When do you do this?

Organization takes time and you have to carve out some time to do it. In the beginning, it takes more time, but as you get better at it, it takes smaller chunks of time. The easiest way to keep up with it is to schedule in an organizing time - I have a bunch of scheduled times to organize:

* Mondays. Monday is my laundry day and my project day - projects mean everything from cleaning out closets to putting together 72 hour kits. I look at my life and decide what needs attention most. By doing projects on Monday, I feel more free and ready for the rest of the week.

* Monday nights. After the laundry is folded and the kids are in bed, I do Quicken (a program we use to keep track of our finances). Monday night is also my big email night when I send out whatever needs to go out that week.

* Sunday night. Sunday night is planning night for my husband and me. I'll talk about this in its own post, because this is SO important!

* After dinner clean up. I can't keep my house clean all day. If I tried, I'd spend my whole day following my kids around making them clean up and I don't feel good about that. But I do want the house clean - everything works and feels better when it's clean. So every night after dinner, we all stick around (whoever is here) and get dishes done and the house cleaned up. I always know that there is a time it will get cleaned up, and that leaves me worry free about the mess the rest of the day.

* Red jobs. Red jobs just happen to be printed on red paper at our house and that's how they got their name. As part of their morning jobs, my kids pick one red job a day and do it. They are jobs that need to be done every once in a while, problem areas of the house or shelves or cupboards that collect and need to be cleaned off. Some examples are take 5 things downstairs that need to go downstairs, or throw away 2 things in your room.

* Organize for dates (if you can). We have many memorable dates going through things together. We feel especially glad when we're done because we had a good time together AND have something to show for it!

Why organize?

One day my sister and I were picking raspberries. I had a specially cut milk jug tied around me and she carried a bowl. We picked and talked and picked and talked. And when we were all done, I happened to glance in her bowl. She had half the amount of raspberries I had! I felt kind of guility because we had been picking raspberries exactly the same amount of time. It bothered me enough that I kept thinking about it. Finally, I realized that I had twice the amount of raspberries because I had had two hands to pick with! She had to hold her bowl with one hand, and I was free to pick with two. That's what organizing does for you - it gives you an extra hand to do the things you want to do! It gives you TIME, POWER, and ABILITY.

Why?

If you are organized, other people can help you stay that way. If you aren't, you stay on a slippery down hill slope. For example, have you ever picked your kids up from someone's house and tried to help clean up the mess? If the person was fairly organized, you knew where to put the toys and could help leave the house at least a little bit cleaner. If the person wasn't very organized, you soon realized the best help would be to take your kids and leave. In this case, the organized person was left with a cleaner house, and the unorganzied person was left with more mess!

If you are organized, you spend a lot less time looking for stuff.

If you are organized, you spend a lot less time shuffling stuff.

If you are organized, you spend less time driving to the store for whatever you can't find or forgot.

Organization gives you an understanding of where you're at - financially, preparedness, even toys.

Being organized saves money (on gas, repeat buys, and by buying things on sale).

Organization is Choosing What You Want

Organization is really all about choices - it's about identifying the things, people, or ideas that are important to you and eliminating the the things you don't want or that are cluttering your life. Those things can be:
* things
* trips to the store (especially extra trips)
* areas of the house that collect
* fighting, arguing, teasing
* time spent looking for things
* or any number of other things
There are millions of things you can choose to do every day, but you get to choose what is most important to you! Look at your life and decide if the things, people and ideas that are filling it are the ones that are most important to you. If there are things you would rather do than shuffle your stuff around, look through it, or find it, then it's time for you to get organized.