Part 2: How to Maintain Your New Year’s Intentions of Staying Organized
How To Maintain New Year’s Intentions: Staying Organized
Traditionally, it seems that every year we start off with the best of intentions and the greatest ambitions, only to find ourselves in the same cluttered mess by the end of the month. So now that we have set our intentions to become more organized this New Year, it’s important to be determined and disciplined enough to follow through and maintain these intentions throughout the year, and hopefully, for the distant future. In this blog post, you’ll find part 2 of the New Year's Organizing Series including tips and tricks on how to maintain your New Year's Intentions on Staying Organized.
Intentions vs Resolutions Reminder
As mentioned in Part 1 of this series, I prefer to set New Year’s “intentions” rather than “resolutions”. While making a resolution can be a powerful tool to meet your New Year goals, it can start to feel like an impossible burden. Resolutions offer little flexibility, which can often set you up for failure. On the other hand, an intention is more focused on creating abundance in your life and does not imply something is wrong with the way you currently live, but instead, motivates you to live even better. It allows you to approach your goals with more compassion for yourself and puts less pressure on creating change and more inspiration to take action.
Start With The Mental
The first step in a successful organizing intention begins before you even clear out a single drawer. It starts in your head.
Shifting into a more positive and encouraging mindset is one of the most important steps when it comes to maintaining home organization goals. Remember that this is a lifelong journey and it’s important to reward yourself for the little wins. By creating a reward system for attaining a specific goal or for each month you stay on track, you’ll eliminate the failure mindset and become more motivated to live better.
Additionally, no one wants to associate their home with negative feelings, and often, the desire to bring inner/outer peace and calm makes it difficult to start. That's why when starting a new project, I like to mentally prepare and ask myself; “What frustrates or overwhelms me the most?” And this is where I begin.
Checking in with yourself mentally before you start each project will ensure your approaching each task with a positive mindset and good intentions.
Consider Your Needs
The next tip for maintaining your organizing intentions is to consider the needs of yourself and your family.
Once you’ve shifted into a positive mindset and are ready to start tackling organizational projects, ask yourself the following questions;
How do I actually want to live in my home?
What activities does the space need to support?
How do I want the space to feel?
With these answers, you’ll start to develop a picture in your mind of what systems you need to streamline your home and your life.
Additionally, you can use these questions as a basis when you begin the decluttering process of what items to keep or edit out. I find this method is more meaningful than the classic 'toss it if you haven't used it in a year', as It's more important to know why you haven't used something so you don’t buy it again in the future.
Tackle Small Batches
The final tip for maintaining your organizing intentions is to start small and tackle small batches. Now that you have a clear picture in your mind of what “organized” might look like for you and your family and how you live, it’s time to start!
It’s extremely important not to try and do it all at once. Just like Rome wasn't built in a day, your house won’t become organized in one day either. Think about specific spaces you’d like to transform or habits you want to change.
For example, if your goal is to organize your whole house, break it down by room and task. You could focus on organizing your kitchen by cleaning the fridge and pantries or you could focus on tidying up common spaces at the end of each day.
As I mentioned in my previous post, make a plan and set a deadline. By establishing daily, weekly and monthly organizing routines, there will be a smoother flow to your home and less clutter to stay on top of.
Tackling small batches also helps you gain confidence, which in turn, strengthens your intentions. It’s better to get a bunch of small wins under your belt than to bite off more than you can chew and do nothing.
And Remember…
Resetting your intentions is not a failure. If you find yourself slipping into old ways and the clutter starts piling up, first, give yourself some grace.
Then, see if there is something going on in your life to trigger your former clutter habits. If you’ve identified the trigger, write it down! Nothing is more important than recognizing and understanding the why behind the way we do or don't do things. Once the trigger is identified, you and your family can work to avoid these triggers and find ways instead to support your organizing intentions.
Finally, remember you had it in you to become organized in the first place, and you can do it again. Bringing yourself back to the beginning of your organization journey mentally can help give you the push to pick it up again.
Being organized isn’t a black-and-white concept, it’s fluid. There will most definitely be times when you will be more organized and times when you won’t be anywhere close to being put together. It is an ongoing process.
Happy Organizing,
Nikki