Little makes life more stressful than an unorganized home. Make the change to a well-managed home organization system, and your life can change. How can this be done?
Break Down the Components
Look at the various parts of your home life that need to be put in order. These include groceries, mail bills and more. A successful home organisation system involves managing each of these elements. The whole purpose is to create order in the life of your household. A few examples follow.
Meal Planning
This is an example where planning can save money. A weekly meal chart ensures that you know ahead of time what you should buy and helps avoid disorganised impulse spending. Planning next week’s meals provides your shopping list, and in turn, provides expense control.
Paperwork
A system to deal with incoming and outgoing paperwork can make the administration of your life so much easier. Paperwork has five conditions. These are:
- Incoming – This is newly arrived paperwork that still has to be looked at. It may be mail or receipts.
- In Action – Any papers that need something done become actionable.
- Outgoing – This is typically paperwork that needs to be returned.
- Stored – To be kept for records. Examples are receipts that need to be kept for tax records,
- Disposable – Paperwork that can be got rid of. This includes things like leaflets.
For the first four categories, use appropriate storage. A paper tray, a file, a second paper tray and a concertina file are examples. Move them from one container to the next to create a workflow and responsibly get rid of anything that can be disposed of.
Of course, lots of this now comes electronically, but even digitally organising can be done.
Schedules
The larger the household, the more important planning schedules become. Schedules provide an image of how the lives of the household interweave. However, they provide other valuable information.
After school soccer practice on Friday, for example, indicates what clothes need to be ready on that day and in turn, this gives an idea of what needs to be washed and by when.
Task Planning
This could fall under schedules, but those are external whereas tasks are internal. Schedules and tasks can feed into each other. An example is that a scheduled visit to mom and dad will require some biscuits to be baked.
Tasks and schedules are both easiest done by writing them on a board in the kitchen or hallway using a different colour for each person. This is better than a digital system because it is simpler to look at every day and there can be no excuse for not looking at it.
Summary
Lots of these items can feed into each other. If you schedule a dinner to host, there will be tasks to be performed and meal planning to be done. It may even generate paperwork if you want to send out old-fashioned written invitations.
This demonstrates how a well-planned home organization system can link together and make everything more seamless. Other areas for organisation are laundry, financial recording, and media management.
