Welcome weekend and welcome to you gals who have clicked your way here from the guest blog post I have running at Hearts at Home. For those of you who’d like a peek at its topic (30 minute easy organizing ideas) click here. But be sure to come back for this second part of our “de-junking” series.

Well, last weekend we chatted about how to get started de-junking your cluttered home. If you need a refresher, you can read it again here.

Okay, once you have rid a room of extra clutter and chaos, what do you do next? How do you re-set it up in a logical way and then ensure it will actually stay that way? Do you just stack and arrange items in a tidy, eye-pleasing manner?

No.

Just having things arranged all ‘neat’ does not necessarily mean they are arranged in a user-friendly or logical. You want to place items back according to their frequency of use.

For those who have home offices for example, decide what items you pull out and use most often. Place them closest to your work desk.  That way, when you are sitting down typing away or making phone calls, you will not need to get up, walk across the room, reach up or dig in a pile or drawer to find them.

In fact, go through and make a list on a notebook or legal pad of all of the items you need to do your daily work. Then assign them each a number of priority. Make the number ones things you use daily, number twos the ones you use most days but not always, number threes those you only get out once a week or so, and so on. Once you have given your items their assigned numbers (usually five categories are enough meaning each item on your list will have a number 1 through 5 after it) begin putting things back.

First things first.

Acting as if your desk chair is the center of the universe, orbit your items around the room beginning with all the number ones first. Then go on to the number twos, etc….Place them according to how often you use them. Really think through your work patterns—where you do what you do and place items accordingly.

Then you can shift to ‘neat and tidy’.

Then you can purchase baskets and bins, cubbies and crates. Don’t just go to the office supply store and buy a bunch of cool looking organizational items and then return home and try to find what items will fit nicely into them. That is backwards. Think logically. The proper plan of attack is to:

• Decide what items you really need and which ones you don’t (dejunking process),
• Then determine how often you use them (priority number ranking excercise)
• Then purchase your organizational tools.

For you gals who had the messy counters. Do this in a mini-version. Be ruthless about what you must keep. Then, rather than make a list of specific items such as in a home office, list by priority the categories of stuff you seem to save. Maybe it will be:

#1 Kid’s school items

#2 Bills and correspondence

#3 Fliers and coupons

#4 Out of place items, etc….

Then you go through and craft a system where you can put these rotating items (you’ll always have items in these various categories, just not the same items each week.).

Again, think logically and in order. Give each category a basket, a handy-dandy plastic stacking paper holder, a folder, a slot, a drawer, etc…Then make it a habit, just like washing the dishes or taking out the trash, to deal with each of these categories on a regular basis. Take care of the papers–sign those slips, transfer the info to your calendar, etc… pay the bills, return the out of place items to their proper location, etc..

You see most of us get frustrated with ourselves and fuss and fume at the dear members of our families, wanting them to stop creating clutter and get with the program.!

The problem, dear sisters, is we have no program in place to “get with”.

Taking time to dejunk and re-think your work patterns can help solve this dilemma.

You can do it! I have faith in you!

Happy Organizing,