Home Organizing - Where Do You Start?

Home organizing is big business these days. Hundreds of professional organizers globally offer services to help homeowners get organized. Books with home organizing tips and systems are practically falling off crowded bookstore shelves. And online and walk-in retail stores sell hundreds, perhaps thousands, of organizational gadgets, storage bins and containers month after month. Shouldn't you be jumping on the home organizing bandwagon as a homeowner (or apartment resident)? Are you feeling left behind and disorganized? Is it time for you to get organized? And where do you start? Here are the answers...

IS IT TIME FOR YOU TO GET ORGANIZED?
How do you know? It's really quite simple. Organizational solutions solve problems. And usually solving those organizational problems results in even more benefits in your life such as...
---more time
---less frustration
---more money
---less stress

So if you need more of those benefits or if you have an organizational problem, then it IS time for you to climb onto the home organizing bandwagon and get organized. It's not just a passing fad for you to take advantage of for the moment . Instead getting organized is something you personally will benefit by long-term.

SO JUST WHERE DO YOU START?
Locate a problem. Don't just say "I'll organize my kitchen" or "I'll organize my clothes closet". Organizing is not something you do usually just to fill time or kill boredom (That's why we have television.). If you want to organize areas of your home just because you like organizing, you CAN do that. Home organizing can be one of your hobbies. But many people want to get organized because of a specific problem, whether they realize that's the reason or not. For instance, you reach into your foyer closet or hall closet to get an umbrella and other items come tumbling down too close to your head. That's a problem! It needs an organizational cure.

Forget making long home organizing to-do lists. That's a waste of time (and a very effective way to procrastinate instead of getting organized). Just start with the "problems" hitting you in the head, literally.

Or start with other organizational dilemmas that are right in front of your face. These take priority. For instance, you see your child running frantically around the house wearing only one shoe and late for school. She can't find the matching shoe. That situation calls for a permanent organized solution.

Or you hear your husband yelling because he needs to pay a bill that's due in two days and he can't find the bill, or the envelopes, or a stamp. Or if he pays bills online, he can't remember or find the password to that account. That's a problem! It too needs an organizational solution right away.

MAKE SURE YOU'RE ORGANIZING "YOUR" HOME
However, don't make the mistake of basing your organizing needs on the Jones'---you know, the "perfect" neighbors, school mom, etc., that you want to emulate. Base home organizing on your needs (or that of your immediate family members).

And don't make the mistake of basing your organizational needs and solutions on some do-it-yourself home organizing television program. Those shows are fun to watch and you can get ideas from them. But what they organize is NOT necessarily what you need to organize in your home.

When in doubt, go back to the advice offered earlier in this article: Organize what's tumbling down on your head, literally, or other organizational problems staring you in the face. These are your home organizing priorities. Start there!