Different Organizing Methods: What's your Style?

Organizing is never one size fits all. What works for one, might not work for another. Find out which method would work best for you. This will really help with maintaining your organized spaces.

Let’s dive into some organizing methods, shall we?

1. The KonMari Method

Marie Kondo swept the world by storm a few years back with her take on organization. Her method involves only keeping items in your home that "spark joy." The idea is to declutter by getting rid of anything that no longer serves a purpose in your life. Another aspect is organization by category and not by location. So for example, you would not organize your complete closet as a whole - but you would organize by category; clothes, books, accessories, etc.

Her method is more of a mindset and appreciating your belongings and thanking them for bringing function to your life.

2. The Zones Method

This method involves dividing your room into zones and organizing each zone based on its function. Take the kitchen for example, rather than organize the complete kitchen in a day, cupboard by cupboard, you would instead organize by zone; pantry, food storage, food prep zone, etc.

This approach helps you to focus on one area at a time making the task less overwhelming. Organizing can take time. You're more likely to feel accomplished by completing a zone at a time, vs leaving behind an unfinished space for another day.

3. The 4 Pile Method

Start by creating piles such as "to keep," "to donate," “to sell” and "trash". Go through your belongings by making decisions in which pile the item belongs. This method is quick and straightforward and great for those who just want to get things done quickly.

The important thing is to not just make the decision but also take action after the process is complete. Remove the trash, put up the items for sale, take items away to be donated and put back things in their "home" for the items that are staying.

4. The one-touch method

The idea here is to not delay decisions or it will lead to clutter. You brought in shopping bags? Don't lay them at the entry way - open up the packaging and put it where it belongs. Items placed at the bottom of the stairs in hopes of being brought up at a later time, might get forgotten and stay there for days.

The idea is to handle each incoming item only once and make a decision about it right away. This also works when dealing with daily routines and tasks. For example, if there is a task that you can complete quickly - get it done right away instead of adding it to your to do list to deal with later.

5. Swedish Death Cleaning

Don't get fooled by its dark name. Swedish Death Cleaning was made popular in the book "The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning: How to Free Yourself and Your Family from a Lifetime of Clutter" by Margareta Magnusson.

The concept here is to organize your own belongings within your lifetime and not leave this task for your loved ones to tackle after your passing. We don't want to burden them with the task of sorting through what we left behind. Live simply by only keeping what you need. Less items means more freedom.

If there are items that you'd like to pass on to specific family members, openly communicating to them also helps eliminate some of the guesswork and confusion.

There is no one correct or best method of organizing. Which one connected with you the most? Try it out and find something that suits your personality. Happy Organizing!

Why do you want to get Organized? Here are some Benefits.

So there are a lot of benefits to being more organized than just knowing where your items are kept.

Saves you money:

Being organized keeps you from buying items that you already have, but might have forgotten about or lost. Raise your hand if you’ve ever gone to the store and came back home with ingredients you already had unopened, hidden at the back of your pantry. 

Saves time:

No more running around, looking for that lost document you needed. Know where everything is kept, so you can find it when you need it.

Boost energy and productivity.

Productivity is all about efficiency -- doing more, faster and with less. When you are organized, you have your whole day somewhat mapped out. You know which tasks are high priority, and you can schedule them into your day.

Brings peace into your life

Outer order brings inner calm. Unfinished projects, pending to-do’s, cluttered environments can all add stress to our lives. When our area is cluttered, it is a lot of for our brain to process. We see clutter and are then reminded of all the things we need to do. Being organized can help cut out that noise and bring tranquility to our lives.

Helps you sleep better

A messy bedroom can lead to a poor night’s sleep and increased anxiety.

A study, conducted by St. Lawrence University showed that people who have clutter in their bedrooms take longer to fall asleep than those with neat and tidy rooms

Decrease overwhelm

When things are not in order, it can cause overwhelm. Clutter is just basically reminders of things you have yet to do. It’s the one word my clients come to me to express how they are feeling in their space.

Increase time with family

Disorganization distracts us by drawing our attention away from what our focus should be on. 

Who wants to spend every weekend tidying and putting things back using a system that won’t maintain the organization long term? No one. It’s a waste of time and you could be doing so much more. By finding the perfect system, tidying won’t take as long and you can do more with your time.

Simplified way to track Monthly Expenses

If you had asked me years ago how much I spend on groceries per month, I wouldn’t be able to give you an estimate. Finances bored me and numbers overwhelmed me. 

It was right around the time that I was planning on quitting my full time job to become a stay at home mom that I decided to sit and take a hard look at the way we were organizing our finances. Personally, if I were to pick a system to follow every month it would have to be super simple for me to want to maintain it.

Don’t confuse this with budgeting. That’s just something that doesn’t really work in our household. Neither of us spend frivolously. The idea was to just keep track of the money coming in and out so that we can have a snapshot of how our monthly spending per category looks like.

Tracking each and every dollar you spend per month sounds more complicated than it is.  What really simplified this process was using Mint’s web-based personal financial management service. It’s free to use and It connects with your bank accounts and credit cards, consolidates all your transactions, and categorizes them. You can even personalize the categories. We rarely use cash in our household, so for the odd times we do, I manually track it to enter at the end of the month.

I plug in the numbers from Mint to an excel sheet I created. I’ve modified this template a few times over the years, but I’ve finally found one that really works for us. 

Now more than ever, it’s important to keep an eye on your spending. This snapshot will allow you to see where you can make adjustments if needed, or simply follow it on a monthly basis.

Click the image if you’d like to download this template. Feel free to modify to fit your own lifestyle.