Organize Your Life – 10 Simple Tips

Sharing is caring!

The goal when you organize your life is to make the time and space for what’s really important to you. Rather than wasting time and space on things that don’t matter to you, when you’re organized you can focus on what you want to do. Begin implementing these 10 simple steps this weekend and get started on organizing your life.

How do you organize your life?

1. Declutter your schedule and your home.
2. Organize your schedule and home by categories.
3. Choose your organizing products carefully.
4. Use clear containers where appropriate.
5. Use open bins where appropriate.
6. File rather than stack items.
7. Label.
8. Make organization pretty.
9. Have a donation box.
10. Schedule organizing refresh time.

Clutter, whether it’s in your schedule or in your home, leads to confusion, wasted time, and stress. Let’s be honest, we all have enough of those three in our lives, we don’t need more. When you take time to organize your life, you clear the space and the time in your life to do and focus on whatever is important to you rather than what chaos forces you to focus on.

Organize Your Life

Declutter

You can’t organize until you first declutter. Most of us have much more than we need or even want in our lives. Decluttering allows you to sort through your items to determine the ones that you truly need and love. You deserve to live with only items that are useful to you and make you happy.

Be ruthless when you declutter. You are making the space for what you really want in your life by removing the items that are only taking up space and time. You can choose whether you want to tackle decluttering in one marathon session or tackle smaller daily decluttering sessions. Use the 31 Days of 10-minute decluttering tasks to guide you through decluttering your home a little every day.

Choose Organizing Products Carefully

All organizing products are not created equal. When selecting products to organize your life, look for top-quality products.

I’m a big fan of Interdesign products. They are extremely well made, easy to clean, come in a wide variety of sizes and are made in the USA.

OXO products are an excellent choice for storing food. They are also very well made and come with an easy-to-open and close lid that keeps food fresh. The canisters are conveniently sized to fit in your hand, making them easy to use.

Look for products that fit perfectly in your space and work perfectly for your unique needs.

• Measure your space (measure twice and purchase once) to find organizing products that will fit in your space.
• Always add an extra 1/4 inch to the measurements of products to compensate products and spaces that are not perfectly even.
• If necessary, measure items that will be stored in the containers to make sure they will fit.
• Consider how you will use the items you’re organizing and what type of organizing products best meet your requirements and preferences.

Organize in Categories

When organizing your life, placing items into categories is a foundational step. You wouldn’t store your socks with boxes of pasta – that just doesn’t make sense. You store your food items together and you store clothing items together – those categories make sense.

When you organize areas, first consider what categories make sense to you in your space. Continue to break broad categories down into smaller categories that make sense to you. For example, a lunch box bin in the refrigerator makes it easy to quickly find the items you need each day to make lunches. Rather than searching through all the items in your refrigerator, you simply pull out the lunch tray and everything you need is together in one category and one bin.

Use Clear Containers

Clear containers take the mystery out of finding what you need. With just a glance, you can quickly find the item.

When you use clear storage containers to organize your life, you often don’t need labels.

Colorful items stored in a clear container can be a decorative item in your space.

Use Open Bins

Organizing systems should be easy to use. Open bins are about as easy as it gets. The bin provides structure and contains items neatly together. The open top means you simply reach in and grab what you need.

Open bins are a great tool to get family members on-board with putting items away and staying organized.

File Items

Most people tend to stack items that are more easily stored when filed vertically:

• Papers
• Books
• Towels
• Clothes
• Plates

When you organize your life, you find that many items are more easily accessed when they are filed rather than stacked.

Just as papers are placed in files and then filed vertically to make them easy to access, organized and filed items make your daily life much easier.

Use Labels

It’s important to label new organization systems. This helps you and your family get used to using the new system. Labels make it clear where to look for items you need and where to put them back when you’re done.

There is no reason to label everything. If the container is clear, you probably don’t need to label it. Label opaque containers, drawers and shelves when there may be some question about where items belong.

Labeling can be functional and also a design element. There are many labeling options available. Choose labels you love and that fit your budget.

Make it Pretty

Make your organization system pretty to make it fun to use. You’ll be excited to use your organization system when it’s pretty. That excitement will help you build your organization habit by using your new system.

It doesn’t have to be expensive to make organization pretty. You can use decorative scrapbook paper or washi tape to dress up organizing bins. When you use washi tape it only takes minutes and pennies to dress up bins and organizing products.

Have a Donation Box

Keep a box or laundry basket designated to collect donations. Whenever you find an item that you no longer need or want, immediately take to your donation box. As soon as the box is full, take the box to your local charity.

Having a designated donation box encourages you to edit out items as you find them in your daily life. If you use your donation box faithfully, you won’t need to have marathon decluttering sessions ever again.

Schedule Organization Refreshes

To organize your life and keep it organized takes discipline. One of the easiest ways to be organized is to make it part of your normal routine and schedule. Make it a habit to:

• Always put items away after you use them.
• Straighten up a space before you leave it and before you go to bed at night.
• Straighten up every weekend.
• Schedule your decluttering and organizing refreshes on your calendar.

Pin now so you always know where to find these tips and products to organize your life, whether it’s this weekend or next month.

You can find all our best organizing ideas in the table below. You can scroll through the table and look for ideas or search for specific ideas with the magnifying glass in the upper right-hand corner (on desktop). Click on the topic and then click through the specific article.