New Year, New Plan

January: New Year, New You! GO Month: Get Organized and Be Productive! Have you made your resolutions? Hitting the gym every day? Are you crushing it?!

Um, 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. 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 regrouping and brainstorming month.

Give yourself some 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 can’t use.

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!

Now brainstorm how you’ll get organized.
Once you have your list, map out how you’ll tackle these organizing 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.

Next year, take some new photos and compare them to this year’s photos. Progress, not perfection, is the goal. Then celebrate your accomplishments by sharing your before-and-after photos here with me!

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BONUS QUICK 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, I ask them if their space has the problem of 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 printable 2022 Decluttering Coloring Page or my Pare Down 100 Things page!