PLAN LIKE A PRO FOR AN ORGANIZED YEAR

Welcome to 2026! Have you made your resolutions for a new you this year? Will you be hitting the gym every day? Creating a whole new spending plan? Completely organizing your entire house? You’re totally on top of everything, right?

Maybe not so much.

Honestly, once I clean up from the holidays and start getting back to the reality of a normal schedule, January is nearly half over!

It’s natural to want to set some intentions for improvement when the calendar rolls around to a new year. What’s unrealistic is thinking that you’ll accomplish them in the first month. This year, to take on your organizing projects, make January your month to come up with a plan.

TAKE TIME TO REGROUP
Put away the holiday decorations, giving yourself permission to get rid of any you aren’t crazy about anymore. Put away any new gifts you received and—yes!—return, exchange, or even donate any you don’t like or won’t use.

MAKE A LIST
Now you can start to assess what you have. Walk through your home and make a list of spaces you’d like to organize. Take photos of your space. Photos give you distance so you can see your home with new eyes. You’ll be amazed at what you see in the pictures that your eyes just gloss over in real life!

MAP OUT YOUR PLAN
Once you have a list of spaces you want to organize, map out how you’ll tackle these projects. Some questions I ask my clients when we start a project are:

• What is the order of importance for your projects? List the top three.
• Are any projects interdependent? For example, do you have to organize the basement shelves before the bedroom closet so you have a place to store off-season clothes?
• What resources do I need? This can be a junk hauler or dumpster, special donation or recycling sites, furniture or containers for organizing (NOTE: “Shop” for these in your own home before buying anything new!). Don’t forget people: someone to help move heavy things, a handy-person, a closet installer, or a professional organizer.
• Is it time-sensitive (e.g. organizing because you’re moving) and when do I have time to tackle it?

Most organizing projects are not urgent, so make peace with the idea that you don’t have to get organized all in one month. See what your schedule looks like, figure out how to divide the work into little chunks, then make incremental progress over the next few months.

Make your plan concrete by actually scheduling the projects.. Whether you decide to organize one space per week, month, or quarter, put them on your calendar or your digital To Do list. Be sure to schedule reminders to ping you when it’s time to get to work.

At the end of the year, take some “after” photos and compare them to the ones you took at the beginning of the year. Progress, not perfection, is the goal. Share your photos on my social media pages and we’ll celebrate your accomplishments together!

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BONUS TIP
There's another question I pose to every new organizing client, and it's a bit of a trick question because I already know the answer. “Does your space have too much stuff or is it just that things are not properly organized?”

99% of the time, the answer is “both.” A big part of being organized is being able to pare down the excess so you have less to manage. Make it fun to let go of things with my FREE printable  Pare Down 100 Things page!

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