Components of an Organized Life

Getting organized means different things to different people. Some folks hope to be more productive. Others want help with their clutter, and still others are looking for ideas about how to run their households more efficiently.

Meet the “core four”—the essential components of an organized life:

•  Controlled clutter

•  Robust routines

•  Organized spaces

•  Well-managed time

These four elements of an organized life work together like highly synchronized acrobats. Each component contributes directly to the others; together they make up an interlaced set of skills, habits, and tools for effective living.

Looking at these components in our own lives, each of us brings a different mix of strengths to the table. One person may have a well-developed sense of time yet live a life burdened by clutter. Another, a neat freak, may have a cleaning schedule that would rival an executive housekeeper’s yet never manage to make it to appointments on time.

That’s why each of us will have a slightly different definition of what it means to get organized. The final goal is the same, but the specific steps any of us will take are dictated by our individual strengths and shortfalls in these four areas.

To get organized fast, we’ll bolster the components that need strengthening while drawing on the power of those that currently serve us well. The goal is to create a well-balanced, flexible set of skills to carry out and support our organized life.

Controlled Clutter

Clutter is an inescapable aspect of modern life. Simply put, we are surrounded by stuff! The ability to manage and control the physical items in our environment is a baseline requirement for an organized life.

Clutter is the sand that gums up the smooth workings of day-to-day existence, and it has a direct impact on the other components of an organized life. Clutter affects your use of time; for instance, if you misplace the keys, you’ll be late to the meeting. It multiplies the effort needed to clean and maintain your surroundings. It prevents you from enjoying the peace and order of your own home.

Bringing clutter under control, and instituting new mechanisms to keep it that way, is a threshold step to getting organized. This book shows you how to identify clutter, send it on its way, and keep it from coming back to haunt you.

ROAD HAZARD

Is more space the answer to the problem of clutter? It’s the nature of clutter to expand to fill the area around it, no matter how spacious. Fix the underlying problem by strengthening your clutter-cutting skills, not by giving clutter a new and larger place to live in.

Robust Routines

Think of routines as the freeways on the road to organization. By grouping and streamlining a set of actions and then making their performance a habit, routines shortcut the time and effort necessary to carry out the work of your life.

Just imagine if you had to wake up each morning and make a specific decision to carry out each action of the day. You’d have to decide whether to step out of bed, put on your bathrobe, reach for your eyeglasses, and bring in the newspaper. Tired yet? Like freeways, routines speed up life’s daily transactions by removing the need to stop and decide.

A robust set of routines is a hard-working and efficient component of an organized life. This book helps you identify routines, set them in motion, and bring them to work for you in every area of life.

Organized Spaces

Picture a shoemaker at work—eyes focused on the boot before him, his hands automatically grasp each item he needs as he works. Now send a whirlwind across his workbench, scattering his tools and supplies. Chances are, he’ll straighten up and glare at you with an outraged look. You’ve destroyed his space’s ability to support him.

Organized spaces function like that shoemaker’s workbench. When focused around our centers of activity, they play a supporting actor’s role in the work of our lives. They speed us out the door, keep us focused on the job, or simply allow us to relax.

This book teaches you how to create activity centers, stow your stuff efficiently, and build routines to maintain organized and supportive surroundings.

Well-Managed Time

Each of us enjoys the same amount of time every day, but we vary in how well we live within it. Making appropriate decisions about the use of time and structuring the passing hours so that we achieve what we hope to achieve is the essence of good time management.

People differ in their goals and preferences for the use of time. One person hopes to jump-start work productivity and live life at a faster pace. Another wants to work more efficiently so as to enjoy more hours of leisure spent with family.

Whether you’re eager to get more done or to do what you must do more quickly, this book helps you tune your time-management skills. You’ll find simple tools and concepts to help you meet your own unique goals for managing time.