Tag: routines

Good Organizing Habits To Help Keep Your Sanity

April 8, 2020 / The Organizing Lady

Habits, routines, bla, bla, bla, yadda-yadda. How many times do we hear those words and yet fail to fully understand the concept behind them?

I’m guessing these are just words that some of us don’t really take wholeheartedly (or enthusiastically) in the scheme of our daily life.

Whereas a routine is a regular course of procedure, a habit is an acquired behavior pattern regularly followed until it has become almost involuntary (as defined in Merriam-Webster dictionary).

Heaven-forbid, I hope I haven’t lost you in the defining details!

Hate ’em or love ’em, habits and routines do help in managing some of our regular activities. So I’m here to give you a few guidelines that involve being organized that will help put some sanity in your life.

So I’m going to talk about one of the key rules of organizing: Put things away where they belong when done using them.

Everything should have a place, a home, in which it belongs. Our clothes belong in the closet; our books belong on a designated shelf; our kitchen dishes belong in the kitchen cabinet, and so forth.

Beyond that, dirty clothes belong in the hamper; dirty dishes go in the dishwasher or sink to be washed; and books we’re reading belong in a reading spot.

That said, the rule of putting things away applies to just about anything and everything we have around.

In bringing in the mail, for example, it should have a specific place to go (that isn’t on a dining table or end table or plopped on any piece of furniture. Tossing mail to conveniently avoid putting it in its “home” will only build up clutter and extra anxiety later on.

Then there’s the case of putting items in a certain “holding” place and not completing the action to get that item into its proper home.

I’m talking about dirty dishes in this scenario. I know some people who hate washing dishes and pile up dirty dishes in one side of the sink and on the counter for days. Although that is the spot for dirty dishes, the routine would have to include actually washing them (and putting them away) on a daily basis to avoid pile-up.

I’ve probably elaborated enough on the rule to put things away, so I’ll move on to making that habit into a routine.

Simply put, it’s a good idea to incorporate the habit of putting things away into the routine of doing it on a regular or daily basis.

When I’m done with a meal, I make it a routine to clean up the kitchen before I move on to something else. In other words, I don’t actually start something else until I’m done with kitchen cleanup.

And with laundry, when I’m done with washing and drying the clothes, I make it a routine to put my clothes away where they belong before doing something else. The clean clothes don’t sit around for hours or days to get put away – they are done as part of the laundry activity.

My life is calmer as a result of having routines that involve finishing the activities I start. That means I get some sanity in the areas I put attention on.

Get the idea?

Well, give it a try and see how your life goes. You never know how it will change your well being by following this one simple organizing rule.

Cyndi Seidler - making time for yourself

Making More Time For Yourself

March 27, 2020 / The Organizing Lady

My recent article on time – Finding Time To Organize Your Home – was sort of my lighthearted attempt to guide you in finding time to get things done. So now I want to follow that with the plan of making time.

I’ll start with using the comparison to making a meal – we plan what we’re going to eat that night, we make sure to have all the ingredients we need for the meal or recipe we’re preparing, then we proceed to actually make the meal.

The preparations into making the meal help us in expediting how fast we can get this meal done. So therefore, let’s apply that with making time.

As a note, although I’ve thought about this in the past as brushing thoughts, this is the first time I’ve sat down to examine the idea of making time, so please bear with me. I’m actually creating my this concept as we go along.

Now, for the sake of this topic, I’d like to examine routines and how we can shorten them to make time.

In the morning we get up and get ready for work, school, or whatever. We pick out the clothes we want to wear, we eat breakfast, we probably take our vitamins, and so on.

If we were to save just a few minutes of time doing something, we’d actually be making time for something else, especially time for ourselves. See how that works?

Let’s take our morning routine and see how we can shorten it a bit …

Instead of picking out clothes to wear in the morning, why not try picking out your clothes the night before? That could save an average of 5 minutes in the morning for a lot of us.

And breakfast – try a few recipes that you can make ahead, like omelette muffins, which is a favorite of mine. You may have seen these type of muffins at Starbucks where they have egg bites. I like to mix some of my favorite omelette ingredients into muffin pans and pour beaten eggs into them. I store them in the fridge and pop them in the oven for a few minutes in the morning. Check out my recipe for Keto Egg Muffin Cups: http://yummyketorecipes.com/keto-egg-muffin-cups/

Yes, I do cooking videos, too.

Okay, anyway … so then there’s taking vitamins. I presort my vitamins into daily pill organizers (marking the day of the week). This way I just dump the day’s vitamins into my mouth and that’s it. I think I save another 5 minutes doing this.

So now I’ve now saved several minutes doing some preparations ahead of time. This means I’ve now MADE TIME for something else. And that brings me to the subject of this article which is making time for yourself. Whatever way you choose to use it, it’s for yourself. See?

Shortening our routines is just one way to make more time for ourselves. The processes in which we do things, like work, is yet another way.

Clearing off your desk when you’re done working at it is an example of streamlining our work process because, when we start work the next day, we have a clear desk to work on.

I could get into a number of ways you can shorten the tasks you do, but I’m hoping you get the idea by now and can find creative ways to make time.

I hope this gives you a start in doing that. I’d love if you shared what you’ve done in the comments.