Let's Get Organized!



Ahhh, January. The time of year when a woman stops, looks at her family, her house, her life-and wants to scream, "We gotta get organized around here!"


And just as she's about to ask for volunteers for The Great New Year's Clean-Up, someone walks in the door, throws his jacket on the couch, announces that he needs four egg cartons and a ball of yarn for a school project the next day and asks, "Do I have any clean socks?"


Let's face it: It would be a heck of a lot easier to just wait a decade or two to organize the nest-after it's empty.


But if you can't hold out that long, productivity consultant Jan Jasper is ready to come to your rescue. Getting organized, when tackled the right way, can do even more for your mind than it does for your closets, says Jasper, author of Take Back Your Time (St. Martin's Press, 1999). "When your home is organized, it becomes an effective base of operations and a relaxing refuge," she adds. "When it's not, it's an obstacle course."
Amen.


Check out these cleaning-and-organizing tips from Jasper and Georgene Lockwood, author of The Complete Idiot's Guide to Organizing Your Life (Macmillan, 1999). We've also included some mom-tested tips.


Plan ahead for success


  • Make organizing fun. Forget trying to cram all the Lincoln Logs back into their original box-if you can even find it. Instead, buy colorful baskets or plastic boxes for storing kids' toys. Label the boxes for older kids and use pictures for small children, so they can see where everything goes. (At our house, on last count, we had at least 1,957 minuscule plastic action figures, Legos and puzzle pieces. Without those wonderful plastic bins, who knows what Mom and Dad might be tripping over at 3 a.m. on the way to the bathroom.)


  • Set up "Operations Central." Every family needs a place for processing mail and paying bills, says Jasper. And it shouldn't be the kitchen table. You'll need an uncluttered surface to write on. Jasper suggests stocking this area with a calendar, scissors, pencils, pens, highlighter, tape, stapler, envelopes, address stickers, stamps, calculator, notepaper, paper clips, letter opener, bank deposit slips and sticky notes. Your work space must be near the phone, since many pieces of paper can be eliminated immediately with a phone call. You'll also need a filing cabinet (perhaps on rollers) and a wastebasket. Best place to open mail: Next to the wastebasket or recycling bin.


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