I visited my son in his new home the other day, and boy howdy was it a mess. “How could you live like this?”, I asked him, to which he replied “I’m just not organized like you are!”. What a load of baloney. If you ask me, it takes very little to live an organized life, and if with this blog I can help you meet your organizational goals, then I very much want to do that!
The truth is, most of what it takes to live an organized life is a small commitment to the happiness of your tomorrow’s self. The more you procrastinate, the more you put something off just one more day, the more you tax your future self for the convenience of not doing anything right now, even though doing very little today would make an enormous difference tomorrow! Each time you excuse yourself from putting the DVD back where it goes in the proper case on the proper shelf, the more of a chore it becomes when you’re finally fed up with the clutter. The more you let those dishes pile up in the sink, the harder it becomes to scrub off the dried food stuck to the plates.
If you’re struggling with a commitment to organized living, start by committing to one small change. It can be as simple as putting your coat where it goes in the closet when you come home, instead of throwing it haphazardly on the couch. It could be as easy as folding up the blanket when you’re done watching TV. Don’t add anything else to the list! Once you’ve succeeded at making a habit of that small commitment, you’ll be more likely to follow through on future commitments than you will be if you take on a thousand at once.
For me it was making the bed. It was so easy to leave the bed unmade when I left in the morning, and I hardly credited it with the additional stress I felt in an unkempt bedroom at the end of a long day. But one day I resolved to that single, small change, and I can’t tell you what a difference it made in my life to come home to a made bed. It encouraged me to make additional small changes elsewhere, and once I had those down, then I felt the confidence to make more. Suddenly, one small change has yielded serious dividends, and brought peace and order to my life in a way I never would have expected.
What one thing could you commit to doing differently? I think you’ll be amazed by what a big difference such a small thing can make in your life. And there’s no better time to do it than now, at the beginning of 2019 – Happy New Year!
