Organize 365 Podcast Episode 145 - Getting Organized Step 2: Organizing

This episode is brought to you by my virtual organizing sessions. Would you like me to help you get your home and life organized? Listen at the end of this podcast to find out how to sign up for virtual organizing sessions, or go to organize365.com/virtual to learn more. Welcome to the Organize 365 Podcast. My name is Lisa Woodruff, and I'm a professional organizer and blogger in Cincinnati, Ohio. I want to help you get your home organized and help you organize life stages and unexpected events. So sit back, relax, and let's get organized. Today I'm going to cover step 2 in the 3 steps to getting organized, and step 2 is organize. And this is when we always think that we're gonna get organized. This is the step we think about, the one where we get to walk down the aisle at Target and And get the brand new containers. That's where we always start. Don't you wanna just jump in and start right there? That's where I always wanna jump in and start. But every time I do that, it influences what I decide to keep and how I store things instead of my things influencing those decisions. And when I was a brand new professional organizer, I was enamored with the professional organization products just like you are. And I knew where to find those cute containers at about 7 different stores within a 5-mile radius of me. And whenever I would go on an organization consultation and I knew I'd be organizing the kitchen the next day or whatever room we were going to organize, I would go to many of those stores and I would buy all these fun gadgets and organizers and I would load my car up with them. And then when I would actually get through these steps of organizing that I'm going to tell you, A lot of times I hadn't even bought the right product based on what we ended up keeping after the decluttering and organizing, or we only used a few of the items that I had. And here's the big secret about getting organized. You almost always don't need anything new. Now we're going through the 100-Day Home Organization Challenge. I'm having so much fun over in the Facebook group. Everybody's showing me pictures. We're in the kitchen right now. They're showing me pictures of their drawers and their counters. And we're just a couple days in and people are already saying, oh, I need to go buy this, or oh, I need to go buy that. And they're correct. They don't have to, but they can because they have gone through the 5 steps of organizing that space. So I'm going to give you some examples of that as well. But after I'd been a professional organizer for about 18 months, I stopped going to the stores entirely. And the first day I would show up to organize a space, I wouldn't bring any organizers with me at all. And if I was at that home for only one session or one day, I would just leave a list of what the homeowner might want to go buy as organization solutions. Now, 5 years in, there are a few things we do keep in our car that we find that most homeowners don't have and do need when we're organizing certain spaces. And one of those I'm going to be mentioning in the podcast today, which are the drawer organizer inserts that I use in a kitchen. So I'll be telling you about those in a minute. But before we get started on that, I want to talk about what does being organized mean. And it may mean something different to you than it does to me, but I came up with 10 things that being organized means to me. So when I say I'm organized or I'm going to get organized, what that means to me is everything has a place and I know where to find things, like to the point that when my husband calls me on the phone, I can guide him in our house to where that thing I— everything has a place and I know where to find things, which leads to number 3. I don't spend any time looking for things. And the few times I do have to look for things, it takes me a long time to find them because they're really lost because somehow they got set down or dropped behind something and they're not in an obvious place. Now, you may not know this, but the average person in the United States loses 55 minutes A day looking for things. So right there, when you aren't looking for things, think about the amount of time that you're gonna have back in your schedule. Number 4, being organized to me means I feel organized and I feel put together. Kind of like when I used to get dressed once I was in high school, my mom used to say, you're naked if you don't have any lipstick on. Like, you have to have lipstick on. So you'll see I always wear lipstick all the time. Um, I'm not telling my daughter that, by the way, but that was something I was told growing up. And so I feel great when I have lipstick on. If I didn't have lipstick on, like it's one of the first things I do in the morning, I don't feel put together. Being organized makes me feel great, makes me feel put together. And number 5, I feel like I can have friends over and feel great. Like I'm not apologizing. I don't care if there are dirty dishes. Like my house is organized and it's pretty good, which leads to number 6. My house looks good. It's not perfect, but it's good. Like, we're not going for perfection here. We just want to be comfortable in our home and comfortable having people in our home. I feel confident in my abilities when I am organized. Like, when I'm unorganized, I feel scatterbrained. I feel like I'm not as professional as I actually am. I feel like I know so much about my kids and what they need medically, educationally, socially, But when I'm not organized and I can't back that up, or I'm late for an appointment, I don't feel organized. And that makes me feel not as confident in whatever area I'm in. Number 8, I don't have too little or too much. And when you really get into organizing, you can end up having too little. Like, you'll declutter everything. Sometimes the cat, you're like, oh shoot, we need the cat. We gotta bring the cat back. And you start to get rid of so much stuff in the first step of organizing, which is decluttering, because if you don't get to this step of organizing, which is the actual organization, you don't feel settled yet, so you just keep decluttering, decluttering, decluttering, and you end up with too little. So being organized means you don't have too little or too much. You have what is comfortable for you. I have choices in how I spend my time when I'm organized. Unexpected things come up and I have margin for those. They— we're always going to have unexpected things, so I'm able to reprioritize and do what needs to be done. Choices is something that I get when I'm organized. And the last thing is, I am able to make forward progress on my goals and my projects when I'm organized. I'm trying to slow down my talking because my editor said that the last podcast I just did about decluttering Was so fast, so I apologize. I get so excited about getting organized, but I get even more excited about being able to break down in steps to you how I figured out to live this organized, productive life, which has an abundance of time. And that is the thing everyone wants, right? Like, we want time. You don't want to organize your house so that you have to spend the rest of your life organizing your house. Is my assumption. Now, I love organizing houses, and lots of people, once they get done organizing, they become professional organizers. So just fair warning, this may become your profession. But for the most part, organization is a means to an end for you so that you can get time and peace and confidence and feel great and feel put together and stop spending all your time looking for things So that you can make forward progress on your goals and your projects. What are those? You may not even be thinking about that anymore because it's too depressing to even think about because you cannot conquer the gosh darn laundry. If you could get the laundry washed, dried, and put away, maybe we could think about reading a book or leaving the house one day not in your pajamas, right? I mean, I understand. I have 100%. I've been there. And when you are organized, you make forward progress on your goals and your projects. And that is the goal. All right, before I dive into the 5 steps to organizing, I want to give you one caution. You will not get this 100% right the first time. Yep. No matter what you're organizing, your goal is to get it to be 80% to 90% better. The last 10% comes in step 3, which we will cover next week. Even as a professional organizer, when I come in and I organize your home, I will now say, we will get this 80 to 90% of the way there. Because of TV, people think we could come in and make it perfect and customized, and it's amazing what professional organizers do. But A, we're not mind readers, and B, we can't take it the last 10%. We'll talk about that next week. Okay, so you now know how it's gonna feel when you get organized, and we're not going for perfectionism, right? All right, let's dive in. First, I'm going to tell you the 5 steps, then I'm going to break them down, then I'm going to apply them to the 4 same areas that we talked about last week. So the 5 steps in organizing are: number 1, get a big picture plan for that space. Number 2, combine like items. Number 3, match your items to the space. Number 4, buy organizers. And number— I think I said that was 4, not 5. And number 5, clean and finish. So what do each of those mean? Number 1, get a big picture plan for the space. I'm— I love this when I come into people's homes and they tell me, this isn't working, this isn't working, this isn't working. And I say, okay, how do you use your kitchen? Do you ever go in your home office? These 3 children share this room. How do they use this room? Like, tell me how you use this room. Day 1 on the 100-Day Home Organization Challenge is looking at your kitchen And figuring out what works, what doesn't work, and where the zones should be. So a big picture plan for the space that we're organizing. Number 2, combine like items. If you wanna find nail clippers in your house, where are they? They should all be in one location. So you're gonna combine all the nail clippers out of every single room and locate those in one place. You're gonna combine them all together. Number 3, match your items to the space that you have. So this is great when you're in kitchens, like you may rearrange where things are in the kitchen because you have too many items for that drawer or not enough for that drawer. So you're going to match the items that you have to the space allotted. Number 4 is when you get to buy organizers. I don't think that needs an explanation. And number 5, clean and finish. So let's talk about this in the 4 areas that we tackled last week. We're going to do the Sunday basket, master closet, kitchen, and your schedule, which is your to-do list and your calendar. Starting with the Sunday basket. We ended last week, we'd already shredded and thrown away all the papers we didn't need. We'd taken the papers that need to be filed and we put them wherever our filing cabinet is and we just left them there. And what was left in our laundry basket were the actionable papers, papers that we had to do something with. We had to read them, fill them out, pay them, mail them, respond to them, do something with them. So step 1 is get a big picture plan for this space. The big picture plan is that we have one place that papers go and that we're going to go through it weekly. When you get the mail, it gets dropped in the Sunday basket. When your child brings you something that you need to read or fill out, it goes in the Sunday basket. When you realize you have to refill a prescription, the medicine bottle goes in the Sunday basket. When you buy a home improvement project, like you're going to fix a doorknob, the doorknob goes in the Sunday basket. So we have the picture— big picture is we have one place for all of these to-dos. And these actionable items, and we're going to go through it each week. Step 2 is to combine like items. When you first make a Sunday basket, you just have random paper in there. Sometimes you have 2 papers, more likely you have 40 to 100 papers in there. The way that you combine like items in the Sunday basket is I use slash pockets. Slash pockets are plastic binder inserts. Usually they have tabs on them. They're always made by Avery. Sometimes there's an off-store brand when you go buy these. They're always in the office supply section of every single store. Any store that has an office supply section, including your grocery store, probably has slash pockets. They're bright colored, and why I like them instead of a file— like, things fall out of a file. Things will not fall out of a slash pocket. Slash pockets are colored, but they're opaque. So so you can see through them. I also like slash pockets because you can put in regular size paper or little notes, business cards, they'll fit any size item will go in there and they won't fall out. And then if you decide to put things in a binder, these slash pockets will go straight into a binder. So combining your items or combining them into slash pockets. Number 3 is to match your items to the space. So your space, your Sunday basket, to start is a laundry basket. The best size laundry Sunday basket is one about the size of a watermelon. A basket that will hold a binder is ideal, but it doesn't need to be a big basket. It ideally will live on a kitchen counter, on an office desk, or maybe on the end table in your family room. It needs to be very accessible, match your decor, and something that you like when you see it and will use it every single day. So it has— so when you're matching your items to the space, you want something about the size of a watermelon, which means you're going to have to empty it every single Sunday. You're going to have to go through it every single Sunday. Otherwise, the Sunday basket will explode onto the counter, which is not where we want it. Number 4 is to buy organizers. If you don't have a Sunday basket, if you're still using a laundry basket, this is when you go buy a Sunday basket. The best place to get a Sunday basket, the easiest, cheapest, fastest way to get a Sunday basket is to go to Michael's Arts and Crafts store if you have one in your area. They usually have a 50% off coupon. They have a whole aisle of baskets And pick one. You can also go to Target or Walmart or use some kind of a tote or a bag. There are lots of places where you can find an organizer like that. Then step 5, clean and finish. The next area we're going to talk about is your master closet. When we left the master closet last, you had just gotten rid of 20 to 50% of your clothing because you took it all out of your closet Put it on your bed, tried it all on, and then you put back in your closet what fit you liked and you wanted. In theory. So step 1 is to get a big picture plan for that space. Once you, and hopefully your husband, not always easy to do, have done this, you're able to look at your closet a little bit differently. Everything still might not fit in there. And I'll give you some solutions for that in a minute. So we're going to possibly move things, but I remember after I had done this a couple years in a row, my big picture plan for that space was to swap where Greg and I hung our clothes. And I actually moved all mine to where he hangs his and all his to where I hang mine. So that's the big picture plan if you're going to do any big, you know, reorganizing of all these clothes are going to switch places. Step 2 is to combine like items. So you may hang all of your shirts together, all of your bottoms together. Another way to combine like items is to have your items hung seasonally. I have my winter on the bottom and summer on the top, and then I swap them as each season comes. You also may divide them by the type of clothing it is. I have a little section in my closet which are for speaking engagements, conferences, and the book tour. So I have some professional clothing. That's not mixed in with all of my other clothing. So that's combining your like items. Now step 4 is to buy organizers. And when you're in the closet, there are a lot of things you could end up buying. You might end up buying a closet system or moving shelving. And that's what I did in my kids' closets. They have standard closets where you open a door and it was 2, you know, double hanging rods with the shelving. I took all of that out and I don't know how to explain this on a podcast, but if you open up a closet and straight ahead you see 2 feet of hanging and then there's a foot of hanging to the right and a foot of hanging to the left. I took those shelves out, like, so there's nothing left in the closet whatsoever. Then if you actually open the closet door and you step in the closet and you turn to the right where there used to be a little bit of shelving or hanging behind the wall there, I put small rods, double hanging rods on those 2 walls. So I made mini walk-in closets for my kids. When you open up— well, actually, I just took off the doors that go to their closets. They don't even have doors on their closets anymore. I put those in the basement. So their closet is always open, but when you look in there, there are no clothes. The clothes are hanging to the right and to the left, and they're double hung. That's a very odd way to do a closet. I've never seen anybody else do a closet like I did, but it— I love it. I love it. The closet feels so much more open. We don't have that door in the room anymore. And I have adjusted as the kids have grown. They're now adult size. I've adjusted those bars so that they have double hang. So in Abby's closet, she has double hang on one side, and on the other side I put in shelves, just regular old shelves, and that's where she puts like her intimates because she got rid of her dresser like I did. In Joey's closet, he hangs everything, so he has double hang on both sides, so he doesn't do any folding of his clothes. That's a very out-of-the-box solution for organizing your closet, and I will put a link to that— let me write it down— link to kids' closet in the post so you could see what I'm talking about. But that's how you match your items to your space. My kids weren't going to get walk-in closets. We're going to live here while they're in high school and probably when they're young adults. Their bedrooms are very small, but I'm making it work. Another thing you might want to do is And I'll put a link to this also. I do this thing called a shoe wall. I do this a lot in a lot of closets, but Greg and I don't have a lot of shoes. But ClosetMaid makes these great, and I'll link to ClosetMaid. ClosetMaid makes these great shoe organizers. They come in 24 or 31 inches long and they can hold, I think, 12 pairs of shoes, 9 to 12 pairs of shoes depending on the size of your shoes. And they stack. So they're like $12, $12 or $14 each. So if you have a closet and there's space to put it on a wall, Greg and I just have 2 of them stacked on each side of our closet, and that's only about 30 inches high. So then we have hanging clothes above that. But in some closets, some walk-in closets, I can find a 24-inch space in there where we can put these Floor to ceiling, and literally these ladies have shoe walls that go from the floor all the way up to the ceiling. It costs less than $100, and it looks amazing. So it doesn't take a lot of money, it just takes some ideas and some ingenuity to make your space work for you. So that would be buying organizers. One more idea I'm going to give you— well, 2 more ideas because I wrote them down. I just get So many ideas. Organizing your closet. One of the things I did the last time I organized my closet was I got flocked hangers. You know, those hangers that are thinner and they have like fabric on them? Because I wear a lot of sleeveless, they're not camis, but they're kind of like that in the summer, sleeveless. And I found tops, I guess, tops. And they're not cotton 'cause cotton always wrinkles. I don't know what they are, probably polyester. But if you hang those on a plastic hanger, They fall all the time and they fall in my daughter's closet. It was driving me crazy. I was doing the laundry, hanging it up, and then it would be all over her floor and then I'd have to wash it again. It wasn't even dirty. So I bought flocked hangers for myself the last time that I went through my closet. And I'm just about to do this in Abby's room and it's an idea I got when I was responding to a Facebook post. I don't know if you're in the Facebook group or not, but just go to organized365.com/facebook. And you'll get the link to join our free Facebook group. I'd love to have you in there. There was a lady who had kids that were sharing a bedroom, and she was having a hard time having them each have their own space in their bedroom. We're totally off the subject of closets, but I told her to go to Walmart and buy bed risers. I think they're $9 or $12, and they're just these little plastic cubes that you put the legs of your bed in, and it raises your bed up about 6 or 8 inches, but it's up high enough that then you can store things under a traditional bed, like just put any kind of tubs under there. If you use the under-the-bed organizers, they're more expensive, they're awkward to get in and out underneath of a bed, and for kids, it's fun to sleep, you know, 8 inches higher than you were and to put some bigger, easier-to-use bins underneath that bed. So I'm about to do that in Abby's room to see if she wants to raise up her bed So she can add in tubs under her bed to give her more space. Because now that my kids are in high school and they're living in their little mini apartments, that's what I call their bedrooms, their mini apartments. If you have kids that are looking to organize their space, especially girls, I did a whole series last June about kids organizing their bedrooms, and I teach them to look at them as their own mini apartments. And then, so they have to have all their stuff fit in the room, so this is another way to get stuff under the bed. Back to the closet, why I'm telling you this at all. If your closet is really, really full and there's just not enough space, put your bed on bed risers and put stuff underneath your bed that is off-season or dressy. We put our bed on bed risers this fall because I had to get a new bed frame, whatever, long story, the bed broke. But our dog sleeps under our bed. Hunter is our dog. He sleeps under our bed and the new bed frame was gonna be too low, he wouldn't be able to sleep under it. And I'm a doting parent, so I had to figure out a way for my bed to let my dog sleep under my bed. So we put our queen-size bed on bed risers, and it's way higher, and I love— it's like a princess. You're sleeping on a princess bed. It's so high, and the dog can sleep under the bed still. So that's why I figured out bed risers. All right, so buy organizers, clean, and finish. Let's go over to the kitchen. Step 1 in organizing the kitchen is get a big picture plan for the space. Now, in a master closet, you're not very often going to switch where you and your spouse hang your clothes or rip out all the shelving in your kids' closets like I did. But if you live in your house a long time, like we've been in our house over 20 years, we went from having no kids to babies to toddlers To school-aged kids, to middle schoolers, to now basically we're living with young adults. That kitchen has been used so many different ways over the last 20 years, I cannot even explain it to you. So when you're looking at your kitchen, I want you to get a big picture plan for the space. When we didn't have any kids, we had a lot of entertaining items in our kitchen, a lot of decorative stuff and— Decorative stuff. Wedding gifts. Then when the kids were babies and toddlers, you have to figure out where do you put all those sippy cups and plastic plates and bottles and bottle washers and formula and baby food and all that stuff. Then as your kids get into preschool and school, you need to think about, okay, where do we store the food? What do we want them to have access to? What don't we want them to have access to? Let's make a lunch packing station so that they can pack their own lunches. Then when you get into middle school, you want to teach your kids how to use the oven and the microwave and the toaster, and my daughter makes dinner for us now that she's in high school. And in our family, we all have very different tastes in what we want to eat and very different schedules, so by the time you're living with high schoolers and young adults, that kitchen almost functions like a cafeteria or a mini restaurant almost. Like, there— we have different drawers in our refrigerator. There are things that are just dad's things for lunch because he'll go to the grocery store and buy all kinds of food thinking he has stuff for lunch, and then our teenagers will have eaten it before Monday. If you have teenagers, you know exactly what I'm talking about. So then it becomes organizing that kitchen so that everybody kind of has a place where they can keep their food or their favorite kind of beverages or whatever appliances that they like to use. So you really have to get a big picture plan for how you're going to use your kitchen, and especially if you're raising children, about every— I would say, well, I do this every school year, but at a minimum every 2 to 3 years, really look at the ages of the kids and how you want to plan that space. So let's get into number 2, combining like items, and I'm going to specifically talk about utensils, like not silverware, but the flippers and the And the tongs and the spatulas, all of those things. I want you— when I say combine like items, I'm not talking about going drawer by drawer here. I want you to take everything that's in the crock on the counter and all of the drawers, empty it all out onto your counter or kitchen table at one time. All of it. The little cheese spreaders and the skewers and, and the rolling pin. All of it. Get it all out. And I want you to combine like items. Okay, these are all grilling items, these are all baking items, these are all spatulas. And if you— this is a little different than the last time you decluttered, so you might declutter a little bit more here. And when you combine these items, I want you to think about after you are done decluttering your kitchen, are you still pressed for space? Like, if you have plenty of space to keep everything in your kitchen at the same time, This isn't gonna apply. But if you have a smaller kitchen or you're an avid cook and you have more stuff than you have space for, I want you to think as you're combining your like items right now. Are any of the things that you have seasonal? Like, do you make a bunch of cookies and do a lot of baking in the fall, but you really don't in the winter, summer, and spring? Or do you have grilling items and you use those all summer long, but you never use 'em from December to March? If that's the case, then I want you to take those items, get some kind of a plastic box for $2 or $5, label it grilling items, baking items, birthday, anything birthday related, cupcake making, cookie making, whatever it is, and put everything you need for that in these plastic bins and store them somewhere other than in your kitchen. Like I always make a turkey In November and December, I make 2 to 4 turkeys, and then I don't make them again. So our turkey roaster and our turkey tong things that go in there to lift— turkey lifters, I guess— and our squirter thing. I'm so not a kitchen person. Our squirter thing, um, baster, our baster. Those 3 things are in my basement right now because I'm recording this in January. And even though I make 2 to 4 turkeys from November to December, as soon as I clean them, I put them back in the basement. Every time I go to make a turkey, I go in my basement storage room and get those things out. So you don't have to keep all of your kitchen stuff in your kitchen. If it is something like— okay, another thing. When my kids were on that gluten-free, casein-free diet, I learned how to make donuts at home. See, I can cook, I just choose not to. That's what Greg keeps saying. So I have this certain round slotted spoon thing that's really big, but it's great for whenever you fry anything, which we almost never do, but we sometimes do. Especially when Greg fries fish. So that doesn't need to be kept in the kitchen. That can be kept with our summer stuff because that's when we make fish. That gets stored in the basement as well. So just because it belongs in the kitchen doesn't mean it has to stay in the kitchen. Now, now you should have less items, and I want you to look at how many things you emptied out. Your crock, a couple of drawers probably. Do you need all— do you still need that utensil crock? No. You might not. Like, you might have one because your mom had one, because you got one when you got married, but you never thought about the fact that these utensils really could be in a drawer. And if you've cleaned out enough space, it could be in a drawer and then not on your counter, and then your counter is clearer. Those are some of the things I want you to think about. And then you get to buying organizers, number 4. So there is a specific drawer organizer that I will put in the post link That I like to use. It is actually made for organizing bedroom drawers of your intimates, and these come folded. These drawer organizers come folded, and then you assemble them. You just snap them together. You open them up. But what I love about them is they're really, really long, and a spatula or a wooden spoon will fit in them. And almost any drawer organizer that you find will not fit a spatula or a wooden spoon in them. So that's why I like these. So I have those as a link. Finding kitchen supplies, organizing your kitchen supplies can be really, really fun. Number 3 or 4, let's talk about organizing your schedule, which I'm gonna talk about your to-do list and I'm also gonna talk about your calendar. Number 1, get a big picture plan for that space. So now we're talking the space of time. So when we look at our schedule of our to-dos, What are the big projects that you want to accomplish right now? And only pick 1 to 3 off of that list. For your big picture plan for your space of your calendar, again, what are the big rocks? What are the 3 things that if you could only do 3 things on your calendar, what are those 3 things? Pick those. Number 2, combine like items. Now, this is kind of fun. I like— when you look at a to-do list that has 20 items on there, and remember when I had you make the to-do list last week, I said that work was just a little line on your thing right next to work, clean out silverware drawer, do all laundry, pay bills. Work— I mean, work takes a lot of time, but it was only a tiny little line on that list, right? I want you to combine some of those other little tasks into a block like work. So obviously if you work for a living, that is going to be one of your big rocks, not really a choice. So it's going to be one of your projects and it's going to go on your calendar and you're going to schedule out that work time. And make sure if you work 8 to 5, don't just put 8 to 5 on the calendar because you know it's at least 7:30 to 5:30, probably 7 to 6 with traffic if you don't work from home. Like when you put in work, Put in the commute time too so that you see that big block like, okay, that whole day is shot because I'm driving and I'm working. But you don't need to put in, you know, laundry 30 minutes, bill paying 30 minutes, going through the Sunday basket 30 minutes. You can come up with big rocks and chunks of time. This is how you're combining. And you can make administrative tasks, housekeeping tasks, And home improvement tasks are 2 that I'm gonna talk about, or 3 that I'm gonna talk about right now. Boy, I'm really off on my numbering today. So administrative tasks for my business. Every morning I just put an hour-long block in there for administrative tasks, which would be checking my bank accounts, checking my email, responding to Facebook, you know, all of those kind of things that I can't really anticipate what's going to be in there, but I do know that I'm going to need to spend time doing it. And I just call those administrative tasks. At home, some of your administrative tasks would be paying bills, going through the Sunday basket, refilling prescriptions. Those kind of things are administrative, clerical things that you need to do every week or every month. And make a list of those so when you have your administrative tasks time, 30 minutes, 60 minutes, 90 minutes, whatever it is for you, then you go to your list, your checklist of what you usually do during that time. Then there are housekeeping tasks, which would be clean the kitchen floor, vacuum the house, change out the furnace filter, clean the bathrooms, all of those cleaning housekeeping tasks. Don't put on your calendar vacuum, clean the floor, whatever. Just put in a housekeeping task block and you'll figure out yourself how much time you have and how much time you need and, and eventually figure out what that is. And then put in a home improvements task chunk, or on your to-do list, think about home improvement tasks. A lot of times when we say we have to clean the house, we don't necessarily have to clean the house. Some of it's administrative, some of it's cleaning, some of it's forward-moving home improvement type things, and some of it's just pleasure like decorating. So start looking at these tasks Differently. And then that's when it gets easier to see, okay, each week I spend about 90 minutes doing administrative tasks, about 4 hours doing cleaning housekeeping tasks, and about an hour doing home improvement tasks. So if we had the ability to hire a housekeeper, I would save 4 hours a week even though she comes every other week. And that's what's happened for me. Now you're left with, okay, I have 90 minutes of administrative tasks, about 30 minutes of housekeeping tasks, And 90 minutes of home improvement tasks, and now I have an extra 4 hours that I can use some other way. Laundry is its own bird, like we're not going to talk about laundry right now. It's a hot button for everyone. Number 3 is match your items to your space. Now, once you start thinking about administrative tasks, housekeeping tasks, and home improvement tasks, if you work Monday through Friday, 9 to 5, which we've just discussed is really like 7:30 to 6 or something like that. Then you could say, okay, I'm gonna break up that house cleaning tasks, which I know is 4 or 5 hours, into an hour a day, and I'm always gonna do it from 7 to 8 every single night. Or I'm gonna keep it as a big block of 4 to 5 hours and I'm gonna put it on Saturday morning. And when you look at your calendar, once you start putting these blocks in, you'll be able to move things around based on the time you have, how long they take, and your energy level. Cleaning for me is pretty mindless. It's physical, so if you work a physical job, you're probably not going to want to come home and clean your house. But if you work a mental job, like you're a lawyer or a writer, when you come home, your mind might be spent, but your body's been sitting all day, so you have no problem cleaning your house. But if you do a physical job, when you come home, your physical body is spent, but mentally maybe you have more energy. Administrative tasks tend to be more mental, less physical. So maybe you do your administrative tasks Monday through Friday, and on Saturday morning you do your cleaning, and vice versa. Home improvement tasks generally need a block of time. They aren't as easy to break up. So like, you're going to paint something— well, you're not going to spend 5 minutes a day painting because all you're going to end up doing is getting everything out and putting everything away every day. So you need a 2-hour block of time to do a home improvement task Usually. Look, the way you look and the way you chunk these things are going to help you make more progress. Step 4 is to buy organizers. This is when you get the planner, or I'm going to give you a link to getting a planner sheet, a free planner sheet. And this is what I do every Sunday, or most Sundays. I go through my Google Calendar and I get out this physical planner sheet and I write down everything that I have for the week. I used to use a physical planner all the time, and when I moved to my Google Calendar, I didn't trust Google so much that for a year I had a paper planner and a Google Calendar. It was kind of crazy. I think the other problem was I had a BlackBerry and it was hard to update my calendar from my phone. Now that I have an iPhone and that's easy to do, I don't have the need for a physical planner anymore. But maybe you do, so whatever works best for you. This is where you get to go to the office supply store and go crazy and get a special notebook or a legal pad or a planner or whatever you really love to do for your planning. Now you can get my free planner checklist thing by going to organize365.com/newsletter. That'll sign you up for my newsletter and that will give you the free planner checklist as well. Now, once you've done these 5 steps to organizing, organizing feels amazing. But after a while, you realize that something is missing. The last 10% is step 3 of organizing, and most people never get there. And I just realized what it was last month. Step 3 is increased productivity. And I'll be telling you all about that next week. Getting organized is really where the 100 Day Home Organization Challenge shines. If you have been disorganized for a while, or you're stuck and unable to find new organizational solutions for your home, or you never really learned how to be organized in the first place, this is the program for you. In the show notes or the newsletter, you can join the 100 Day Home Organization Challenge. Yes, the challenge is still open and I don't have plans of closing it for quite a while. Just jump in with us and get started. There are payment plans available, or you can try a week for free and make sure it's a good fit for you in the links in the show notes. Or maybe you're looking for a little more personalized help. I would love to learn more about you and your home and be your virtual organization coach. Listen to episode 143 to find out more. Okay, one last thing. Are you on my newsletter list? Every Friday, I send out an email with notes from the podcast and links to everything mentioned. I know I listen to podcasts in the car and frequently forget to go check the show notes and follow up on what I learned. I also talk fast, like I mentioned before. It's just me! This week's email has the 5 steps to organizing right in the email. Just go to organize365.com/newsletter to get my weekly planning sheet that I mentioned and get on my weekly newsletter list so that you will get the next newsletter that comes out next Friday. I am so excited to be offering virtual organization services in 2017. I have been professionally organizing clients for over five years, and in podcast number 143, I really explain how the coaching and strategy part of professional organizing can be done through phone calls. Virtual organizing is perfect for you if you cannot find a professional organizer in your area, or you do not want someone else in your home. You might really want my input on your situation. And you want to make quicker, focused progress in your home. I know you get stuck, and I would love to help you come up with ideas and troubleshoot exactly solutions that will work for you in your home. To learn more, listen to episode 143 or go to organize365.com/virtual to find out your next steps And to sign up. I'd love to work with you and help you get your home organized in 2017. You can find the links for my virtual organizing services and everything else mentioned in this episode at organize365.com/145.