Organizing For Dummies

Eileen Roth, Elizabeth Miles

• Publisher: For Dummies
• Year: 2011
• Print ISBN: 9780764553004
• eBook ISBN: 9781118053713
• Edition: 1

Organize your office, your home, your life! What's the favorite four-letter word of people who are less than fully organized? "Help!" So many technological, social, and economic changes affect your life that you need organization just to keep up, let alone advance. Many people have two jobs– one at the office and one taking care of things at home. If you have a family, you may count that as a third job. Caring for elderly relatives or have community commitments? You can count off four, five, and keep right on going.

No matter what life stage you're in, getting organized can make every day better and help you achieve your long-term goals. Organizing For Dummies is for anyone who wants to

• Polish his or her professional reputation
• Experience less stress
• Increase productivity
• Build better relationships
• Maximize personal time

Organization isn't inherited. With the human genome decoded, the evidence is clear: DNA strings dedicated to putting things into place and managing your time like a pro are nonexistent. Instead, organization is a learned skill set. Organizing For Dummies helps you gain that skill with topics such as:

• Understanding how clutter costs you in time, money, and health
• Training your mind to be organized and developing a plan
• Cleaning house, room by room, from basement to attic (including the garage)
• Creating functional space for efficiency and storage
• Time-management strategies for home, office, and tavel
• Scheduling, delegating, and multitasking
• Making time for your family
• Managing your health– physical and financial
• Finding time for love
• Organizing and cashing in on a great garage sale

Getting organized is about unstuffing your life, clearing out the dead weight in places from your closet to your calendar to your computer, and then installing systems that keep the good stuff in its place. Organizing is a liberating and enlightening experience that can enhance your effectiveness and lessen your stress every day– and it's all yours simply for saying "No" to clutter.

Part I

Basic Organizational Tools and Tenets

In this part . . .

O rganized people aren’t born . . . they’re made. So if you wouldn’t know a time-management technique if you tripped over one and can’t figure out how clean- ing out your closet can make your life better, where do you start?

This part introduces you to the why and how of getting organized, giving you both the convincing pep talk and the basic principles you need to put everything in its place. You can discover the many benefits of being organized, how to develop an organized mindset, and six tricks that make quick work of any organizing challenge. Read it and you’ll be raring to go!

Chapter 1

Dealing with Clutter

In This Chapter

Why anyone can get organized and why you should now

Calculating the cost of disorganization in dollars and cents

How organizing increases time, productivity, and good health

Stopping clutter-causers in their tracks

I know you think clutter-busting is going to hurt. For many people, getting organized sounds less appealing than a trip to the dentist and more complicated. You may have put off cleaning up your life by figuring that if you’re not organized yet, you must have the wrong personality type. Getting organized goes against the grain and only causes pain.

Then there are the more specific antiorganization arguments. “I don’t have time,” say many, mixing up the excuse with the exact reason to do it. Others worry that organization will limit their creativity or rob them of their spark. Some people steer clear because they fear that organizing systems might turn them into uptight rule-makers or rigid control freaks.

If a broad range of people didn’t share these concerns, I wouldn’t have a booming business as a professional organizer. My job, in my business and in this book, is to prove the power of putting everything in its place and how that improves all aspects of your life, from work to home, play, personal relationships, and professional reputation. Why get organized? How about recovering the 15 minutes a day you spend looking for your car keys, or the hour lost last week searching for a critical computer file saved in a dark corner of your directory? Getting dinner on the table with ease and cleaning up like a breeze? Inviting guests into your home without shame? What about finally winning the promotion you may have been passed up for because your desktop piles or late arrival at meetings have undermined your credibility? Wouldn’t you like to leave the office earlier so you can get to know your friends and family again and earn more per hour than you did when you were 16?

The techniques in this book provide simple and proven ways to organize your life the way you like to live it. Get organized to achieve peak potential and enjoy lifelong peace.

Organizing myths and truths

Myth:

I wasn’t born with an organized personality.

Getting organized will make me less creative.

I don’t have time to get organized.

Getting organized will turn me into a control freak.

Truth:

Organization is learned, not inherited.

Organization frees the mind to think outside the box, and leaves you more time to do it in.

Organization saves time, yielding huge payoffs for the small amount of time invested in setting up systems that will last for life.

Organization reduces your need to exert control. Everything is already in its place — so you can relax instead.

Living in an Overstuffed World

Imagine that a tornado hit your house and whisked it away. What would you really need to start over again? What would you truly miss?

Say that an earthquake levels your office to rubble. How many missing items would you have to reassemble to get back to work? An accident lands you in the hospital. How much would the world really suffer because you didn’t attend to all the obligations on your calendar? How much of the confusion could you have prevented with good systems that someone else could manage while you recovered?

It often takes dramatic thinking to help people sort out the productive elements from the clutter in their lives. Why? Because the world is overstuffed. Houses and offices are filled to the brim, and yet advertisers still beg consumers to buy more. Sandwiches get bigger all the time, and people do too. Cities are bursting at the seams, schools are overcrowded, and they’ve jammed so many seats onto airplanes that passengers are practically sitting on each other’s laps. Society has adopted an overstuffed mentality, and then you wonder why you can’t think clearly or feel peaceful and calm.

Getting organized is about unstuffing your life, clearing out the deadweight in places from your closet to your calendar to your computer, and then installing systems that keep the good stuff in its place. Organizing is a liberating and enlightening experience that can enhance your effectiveness and lessen your stress every day, and it’s all yours simply for saying “No” to clutter.

Clutter happens when you don’t put things in place, whether on your desktop, inside the filing cabinet, in your calendar, or atop the kitchen counter. Bringing things into a room and not putting them back where they belong creates clutter. Leaving toys in the hallway, newspapers in the living room, or e-mail in your incoming queue clutters up your space. Unimportant obligations are clutter in the day. Jamming too many things in your home, office, or schedule — filling every space, littering your life — doesn’t give you more power or pleasure. Random articles and activities give you clutter. By getting organized with the techniques in this book, you can leave space free to work, play, and be.

Piled-up clutter

Then there’s that special form of clutter you may recognize with a guilty smile: the pile. While making a pile could seem like putting things away, nothing could be farther from the truth. Think about what happens when you make a pile: Now you have to dig through everything on top to find what you need, instead of simply going to the file or drawer or shelf where the item should be. Whether it’s papers, toys, clothes, or computer disks, making piles makes work and wastes time.

Organization turns pilers into filers and helps you to put things away naturally and easily, because everything has a place.

Mental clutter

The most disorienting form of clutter is mental. Mixing up your mind with commitments you can’t keep track of, things you can’t find or don’t know how to do, or chaotic surroundings can cause stress and block basic cognitive pro-cesses. If you find it hard to make a decision; if you frequently have to go back to the office, the store, or home to pick up something you left behind; if you’re worried that you can’t accomplish what’s expected or needed, from cooking dinner to finalizing a deal, then you’re probably suffering from the confusion caused by mental clutter. When you get organized, you’ll gain planning, time-management, and placement techniques to clear your mind and de-stress your life. Getting organized is like growing new brain cells — an all-natural upgrade to your gray matter.

The Cost of Clutter

The reason for reading and using this book to organize your life is simple: Clutter of all kinds costs you dearly.

The costs of clutter range from hard cash to time, space, health, and your relationships with people. You may be unaware of the price you pay for overstuffing your life, but when you analyze the cost of clutter, the rewards of getting organized become clear.

Time

What’s the one commodity we can never replace in this life? Time. Once it’s gone, it’s gone. Not a moment can be retrieved, relived, or replayed. Time is the most precious gift, yet we casually throw it away every day. Did you spend time looking for something this morning? Miss an appointment, train, or plane? Drag your way through a report after wasting your peak work time on opening the mail? Maybe you waited in rush hour traffic because you left too late. Perhaps you lost an hour of relaxation time because it takes too long to get dinner on and off the table, your laundry room is set up wrong, or you went to the grocery or office supply store without a list.

Every second counts. Getting organized helps you get things done fast so you can spend the extra time enjoying life.

Money

Hello, bottom line! The wallet is often where people feel things first, and disorganization could be draining yours. Consider your own situation, and take a minute to calculate the dollar cost of the clutter in your life based on the following:

Rent or mortgage: All the square feet filled with junk in your home, office, or storage locker

Wage or salary: Th...

Table of contents

• Title
• Contents
• Introduction
• Part I : Basic Organizational Tools and Tenets
• Chapter 1: Dealing with Clutter
• Chapter 2: Training Your Mind to Be Organized
• Chapter 3: Assembling the Tools, Supplies, and Systems
• Part II : Getting Organized at Home
• Chapter 4: Where It All Begins: The Front Hall
• Chapter 5: What’s Cooking: Organizing the Kitchen
• Chapter 6: Sleep on This: Bedroom Bliss
• Chapter 7: Bathe and Beautify: Creating Functional Bathrooms
• Chapter 8: Space for Gracious Living: The Living and Dining Rooms
• Chapter 9: The Hangout Spot: Family and Media Room
• Chapter 10: Organizing for Fun: The Playroom
• Part III : Organizing Storage Spaces and Other Secret Places
• Chapter 11: Lightening Your Load: The Laundry and Utility Room
• Chapter 12: Where Clutter Clones Itself: The Basement and Attic
• Chapter 13: Patrolling the Borderlands: The Garage, Patio, and Shed
• Part IV : Professionally Organized: Your Office
• Chapter 14: Making Your Work Space Work
• Chapter 15: Command Central: The Desk
• Chapter 16: Managing Your Information Flow
• Chapter 17: Cyberorganization: The Next Frontier
• Part V : Time Management Strategies for Home, Office, and Travel
• Chapter 18: Planning Your Day and Your Life Like a Pro
• Chapter 19: Scheduling Skills for Maximum Productivity
• Chapter 20: Maximizing Your Personal Time
• Chapter 21: Going Mobile: Trips Near and Far
• Part VI : The Part of Tens
• Chapter 22: Storage for Small Spaces: Apartments, Condos, and Compact Houses
• Chapter 23: Ten Moves to Make Your Move Hassle-Free
• Chapter 24: Ten Tips for Great Garage Sales
• Chapter 25: Ten Pointers about Pets
• Chapter 26: 911! Emergency Strategies
• End User License Agreement