How To Get Organized And Stay Organized It took so long to organize your room and each closet, but it only takes a few days for you to return to your old bad habits. Rushing out the door, you toss something into the drawer, vowing to put it in its proper place later. The kids come home from school and toss their clothes in the closet and on the floor instead of hanging them up. Slowly but surely, the books are no longer organized, or even not put away. Learning how to stay organized is one thing, but remaining organized is a completely different matter. If you want to know how to stay on top of the organized lifestyle you've laid out for yourself, see Step 1 to get started.
Put everything away as soon as you can. This is one of the easiest ways to stay organized. Sure, it's great that you organized your home, your office space, or anything else in your life that needed to be put in its place, but that won't mean much if every time you come home, you throw your keys, the mail, umbrella, or other countless items wherever you feel like it because you're tired and you'll get to it later. Making a conscious effort to do this as much as you can will make a huge difference in how organized everything will look -- and how much better you'll feel. Of course, it may not be realistic to expect you to put everything in its place the second you get to work or the moment you walk in the door. It can help a lot to have a "sorting bin" near the entrance of your front door so you can toss the items into the bin, knowing that you'll have to organize them as soon as possible. However, you can't let this bin pile up: you should make a goal of keeping it as empty as possible and going through it every 12 or 24 hours. A lot of the trouble with this is mental. You may think that you don't possibly have the energy to sort through your mail or your school backpack, but if you just say, "I'm going to spend five quick minutes organizing this stuff," you'll see that the task is manageable. And the longer you let things pile up, the less manageable everything will feel.
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Make your bed when you wake up. This may sound like a small point, but if you make an effort to put this into your routine, you'll be much more able to stay organized. An unmade bed is a sign of a disordered life, and the sooner you make the bed, the better you'll feel about facing your day. Seeing a neatly-made bed before you start your daily tasks can make you feel like your life is in order and that you're capable of facing the day. If your bed isn't made, it's much more likely that the rest of your bedroom will look chaotic, and that you won't be able to stay as organized as you'd like. If you leave your bed unmade, that's like giving yourself an invitation to leave your clothes piled on the floor, your makeup spilled all over your dresser, and letting old papers you don't need pile up on your desk. If your bed is made, it's a signal that you'll make sure that the rest of the room is up to par with the bed in terms of organization. Make a to-do list for the day. You should make a goal of creating a to-do list toward the beginning of every day. This will set your priorities for you, keep you focused, and will make you feel accomplished for doing the things you set out to do. However, different forms of list making work for different people, so you shouldn't feel compelled to do exactly what wikiHow or other websites tell you to do; find a list-making method that works for you and stick to it. Here are some things to keep in mind as you make your lists: Consider making a weekly to-do list. Then, break up the things you need to get done each day so that all of the stuff you have to do feels less overwhelming. You'll feel a lot better about getting through that long list if you decide that you only have to get three things done on Monday. Make a "top 3" list for the day. These are the things you really have to get done to feel better and to move forward. Don't do something easier and more fun, like returning a friend's phone call, when there are more pressing things to attend to, like paying those electric bills. Don't feel compelled to write down every little thing you have to do. This can actually lead you to feel a bit more overwhelmed. If you have some of the easier tasks firmly planted in your head and go about doing them, you'll feel better about checking them off your list. Avoid making an incredibly long list. Though your list can include some "reach" items that you'd like to do this week but can do the following week without the world ending, you should stick to the things you actually have time to accomplish. If you write down 40 tasks, then you'll just feel bogged down and overwhelmed and won't know where to start. When you make your daily or weekly list, you can separate the items in terms of urgency. You can label them, "Things I have to get done today," "Things that need to get done this week" or "Things I have to do by the end of the month." This will help you put things in perspective and will help you prioritize your tasks.
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