January Organisation (Part 1)

I follow Peter Walsh on Facebook. He has issued a challenge during January for "31Days2GetOrganised". I decided to follow it to kick start my organisation for the year. Most of the tasks only take 10 minute which makes them achievable and are good because they don't take heaps of time out of the day. I will post this about a week at a time otherwise it will be one really long post!

I also started on January 2 as Peter started on January 1 in the US so I don't get the challenges till a day later.

So here they are with my progress:

Day 1:  Clearing things out of Living Room that don't belong. This was an easy one for me as a couple of days before I took down all the Christmas decorations and put things away then. I did clear away a few things that were on the dining table that didn't belong there. I have issues with things sitting on the dining table for much longer than they need to.

Day 2:  Sock drawer. Again another easy one. I went through this drawer a couple of months ago when I was looking for some pantyhose and got tangled up in the number. I do also throw out socks that are worn/have holes as I find them. Also, don't know how but I don't really have issues with odd socks so there were none of those to deal with.

Day 3:  Plastic Storage Containers. Once again, an area I'm on top of. Whenever a container is looking a bit old, etc I get rid of it (and its lid). Also, since we don't really get take away in plastic containers there is no accumulation of them either. I have more containers than Peter recommends but that is because I don't have a lot of stuff in the freezer at the moment.

Day 4:  Remote Control Organisation. I do have mine in a caddy already and as B does not use the remotes if they are not in the right spot then I only have myself to blame, lol!!

So at this point I'm feeling pretty good about the whole challenge with the tasks being ones I am on top of or required no more than the 10 minute time limit. Doing a bit of a "I'm not as disorganised as I thought" dance. Until ...................................

Day 5:  Master Bedroom. This is my Achilles heel. If something doesn't have a home or I need it out of the way it ends up in my bedroom. There was no way that I could restore order in 10 minutes. I did clear off the top of the chest of drawers next to my bed. Updated the photos in the photo frames and gave everything a good dust. Most of my craft supplies are stored in my room but they are bursting out of the storage. I organised some, got rid of a few books that were there as well and did a little tidy up. It will be an ongoing process but as one of my goals for the coming year is to finish off my craft projects this will free up space in this area.

Day 6:  Towels. Again, another area I'm on top of. I don't have a lot of storage for towels so am pretty good about keeping only the number I need. Also, last year B complained about the towels scratching him and my swimming ones had holes in them so I got new ones, both for the bathroom and for swimming.

Day 7:  Underwear. Once again, another area that I had under control. Last year I finally bit the bullet and spent some money on myself and splashed out on new underwear so I cleaned out these drawers at that time. I did also go through B's underwear and moved on a few things that don't fit him.

Day 8 & 9:  Paperwork organisation. Not too badly out of control thank goodness and I already have a system which on the whole works well for me. Additionally with receiving some bills/statements, etc electronically these days there is a lot less paper coming in to deal with.

If it has been a task that I didn't really need to do I have then been spending the allocated 10 minutes on tidying up another area. I went through all of my paperwork and got rid of a nice big pile (prior to Days 8 & 9). I went through the junk that was on top of the fridge, including going through the tool box and getting rid of the millions of Ikea allen keys!!

I'm finding this exercise really useful and am enjoying the little tasks that don't take much time but make a big impact overall. There are already a couple of boxes that need to go to the op shop!

I would encourage you to join this challenge if you have issues with your own organisation. As I said it's only 10 minutes a day but it's already making a big difference to my head space! I would love to hear if you have any organisation goals or challenges that you want to tackle this year. We could be each other's support and encouragment!