When it comes to explaining how to organise your life (& keep it that way) there are few more knowledgeable than Craig (A Tidy Mind – London) We’re excited to share his most recent blog packed full of simple tips. It’s never too late to organise your life. And you’re never too old or ‘set in your ways’ to do it!
Craig Hoareau
Often when I work with clients to organise their homes, they comment on how much their life changes simply by knowing where everything is. Not only does it save time, but it also makes it easier to put things back where they belong, creating discipline.
Unless you live a quiet country life or on a small deserted island, life can be quite hectic, especially if you have a family to look after. From planning meals to budgeting, school meetings, housework, family holidays and keeping track of commitments or socialising. All of this can be overwhelming leaving you feeling burned out with no time to do what makes YOU happy.
When you find that you can’t do your hobbies or relax, you will feel like your life is disorganised and you need to put things in order.
What do YOU want to do and why aren’t you doing it?
Before you can start any process of organising, whether it’s your home or your life in general, you need to determine what is causing the chaos in the first place and what is stopping you from doing it.
Too many commitments?
Lack of motivation/interest?
Lack of productivity?
You don’t know where to start or how to do it?
Whatever the reason, knowing the why will always help to find the solution.
Here are a few changes you can make to start putting some order in your life and taking back control:
Everything in its place
When everything in your life has a ‘home,’ this makes the whole process of staying organised so much easier. Be it items in your house, paperwork for your job/life admin, where you save your notes, apps on your phone or where you keep your keys. Knowing where something is, gives you quick access to it which will allow you to focus on the doing rather than the searching.
Plan it!
Planning your time is one of the most important things you can do to ensure you stay on top of everything going on in your life. This includes your ‘ME’ time to do hobbies or to just spend time with yourself. Download a free calendar, buy one, create one or use the one on your phone. Plan everything from your meals, social events, commitments and even your outfits. If you need a family calendar where everyone can enter what they’re doing, google calendars allows you to synch different calendars into one (with each person having a different colour) so you know what everyone in the house is doing. It will help greatly with communication and avoid double bookings. Having it on your phone is also handy.
Keep track of your favourite places
Want to know one of the biggest secrets of how to organise your life? Apps! I recently discovered this new one called the ‘Urbaniser app’. It lets you save your favourite places to go in any city in one place – all categorised! It can be a restaurant, café, art gallery or small boutique. It just makes finding somewhere to eat so much easier especially if it’s your turn to organise a friend’s dinner/outing.
Tidy & declutter regularly
Tidying is not a once in a life thing, it is regular and needs to be maintained. Tidying your home space, work space, your to-do list or phone apps regularly, will help keep things manageable in the long run. Do you add things to your to-do list that just linger and never get done, taking up space and making you feel more disorganised? If you have not done it for a while or you don’t want to do it, it’s not important – Remove it! Same goes for social events, if you have so much going on, learn to say no and don’t attend it. You don’t HAVE to do anything which inconveniences you.
Set goals and prep!
Set goals for the week/month. What do you want to accomplish this week or month? When will you do it? Do your commitments fit around it? I always create a master list of all the things I need to accomplish for the month. I then allocate time for each task during the month around my regular commitments. You need to find a method that works for you and once you’ve done it a few times, it will be so much easier to manage going forward.
We hope you enjoyed Craig’s tips. For lots more, give him a follow on Instagram or Facebook. Remember that Craig and his team cover London, plus we have organisers in Yorkshire and The Midlands too. We can work with you virtually or in person (with covid precautions taken). We always offer free, no obligation, consultations or simply a chat on the phone so don’t hesitate to get in touch – [email protected].