How to organize your time and space for better living in 5 steps you can start right now

When the holidays are over and the New Year rolls around, many of us find that it’s a good time to make resolutions. These simple goals aim to improve our inner-selves and the quality of our life through our own refection on the past year and a desire for a new beginning. We all want to find more time, find more space, and we all want to live better than we did in years prior. Even though January is National Get Organized Month, why wait for a new year when you could start ‘a better you’ on the first of any month, the beginning of any week, on any day, or even right now.

Your future depends on what you do today …

– Mahatma Gandhi

Want to lose weight, eat healthier, save money, or even just find more time for yourself? Do you want to look better in your clothes, get into shape, live longer to see your great-grandchildren, get out of debt, travel more, or write your own life story? In order to find more time for you, your family, friends, exercise, or if it is just for planning a healthy meal, it all begins with being an effective organizer. Since the number of hours in a day, the number of days in a week, and the number of days in a month don’t ever change, to find more time to take care of ourselves – WE must change.

When life becomes about the million & one things on your to-do list instead of getting to what is most important, & actually enjoying yourself, something is wrong.

Julie Morgenstern – @JulieMorgenstrn

Organizing your time, your home, shed, garage, or office – there is one simple thing you need to know. In order to organize, you need to find SPACE.

Here’s what you NEED to know:

Several years ago I thought I was fairly good at being organized, but being organized is not something you ever perfect. Life is constantly changing, priorities are constantly evolving, and we continually reflect on the effectiveness of our attempts in reaching our life goals. This is why every year we make the same New Year resolutions, however personal development (organizational skills) are one resolution that has a greater chance of permanent change than those aimed just at ‘losing weight’.

I typically don’t do book reviews, however when one or two books can completely change your life, it makes them noteworthy and bears mentioning. I was looking at improving my organizational skills and came across two books by author Julie Morgenstern. They completely CHANGED MY LIFE!

One was about organizing your life, your home, your ‘stuff’…

While the other was about organizing your time.

I have included the underlying principles that Morgenstern applies in each of her books with very brief examples but to get the most from this simple organizing technique, I really recommend getting each of these publications (and I have included links where you can purchase them on Amazon). I am certain they will change your life as much as they have changed mine. Although different books, they are both based in organizing according to the simple principle of SPACE:

S – Sort

Your life:

Take a room, a wall, an area, start small and sort your stuff. Put on piles those things that are similar. It can be as specific as pens with pencils as ‘writing utensils’ or with tape and scissors as ‘office supplies’. Sort it all out. Make piles and categorize them into whatever clicks with you. Clothes you fit in now vs clothes you will fit in this year, shoes, kitchen utensils, kids toys, or pet items – sort them and put them onto piles.

Your time:

Sort out your day by taking the tasks that you need, want, and are obligated to do and put them on ‘piles per se’. You need to pick up the kids at school, you need to cook supper, and you need to do the dishes, so these are probably going to be more time specific than wanting to find that episode of the Bachelor and getting it recorded on the DVR. Categorize your tasks and sort between them into what you need to do today, tomorrow, this week, or every day this week. Write them out.

P – Prioritize

Your life:

What are the things you hold onto that are priorities in your life. Those old photos of your grandparents holding you as a child have a dear spot in your heart and are a priority to keep. Old notes of ‘things to do’ that eventually ‘got done’ can go. Shoes you wear vs shoes you may wear sometime in your life have different levels of priority. In the refrigerator you can realize your desire for a healthy change by moving your priorities to the front (fruits and vegetables), less priorities to the back (the carton of whole milk) and get rid of those things that have no priority in your goals for healthy living (the fattening chocolate sauce).

Your time:

Those tasks and moments of time needed to see priorities through is essential. If spending an hour every night to help your kids with their homework is a priority, then you will want to make sure you fit it in every night. If it’s planning and cooking a healthy meal, walking your dog, or checking your email that is a priority, allow for it. Write it down and make sure you list all of your priorities, days when they occur, and how much time they need.

You always have time for the things you put first.

-Anonymous

A – Assign a Home

Your life:

You’ve sorted and prioritized your items, now you need to categorize them and give them a good home. You don’t necessarily have to keep all car items with all other car items, all kitchen items with all other kitchen items, or all healthy foods together. This is your organizational plan and it means something only to you. If you have always kept your car keys in the top left drawer of your dresser, then organizing means that all of your keys will be in the top left drawer unless you want to effect that change. When you assign a home to your items, that is where they live in the same manner as you live where you do. You picked your home for a reason that makes sense, was important to you, beautifully decorated, and makes you happy, so use the same thought process in assigning homes for your items. You can file folders in a traditional filing cabinet or choose to go creative and decorative. The spaces and containers you choose are only limited by your imagination. My favorite sorting pieces are decorative and beautiful woven and fold-able baskets and totes. It’s just a great way to make organizing look just as pretty as the rest of the house.

Your time:

You’ve sorted and prioritized your time, now look at the events in your life and give them a day, a week, or a month to do them. If you know that you need to do your taxes by April 15^th and you want to have them in a month early, know that you will be assigning March as the new home for doing (and worrying) about your taxes. Now instead of dreading them all year long, now you only dread them for one month. If you are also following along with organizing your life, you would sort out your tax paperwork, and assign it to a home in your house as a priority so when March comes around, you can find it quickly and get it done fast because you’ve kept everything together in one spot. (See how this can create more time and could really make life happier.)

C – Containerize

Your life:

Ok so your organizing the living room and there are 100 dog and cat toys all over. You’ve sorted and picked out the ones that are still safe and Fluffy really loves to play with. To containerize means to hold them within the home size you’ve assigned them to. If they are supposed to fit in the pet toy box but you still have too many to fit, you may have to re-sort, and re-prioritize them in order to fit. Regardless if it’s 100 pet toys or 100 pair of shoes in your closet, this is a great way of getting rid of anything you really don’t need, don’t want, don’t use, and will never need or use. Don’t hoard them but love the container they are in instead. Put Fluffy’s toys in a bone wicker basket or a decorative toy tote from Chewy.com. It will look great for your decor and you’ll have a home for all those toys that you ENJOY looking at.

Also… If you’ve been holding onto that cake mix box in the cupboard you are trying to organize, but never made that cake, now’s a good time to take it out and leave the space for something healthier. This will also encourage you to make better eating choices.

Containerize is also about keeping things together in a readily accessible location. As I mentioned previously, wicker baskets are a decorative way of organizing and using plastic totes keep Christmas decorations together, stackable for space-saving, and will keep them safe. Invest in a label maker and label each tote with a summary of items inside – “Wrapping paper/Tags/Bows”, “Ornaments/Garland/Tree Lights”, “House Decorations”, “Outside Lights”, and so forth. Labeling your files in your home office to mark important paperwork to keep such as “tax paperwork”, “home/life/car insurance paperwork”, and “Josh’s works of art in school”, make them easier to find when you need to access them quickly and relieves stress because you know you have them safe and… close-by. Look for quality label makers by Brother or DYMO. Don’t invest money or time into an off-brand label maker that you can’t figure out how to use it or it isn’t going to last for years.

Your time:

Before I went with the SPACE system of organizing, I timed all of my tasks and put them into 15-minute intervals (my own form of containerizing). I talked my former employer into purchasing a planner for me to increase my productivity (and I’ve been using that same binder for 30 years now buying my own refills once a year and deducting them off my taxes). I had them invest in a day-Timer Starter kit for me that comes with enough to get your organizing system on track. What I found when I started organizing my time was that something I thought would only take me 15 minutes, actually  took me longer than I expected. I ended up spending more time on simple tasks and not getting done those tasks that were more important. My time organizing system gave me a harsh reality of where my time was truly spent.

If you write in your planner that on payday Fridays you will give yourself 1 hour to do your bills before you sit down to watch that episode of the Bachelor on DVR, but you took twice as long to do your bills, then move the Bachelor episode on DVR to a slot in your planner on another day (Saturday night for example). Viola, you just caught back up with your time and you are staying on track of the important things. If you only allowed yourself 30 minutes to check your email before helping the kids with creating their award-winning science fair project, after 30 minutes, turn off the computer or close the app. Ask Siri to set a timer for you or make an alarm to catch your attention. Plan to start 30 minutes earlier tomorrow to catch up on those emails you didn’t get to or just ‘unsubscribe’ to all of those shopping offers. This keeps your time from getting out of your own control and is helpful when you are trying to containerize more time to planning and cooking healthy meals. There is a greater chance of following through with your resolution to eating healthier or spending more time for you when you organize your time, understand how long things really take to complete, and make yourself a higher  priority.

Containerizing your time also means to give time to priorities first and holding time constraints to those that aren’t as important. Now I can better judge my time and by changing some habits I CREATED more time. As a simple example, when I switched to an automatic pet-waterer from Chewy.com, I freed up an extra 15 minutes a day because I spent less time refilling the water bowl all the time.

And yes folks… they did it… a pet feeder that allows you to automatically feed your pet from your cell phone. WHAT A TIME SAVER.

E – Evaluate

I stated this before and it is worth repeating, personal development skills are a resolution that has a higher chance of long term success than merely making the resolution to eating healthier or losing weight. Since organization is not a skill that can be perfected, evaluation of organizing efforts against the goals wanted to be achieved (eating healthier, losing weight, having more time for family or exercise) must be re-evaluated so see if organizing is essentially giving us the more free time we deserve (ie… are you there yet?). When you sort, prioritize, assign a home, and containerize your time you will find that those things you dread take longer and those cherished moments are shorter. Organizing your time will reverse this because you control it. More time is prioritized to happier moments while those dreaded tasks still get done and out of the way.

An organized home is easier to clean, an organized schedule is easier to maintain, and an organized life is easier to enjoy.

Things might need to be tweaked in your organizational plan once in a while. You might have to re-sort, re-prioritize, re-assign a home to a different day or location, or re-containerize for more time allotted or items kept in a smaller area, but these are things that change as fluidly as life does. You can organize your goals for traveling, writing, family and your own health as priorities and understand what truly IS a priority. Morgenstern’s books have a lot of great tips for navigating through the fluidity of change. I know for sure though that if you get into the easy habit of using SPACE today, using a planner (or using it more efficiently), and to organize yourself into your priorities, SPACE will be involved in everything you do. You will re-think how you organize everything and once you have SPACE in your home, office, and in your schedule, you can enjoy the bright and stress-free future you are destined to create today.

How SPACE saved me:

I am a time-organizing freak. I work full-time with a long commute, I own my own Primitive/Americana home decor on-line store and I sell on Etsy, Ebay, and Amazon. I am a mother. I am my son’s biggest sprint-car fan. I am a blogger, a decor designer and manufacturer, mill operator, small farmer, and I volunteer. I also enjoy riding snowmobiles and side-by-sides off the beaten path. I was recently side-lined with a serious neck injury and I honestly believe that being the organizing freak that I am, it prevented me from losing it all AND losing my mind. I still need physical help and my “to do list” is long, but I haven’t lost the availability of having the time to enjoy a good hot-tub soak, family, friends, and to be outside with the critters who call my farm home. Life is organized and… Life is good.

Thanks for stopping by.

~ Sue  😊

To find out more about the author Julie Morgenstern – feel free to visit her website at https://www.juliemorgenstern.com

Here’s those links I told you about… and you might enjoy these other organizational tools from Julie Morgenstern: