One of the hardest things to do in life is to keep everything organized and maintain forward momentum and motivation when things might get messy emotionally. Maybe you lead a busy work life, have stressful family concerns to take care of, or simply find it hard to organize your own life without extenuating circumstances.
Whatever the reason you find yourself here reading this guide, we’ve got you covered. We know how hard it can be to organize your life and stay headed in a positive direction. With these 30 helpful tips and tricks on how to organize your life, you should be able to start on the path to better organization.
Keep reading to learn every trick you need to know about to get your life in order now.
1. Keep Digital Notes
Keeping notes can be essential for staying tidy and organized. This is especially true if you’re a student or have a busy work life, as there may be a lot of information you need to keep track of all at once. Keeping digital notes will help reduce the clutter that would accrue from paper notes while still allowing you to stay on top of every little detail you need to remember.
2. Organize Your Digital Pictures
Because smartphones are with people pretty much every hour of every day, people take a lot more photos than they used to. Many people may quickly find hundreds or thousands of pictures in their digital libraries with no organization to help sort them. Try to keep them organized by using a storage app like Google Photos or OneDrive. This will make it that much easier to find the photo you’re looking for without having to scroll forever and ever.
3. Keep Your Passwords Secure
If you’re anything like we are, you probably have ten or fifteen passwords that you need to keep track of to log in to all your accounts and devices. To help ease the burden of remembering them, you should store your passwords in a single secure location. This is what digital password managers are for; programs like LastPass or Dashlane. Remove the stress of keeping all those passwords straight by simply keeping them in one easy-to-access location.
4. Keep Your Docs in the Cloud
Most professional adults need to keep many documents on their devices, whether work-related, recreational, or for finances. It can quickly become challenging to keep all these documents organized, and you may be tearing your hair out trying to find the right one when you need it. Keeping them in the cloud in organized folders can alleviate this issue and keep your documents safe from potentially getting deleted or lost.
5. Time Management
In today’s world of distractions, it’s all too easy to while away hours of your time doing nothing at all. You may find yourself scrolling on social media for an hour or two or three per day, or you may lose yourself in captivating streaming series. Whatever the distraction may be, you’re losing precious time by not putting limits on them. Try limiting these distractions to put your time to good use on productive things. Various time management tools can help you get better organized.
6. Use a Recycling Bin
This one may seem like a no-brainer, but many people do not have a recycling bin in their homes. Imagine all the junk mail, old letters, and newspapers you get in the mail that always seem to pile up on any available surface. By having a recycling bin in your home, somewhere easily accessible that you won’t forget about, you’ll be able to declutter and throw out all that junk mail. Plus, recycling is good!
7. Use a Filing System
Even as common as it is to have most of your documents in digital form nowadays, you are bound to still have to keep track of some essential physical documents too. By using a file system, you can keep things like birth certificates, social security cards, tax forms, or other financial records organized and separated so that they’re easy to find when you need them.
8. Put Your Pictures in Photo Albums
If you’ve got a huge old box of photos sitting in the attic or in the basement collecting dust, you should organize them in a series of album books. This way, you’ll be able to locate the exact picture you’re looking for without needing to sift through a massive stack of dusty photos. You will also be able to keep track of them, and when they’re in sight and organized, you’ll be more likely to take them out and look through them rather than forget they exist.
9. Put Together a Box for Memories
Everyone is bound to accumulate sentimental trinkets and items over the course of their lives. These items may well be collecting dust, but you can’t bring yourself to get rid of them because they mean something to you, right? Well, to make it easier to pull them out and look at them while also making them harder to lose, you can throw them in a box of memories. This way, you’ll always know where they are when you want to take them out.
10. Make Organization a Scheduled Activity
By scheduling times to organize things around the house, you’ll make sure organization becomes a priority. A clean house is a happy house, as the saying goes. By organizing things regularly, you’ll be able to better keep your home free of clutter, dust, and other things that might start to build up over time. This will also help you keep better track of things that might become lost.
11. Put Things Away Regularly
It can be overwhelming to try and clean the house after a few days of having not put anything away. There may be toys all over the floor, dishes to put away, clean laundry to fold, etc. It can be a massive help in keeping your life organized if you put in the effort to put things away regularly, rather than letting everything build-up and putting it all away at once.
12. Get Rid of Things You Don’t Use
Consumer culture makes you feel like you need all the stuff that everyone else has, and unused things can quickly pile up around the house. You’ll find yourself buying new clothing, appliances, devices, or any other thing that you might think looks attractive in the moment. And soon, you’ll have piles of old things lying around that you don’t use anymore. It would be best to make a concerted effort to get rid of these things as often as possible, as clutter will keep your life unorganized.
13. Organize Cluttered Areas
Speaking of clutter, this can be a huge obstacle in getting your life organized. Part of feeling like everything is in order is having your living space tidy and organized. If your living room, bedroom, or kitchen, for example, are cluttered, it will be hard to feel at ease in each of them. Be mindful of clutter spots, such as the coffee table, dining room table, or kitchen counters, making sure to declutter them regularly.
14. Sort Out Clothes You No Longer Want
Again, in the same vein as the previous two points, things you once used and loved may become unused or unwanted over time. This applies especially to clothing. It can be a good idea to sort out unwanted or unused clothing and keep it in a box or bag until you can donate it to a thrift store or give it away. There will almost always be someone who would want to wear your old clothes, even if you no longer want to.
15. Organize Seasonal Items
There may be certain items and dĂ©cor that you only use during a particular time of the year, and it sits there collecting dust for the rest of it. For example, this could be holiday decorations or certain appliances you only need when it’s cold outside. You should store and organize these items by season to make them easier to find when you need them and keep the rest of your home free of clutter.
16. Organize Your Work Area
Just as homes can get cluttered and disorganized, so too can your workspace. This would include any area you may use for work, such as an office or a shop. You should also apply the previous points we discussed to this area, as organizing yourself includes all facets of your life, not just your home. Make sure to clean, organize, and declutter your workspace to feel more productive and at ease.
17. Compile a Comprehensive To-Do List
When it comes to keeping track of every task you need to complete throughout your day or week, it can be a great idea to keep a to-do list going. This will help you know what items need to be completed and which ones you’ve already marked off. Without a good to-do list, you may forget critical tasks here and there, and nothing will make your life feel disorganized faster than missing something important like this.
18. Clean Up Your Email
Email has become a crucial way that people communicate with each other, allowing for updates, events, invitations, and notices to be sent on the fly. However, since email has become such a common form of communication, you may find your inbox filled with emails that you haven’t even read yet. By decluttering all those junk emails, you’ll be able to read only the most essential things in your inbox when they arrive.
19. Plan Out Your Days
One of the best tips on how to organize your life is to become someone who plans. Many people fly by the seat of their pants, so to speak. They never plan much of anything but only do things as the thought strikes them. This may work well for some, but for a lot of us, we need to have more structure in our lives. Using a planner can help you keep track of daily events and activities and things you need to remember to do. Having structure can keep you feeling organized and in control of your life.
20. Put Boundaries in Place
To feel like you have control of your life completely, you need to be able to set clear boundaries for yourself and for others in your life. This could include people like family members, in-laws, friends, or even acquaintances. It’s no secret that some people may overstep their bounds and try to enforce their ideas and desires for your life on you when you might not hold those same desires. By setting boundaries, you can remain in control of your life decisions and stay organized.
21. Write in a Journal
Plenty of people keep journals about their daily lives, recording their feelings and what they do day in and day out. This can help you make sense of the things happening in your life, and you can look back on your life with clarity one day. Keeping a journal is a great way to organize your thoughts, too. You may not know what you feel until you put it down on paper.
22. Exercise Regularly
Another way to keep feeling organized is to make sure you exercise regularly. Exercising can be a great way to destress, work on yourself, and put your feelings into order. This will allow you to stay organized physically and emotionally.
23. Use a Time Tracker
How to organize your life if you don’t have a sense of time? As we mentioned earlier, there are countless ways to waste time in today’s digital world. Using a convenient time tracker app allows you to set daily limits on how much time you spend scrolling on social media. Or you can simply keep track of how much time you spent on any given activity if you don’t want to set limitations just yet.
24. Become an Early Riser
Waking up early is another good way to feel more organized. You’ll get a head start on the day’s productivity and find you have more time to do what you need to do. This will result in your feeling more organized than you would if you woke up later in the day.
25. Record What Works and What Doesn’t
As you attempt to put your life in order and become more organized, you may find certain things work well for you while others simply don’t. Try to keep track of what works and what doesn’t so you don’t go back to something that you already tried.
26. Unsubscribe from Things
Over the course of surfing the web for a few months or even years, you may randomly subscribe to free newsletters, online services, or other things on a whim. Over time, these subscriptions can add up, and you’ll start to get flooded with emails, letters, or other things from said subscriptions. Try unsubscribing from things you no longer like or use. It will declutter yet another part of your life.
27. Make Your Bed
This one may seem silly, but making your bed as soon as you wake up can set your day on the right track. You’re already starting out making a concerted effort to be organized, and this same effort will bleed into the rest of the things you do that day.
28. Keep Your Food Organized
Everyone needs to eat. But our food can quickly become a huge mess in the pantry or fridge if we don’t keep it organized. One thing that can help is to keep certain kinds of food in clear containers, either glass or plastic. That way, you’ll be able to declutter and get rid of boxes, bags, and other food containers that may cause clutter.
29. Plan Your Meals
Knowing what you’re going to be cooking for the rest of the week can undoubtedly free up some time and energy you may otherwise spend trying to think of what food to make. Try to plan out your meals and do grocery shopping according to the ingredients you’ll need.
30. Keep Track of Expenses
Lastly, a great way to feel organized and in control is to keep track of your finances. Many people may be inclined to only look at their bank account when they need to, but that’s not the best idea. You should be keeping careful tabs on your expenses and incomes each month. This will help you make sure you’re spending your money smartly and avoiding unneeded stress from overspending in certain areas. Having your finances in order will take a huge weight off your chest and mind. Click here for a supreme guide on how to save money.
Final Thoughts
Now that you know how to organize your life – start applying at least 5 of these 30 tips and increase gradually over time. Sooner or later, you’ll realize how much you can improve your life by being organized and doing things on time, without procrastination.
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