Sunday, January 6, 2013

2013: The Year of Organization

I love to organize.  LOVE.  And sometimes I really good at it.  But I find myself little pockets of space in my life that are complete disasters.  For instance, my office/craft/I-don't-know-what-to-do-with-this-throw-it-in-there-and-close-the-door room.  Awful.  It's a complete embarrassment.  So one of my goals for 2013 is to be more organized.  Like ridiculously, annoyingly organized.  I'm finding lots of good ideas on Pinterest and I'm slowly but surely making lists and implementing ideas.  Here's two I'm starting with.

Cleaning Schedule
The first idea I started with I found on Pinterest.  I actually created my own list and started using it in November of 2012.  And then Christmas and 3 weeks of sickness hit and I stopped doing it.  But the weeks I did do it I really loved it.

Here's why it works:  I felt like I was accomplishing something important every day and my house looked better and I just felt better!  Also, with the swing day I was tackling one big thing that really did need to be done at least once a month but I never seemed to find the time for it.


Challenges:  Make sure you have what you need for your cleaning.  And for the daily chores it might take you a few days to figure out the best way to tackle them.  For me, I enlisted the help of Jackson for bed making (starting him early!) and then tried to tackle the dishes and counters while he was eating breakfast.  I found that the chore of the day I usually had to wait until my hubby got home.  And I didn't even think about doing the night chores until everyone else was in bed.

30 Bags in 30 Days
I've seen a version of this on Pinterest but decided to definitely go for it when I saw Bekah over at Country Mouse tales posting pictures of her bags on Instagram!  Such a great idea and really quite easy!  I referenced Bekah's list and then set about creating my own.  My list will start today and runs for 30 days, so that puts me at February 5th, which is PERFECT because The Boy's 3rd birthday party is just a few days after that!


Here are a couple of other ideas I'm going to be tackling this year:
1.  Setting up a household binder.  I have seriously been trying to do this for TWO years.  
2.  Back to couponing and saving money!
3.  Organize all my digital files.
4.  Create my own cleaning products.
5.  Create a menu planning board
6.  Follow the Declutter Calendar by My Simpler Life.  Again, some of this maybe overlapping but I want to make sure I don't miss a thing!!
7.  Organize all finances/billing.

So there's my plan to a simpler, more organized life.  Check out my OCD (yes) and Make My Life Easier boards for inspiration of your own!  How are organizing your life?  I would love to hear your ideas!