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Amber’s Home and Office Organizing Blog index

Making Organizing Fit Your Time

Finding Time to Organize

Finding time to organize is always a struggle. There’s always pressure to carve out time, but realistically how does one do it? I want to be clear and explain there are two expectations here or two different aspects of organizing that one has to realize or understand.

The first is... if clutter has been accumulating in any area for months or years, it will take hours or in some case days to catch back up. That is what I describe as an organizing project. The project could have several aspects and parts to it. Some that need help from a professional other parts that may not. 

The second is.... organizing to maintain a space. Just like most of you, I too have to straighten my closets every once an awhile, clean out my filing cabinet, clear off my desk, sweep out the garage, etc. Those tasks should take no longer than 15 minutes maybe an hour tops. 

So finding TIME to organize has lots of meanings. If you have organizing projects ahead of you, yes, you will have to carve out a block of time, whether that’s a weekend or a day, etc. It will need to be scheduled on the calendar. You may need to take a day off of work or hire a babysitter. On the other hand, all of us(including professional organizers) need to make the small organizing routines a habit. By changing daily habits we will ensure long term success on the big projects we spent lots of time on. 

After speaking with a mom of teenagers this last week, we agreed on this approach. Organizing a teen’s bedroom which has gotten way out of control may take 6-9 hours to organize. However, later when weeks pass and even months pass, mom is able to enforce the systems and structures we set up. Then the weekly “cleaning of his/her bedroom” is manageable on a smaller scale. 

The Chicago Tribune this last weekend had an article that spoke to breaking down tasks by time. Read it here. 

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