10 Life-Organizing Systems To Teach You How To Organize Your Life

The mental health burden of the disorganized person

Everyone would agree that being organized and having everything sorted alphabetically and size-wise is the best way to keep your mental health in check.

But what if you just can’t become that hyper-organized person?

What if you’ve tried and tried, and you got really close but bounced back to the crazy chaos you dearly know to be your reality?

What if, regardless of what everyone says, you are still a walking procrastinating disaster and can’t see the end of it?

Researches prove that living in a tidy space improves mental and physical health, boosts self-confidence, and promotes happiness and success.

Highly organized people are more likely to exercise, get promoted, and smile more often.

Here’s my take on all that!

First of all, recognize that you can rarely be born with the knowledge of how to be and stay organized every day.

You might not have been raised with the habits and gentle (or not-so-gentle) urges to become organized. I was never taught to clean when I was a child. My daily chores consisted of doing homework and then reading, and if I asked to help with something, I was usually met with, “Don’t you have a book to read or something?”

So, you might end up coming to the shocking realization that you are an adult, your house is dirty, your home office is a huge mess, your sink is always full, the laundry basket is bottomless, and nothing has “a home” in your home.

So what do you do?

You get on with it! You search for systems, test stuff, and notice patterns; you work on your mindset, and most of all, you start with self-acceptance.

Step 1: Learn The Secret

The secret to becoming an organized person is to accept you are not an organized person!

In order to become “something,” you need not be “it” before that, right? (you know what I mean!)

Self-acceptance is crucial for understanding the process here. Demanding you wake up “knowing” how to be tidy and organized isn’t going to work for more than a week, and you know it because you’ve done it many times before.

Only when you decide to be okay with all that can you focus on improving yourself.

>>> Recommended Read: How To Learn To Accept Yourself Unconditionally

Step 2: Get On With It

This post is dedicated to offering you systems and ideas to test until you find what works for you. I might be saying, “Do this!” but if it doesn’t resonate with you and you know it won’t work – keep going with the next idea.

Some people thrive on following only one or two rules. Others find their best version of themselves once they create a complicated system that works beautifully, but no one else can understand it.

And then there are people like me who constantly need to change and tweak their systems because they get bored. Once the excitement is gone, the work doesn’t get done either.

We are all different, and coming up with one solution can never work for everyone. So, here are more than a few different ways to get organized and work on improving your life.

Test them, combine them, and find which ones work for you!

3-Step Capture System

• If it’s an appointment, it goes on the calendar.
• If it’s something you need to do, it goes on your to-do list.
• If it’s something you need to remember, note it down and archive it.

>>> Recommended Read: 160 Lists To Make To Finally Organize Your Whole Life

Zero Inbox System

It’s a wrong misconception that to have no emails in your inbox means you need to deal with everything and then delete it.

The secret is opening different folders in your email and archiving your emails there. Categorize and name each folder in a way that makes sense. Here are a few examples:

• Each project you work on has its folder.
• Each department you communicate with has its folder.
• Each client has their folder.
• You can add folders with emails you need to follow up in a week or two.
• Folder with discounts and promo codes you have nowhere else to keep.
• Folder for newsletters you wish to read when you have more time.
• Folder for reference emails (those you don’t know what to do with but are sure you shouldn’t delete)
• Folder for receipts and invoices.
• Folder for login info (when you create an account and they send you that first email with all your login info, keep it in that folder as you might need it one day)
• Events folder: If you often attend seminars and other events, you can store their information here.

Make sure to develop a “checking system” where you dedicate 15 minutes weekly to scan through these folders and see if you need to take action on something.

The 2-minute rule

This comes from the GTD system by David Allen and is a rule I try to follow daily. It’s really easy to remember: if something takes 2 minutes to finish, do it now.

>>> Listen to David Allen’s Get Things Done book for Free right here! <<<

Find/Create a Home for Everything in Your House

Most organizing gurus agree that this rule is super important. If something doesn’t have a designated spot in the house, it is likely to invade any space at any given time.

For example, if you don’t have a box for all your incoming mail, it will most likely live on your dining table, kitchen worktops, and so on.

Creating a home for stuff gives you the excuse to dump it there quickly and forget it exists. At least, that’s what I do!

Shine your sink

This is one of my favorite rules ever, and I learned it from the FlyLady cleaning routine. It’s pretty much the only thing I’ve adopted from that routine, even though I tried really hard to do all she recommends. I love the system, but I didn’t have the discipline to stick to it for even a week.

But this rule has become my staple for cleaning for the last year and a half, and I’ve forgotten what it means to have a sink full of dishes.

It’s really simple: At the end of the day, your sink needs to be empty, and you need to shine it (wash it). She says that you can put the dirty dishes anywhere else you want, under the sink, in a cupboard, or wash them – it’s your choice. The idea isn’t to wash the dishes but to keep the sink empty.

Guess what! I am still waiting for the day when I will decide that moving around dirty dishes is easier and more attractive than quickly washing them (I do not have a dishwasher, in case you’re wondering).

>>> Recommended Read: 70 Effortless Ways To Get Your Life Together

Time everything!

If I had gotten a coin every time I procrastinated on something for days or weeks but realized that it would usually take me 10-15 minutes to deal with it (rarely more), I would’ve been rich by now.

At some point, it occurred to me that I had a strong misconception of time. I often thought that doing something would take me “forever” when, in reality, it took seriously embracing less time.

My latest example is from last night. I’ve had the idea of creating a page dedicated to all of my free printables on this blog, protecting it with a password, and giving that password to my subscribers so they can access everything, like a catalog.

I literally thought it would take forever to create it and link everything there. Do you want to know how long it took me last night? 36 minutes – I timed it!

I’ve been doing that experiment for everything in my life to prove to myself that procrastinating takes longer than just getting on with it.

Once I’ve “timed” something, I know that the next time I decide to do it, it will take me significantly less time than I initially imagined, and the urge to procrastinate on it is almost non-existent.

>>> Recommended Read: 8 Simple Ways To Develop Discipline and Willpower

Automate everything

We live in a world where automating things is easy and a modern way of living life. While not everything can be assigned to an app or machine, many things can. Here are a few ideas:

At work:

• Email responses – canned responses or email templates for frequently asked questions;
• Data entry: there are software and tools to input data from forms, spreadsheets, or documents automatically
• Meeting scheduling: Use calendar scheduling tools that allow people to view your availability and book meetings with you, avoiding the back-and-forth exchange of emails and messages.
• Task reminders: Set reminders for daily, weekly, bi-weekly, and monthly tasks.

At home:

• Bill payments: Most of us already have everything set to pay our bills automatically, but if you aren’t part of the mob, now is the time to join us.
• Grocery shopping: there are subscription services and apps that allow you to automate your grocery shopping and home deliveries.
• Cleaning: get a robotic vacuum cleaner and thank me later.

Themed days

If you have enough freedom at work to give each day a theme, try it!

I do that for a few of my tasks, especially the short ones. For example, my Wednesdays are dedicated mainly to my Etsy shop. This means that if I have to take photos and videos and catalog my books, it will happen on Wednesday. Those are the days I create my listings for the shop as well. My Tuesdays are dedicated to writing new content (such as this article).

This is much easier at home. Mondays can be days off for cleaning. Tuesdays could be for dusting and vacuum cleaning, Wednesdays for deep cleaning one tiny area, Thursdays – for bathroom cleaning, Fridays – for laundry days, and so on. You are in charge of this! Make it work for YOU!

>>> Recommended Read: 7-Day Productivity Challenge To Become More Organized

The Two-Day Rule

I do not remember who mentioned it, but it was in a YouTube video I watched many months ago. The guy was talking about adopting this two-day rule where he would perform a habit with no pressure to do it every day, but he would have a rule never to allow himself to skip on it for two days in a row. You can have this rule set for basically any category of your life: cleaning, workouts, journaling, meditating, or whatever else you wish.

Brain Unload

As David Allen says, our brains are for coming up with ideas, not for storing them. Get it all out of your head and onto a sheet of paper, a journal, or your notes app.

You can call it brain dump, mental declutter, or whatever else you wish; the process is the same. It is exhausting to keep your brain cluttered with information, ideas, and tasks you need to pay attention to (one way or another).

Once you take it all out of your head and have it written down, you will be free to forget about it (metaphorically speaking). The only habit you need to develop is trusting yourself to go back to that list and deal with the items on it. I would recommend choosing an app or a journal you already use daily.