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You read some books, maybe took a class, engaged a good friend to help, planned it out and got it done. All of your spaces are organized! It feels good doesn’t it? Eliminating clutter can be liberating. Having a home for all of your belongings breathes a breath of fresh air into your living spaces, it creates peace of mind.
Now that your spaces are organized, you want to keep them that way so the peace will remain. No matter how you created your systems, you need to take some steps to maintain them. Using the strategies below will help you maintain your organized spaces. If you have others, I would love it if you posted them here.
Chances are you created storage for your items where you use them. Labels help you and everyone else know where an item belongs. After you use an item, return it to its assigned home. It’s a simple concept and critical to the maintenance component of the organizing process.
Use it or discard it
We all acquire things; things we need and use, or just because we love them for many reasons. We also have a finite amount of space. If we acquire more items than we have space to store them, they can quickly become clutter. The things that you haven’t used over a period of time need to be discarded; donated, recycled, trashed.
Tweak your systems
As you work with your systems, or as circumstances change in your life, you may discover that the systems you created are not working as well as they did when you initially created them. When the realization surfaces, take a little time to determine what works or no longer works with the system you are using. Sometimes a small adjustment makes a big difference to make your system work more efficiently for you.
