide comforting, peaceful order to your life. 

When families collect too much stuff, the unnecessary clutter can interfere with the tranquility and calmness of the home environment. Too much clutter can actually cause feelings of despair and frustration. Clutter takes up a lot of precious space in your home that could be used much more efficiently.

One of the first things I learned when I was studying to become a professional organizer was the major importance of assigning everything in your house a specific place or “home” so that you will know exactly where to find that item in the future when you are searching for it. This is a good habit to teach all of your individual family members.

You could start in your foyer/entryway area of your house and place a small basket or dish to hold your keys. A larger basket set on an entryway table could temporarily hold library or school books, so they don’t get lost and remain quick and easy to find. A coat rack could nicely hold your seasonal coat and purse. 

I know you can think of several areas throughout your house for organized storage of various items. In the bedroom you can use drawer dividers for socks and tiny items. I have found useful, multi-purpose ottomans to store many things, such as seasonal throw blankets in my bedroom. They are also handy to store excess books. 

In my own closet, if I find clothing that I haven’t worn for a year or is no longer my size, I decide if I want to sell or donate those items or store them. I use slim color coded hangers to display only the clothing that is currently my size and that I plan to actually wear often.

One thing I routinely do with my kitchen items is to try to donate a small appliance at the time that I purchase an upgraded model. I have a small kitchen with limited counter space. I do a lot of cooking every day, so I try to prioritize things carefully in my kitchen. It takes a decent amount of time, but I need to really maintain order inside my small kitchen cabinets for adequate storage purposes.

I find that my dining room table can easily get cluttered with excess grocery supplies or with mail/bills, etc. It definitely is a fabulous habit to keep your kitchen and dining room table clean and free of all clutter. Hopefully, you may have a spare desk or even a dedicated cart of some kind to keep your mail and bills, along with your writing supplies, calendars, notebook and menu planners. 

I keep at least three boxes in the house labeled the following:

1.) Donate

2.) Sell

3.) Put Away

Then when I straighten out rooms throughout the week, it makes it easier to keep things tidy and organized.

There a few things to consider when you are deciding to donate items, such as:

1.) Have you used the item in the past year?

2.) Do you have duplicate items?

3.) Have you upgraded to a newer model?

4.) Are you holding onto the item just for sentimental value?

Part of organizing is deciding what is important to you and finding an appropriate place for your items, so your home can be maintained in an easy manner. You will reap the benefits of a calm, happy, “clutter-free” home environment. Hopefully, you will have more available quality time to spend enjoying your favorite things and more relaxation. Organizing is not about throwing out a lot of household items or buying lots of storage containers.

Don’t feel guilty for accumulating a lot of stuff over the years. Developing a unique smart organizing system that will work for you and your whole family will certainly help you maintain your household.

To create a lasting, successful organizing solution, make your system fit your personality so you feel comfortable with your home surroundings. Create neat order, clear surfaces, simplify your life by designing your own organizing system unique for you and your family!

Step-By-Step Goals For Organizing Your House

The truth is you can really increase your productivity a great deal by simply organizing your belongings around your home and office. Here are some tools to help you when first starting on your goal to organize your life. It is so important to develop a plan. There is nothing that is more potent to achieving your goals than having a specific plan to start off. 

A lot of people set far too broad goals when first embarking on any area of their life. In order for your plan to succeed, you need to have realistic, precise goals that are well-defined and written out. It is a good habit to set long-term and short-term goals. For instance, your long-term goal could be getting your whole home completely organized in a year's time. Your short-term goal could be getting one room in order within a month. 

After you have your goals in mind, write them down on paper and put that paper in a place you can view it often. Maybe you may want to use a planner notebook or a digital app. Knowing a target in your head is not enough; it needs to be in a place where you can view it often and constantly motivate you to achieve your goals. 

Finally, you need to determine the reason why you want something. It may not be enough to simply want to get organized. You need to know why you have this desire. Without wanting something whole-heartedly, it will be harder to achieve it. 

While the above tips may seem simple, it is incredible how many people set out to achieve a target without knowing what they want to get done. The simplest and yet strongest force to achieving your goals is knowing where you are going and why you are going in that direction. Follow these tips to help you get organized and enjoy the process!

Video Titled "How to Organize Mail & Bills (Part 3 of 9 Paper Clutter Series)"

Video Titled "How to Organize Files in Office/Home (Part 2 of 9 Paper Clutter Series)"

You Don’t have to Be Bogged Down with “Stuff”

So just what is a minimalist lifestyle? Why is this so much more than an approach to décor? What does it really mean? “Get everything you want, by discovering you already have it.” Essentially, a minimalist lifestyle simply means reducing the clutter, scaling back your possessions and aiming to say and do more with less. It means appreciating a few things instead of having a huge amount of clutter that you don’t really need or want.

We often see minimalism as an approach to certain designs for devices from companies and on an increasing number of websites. Here, the all-important maxim to follow is ‘communicate, don’t decorate’. That means that unless something is serving an actual purpose, it doesn’t belong in the design. A website doesn’t need a patterned background, it doesn’t need unnecessary menus and it doesn’t flourish filling up every bit of white space.

Every single element should serve a purpose, whether that is to guide the viewers’ eyes in a certain direction, to communicate some key information, or to facilitate an important interaction. If a button doesn’t do anything, it doesn’t need to be there!

Applying Minimal Design to Your Home

This same theory can then be applied to décor. Of course, you don’t need to communicate anything as such when it comes to your home’s decoration but you can accomplish something similar when looking at items of furniture etc.

Minimalist items of furniture are items that are utilitarian in as much as they don’t have lines or decorations that don’t need to be there.

That means that they will be made up of straight lines and they won’t feature things like swirly handles, or unnecessarily elaborate feet. Everything serves a purpose. With that serving as the basis for your décor, you can then continue with that basic concept by adding just a few items that you need while staying away from the temptation to add extra decoration that will serve no real purpose.

This minimalist concept allows for better interactions. By having fewer distracting elements, this approach is able to more effectively direct users to the right points on the screen and encourage the right interactions. It also allows a website design to more effectively scale to different screen sizes when users change devices and it creates more ‘space’ which makes the experience more calming and enjoyable. All these same concepts may apply just the same to your home. When you start removing unnecessary decorations and clutter, you start to make interacting with your home much simpler.

When there are fewer items on your desk, you’ll find that you can find what you want that much more quickly and easily. Likewise, when there is less clutter generally in your interior design, you’ll have less clutter in your visual field. This will make your space that much more calming and relaxing and also make it much easier to keep clean and tidy. And that in turn means you’re now spending less time cleaning and less time digging around for things.

Your home will be clean and attractive more often and you’ll have more time and energy to do the things that you enjoy doing and actually use your space! Your home serves a function. That function is to support the lifestyle that you want to live. So, if an item in your home is not serving that role, then the simple solution is to remove it! And then you can breathe more easily.

Minimalism as a Reaction to Materialism 

More and more people are starting to realize the benefits of actually having less clutter and fewer items and this is resulting in a situation where they are happier with just a few beautiful objects rather than feeling the need to go out and buy everything they see advertised on TV. And what does that lead to as a result? Greater satisfaction and happiness with fewer items!

This makes a massive difference because it means that you’re now going to be happier and spend less time thinking about the things that you don’t have. And you’ll have more money to spend on those select few items and on the things that really make you happy. This is the perfect antidote to our modern, materialistic culture and it is also the very same theory that has been preached by numerous philosophies and spiritual practices for centuries. Happiness doesn’t come from what you own, it comes from what you do with what you own.

You can be the richest person in the world but be incredibly stressed and unhappy. Why? Because you have created a lifestyle that still pushes the limits of your budget. You’ve been accustomed to a certain quality of life that costs a lot of money and involves a lot of hard work. Maintaining this lifestyle takes a lot of effort and yet you are still always thinking about the things that you don’t have and the things you want.

You don’t stop to take a moment and just enjoy the things you have and objects of incredible value and beauty end up being lost in all the noise and losing their value to you. Minimalism is about getting the very most out of what you have and this applies to your personal life. Taking a gratitude attitude means waking up and feeling so lucky that you’re with your partner. It means being overjoyed with your children and with your health and with your freedom.

It means not looking next door and wishing that you had the neighbor’s widescreen TV. It means not wasting money on junk and it means being present. And of course, minimalism means that your happiness isn’t tied up in physical possessions. It means that you can get enjoyment out of your own mind rather than letting that small scratch on your car ruin your day. Life is there to be enjoyed and there is so much out there to be enjoyed right now.

If all you can think about is how much you want the latest toy or gadget though, then you’re not going to have time to stop and enjoy those things. You have to work harder, stay in the office later. But what you don’t realize is that you already have everything you need. It’s time to relax and enjoy it! Many thinkers agree that this is the secret to happiness.

To be able to truly appreciate things and let go of unnecessary stress, distracting desires and that gnawing sense of dissatisfaction. Of course, in a capitalist world, where every company under the sun is constantly showing off its wares, this can be incredibly difficult. 

Declutter Your Closet

When it comes to clothing, most of us have far more than we really need. If you take a good, honest look through your closet, you will find that you have much more than you use. In fact, most people wear only a small percentage of their clothing over and over, and neglect the rest.

Why You Should Declutter Clothing

Having too much of anything takes up not only physical space in your home, but mental space as well. When you are looking for something to wear, having too much clothing makes you feel like you are searching through endless piles of stuff and yet still cannot find something suitable. When you declutter, you will be able to quickly find outfits that you love. This will save you time, and keep your stress levels low.

How Does It Make You Feel and Look?

As you are sorting through your clothing, think about how the item makes you feel. Do you look at it and feel excited to wear it? When it is on your body, does it make you feel and appear attractive and ready to take on the world?

Clothing is much more than a cover. It is a part of who you are, and how you feel in it is the image of yourself that you are presenting to the world. Keep only the clothing that makes you feel confident, and causes you to be proud of who you are.

Are You Keeping It Out of Obligation?

Many of us are harbouring clothing out of guilt, given to us by well-meaning friends and family. Unless someone knows your taste 100% of the time, clothing generally does not make an appropriate gift. Too often we are given an item and then feel stuck with it for an undisclosed amount of time, and we never quite feel right getting rid of it.

If you are keeping clothing you hate just because you feel loyal to the person who gave it to you, go ahead and get rid of it. This will make room for items you love, and you won’t feel guilt every time you glance at it, knowing that it hasn’t been worn and will probably never be.

Have You Worn It in the Past Year?

A good rule of thumb is that anything not worn in the past year you may decide to let go. The reason for the rule of a year is because certain items of clothing and accessories have particular yearly events that they are appropriate for, and it’s ok to keep a few of those special items.

Also, many locations have seasons that are very distinct in temperature. You will have clothing that you don’t ever wear in summer, but faithfully make use of every winter… or vice versa. If you didn’t wear it in the past year’s appropriate season, it is likely that this item is no longer needed, or that it no longer flatters who you have become.

Once you have made choices about what to get rid of, you can throw away any damaged items, sell a few select items and give away the rest to those in need. Organize what is left, and you will see what a difference it makes in your life when you have in your closet only what you need and love wearing. Enjoy your new organized closet and never search for hours for a lost item again.