It’s that time of the year when we’re all gung-ho about making new year’s resolutions. And rightly so. With the universe giving us such a wonderful opportunity to start afresh, who are we not to rise to the occasion? While our new year resolutions could be just about anything pertaining to any area of our lives, one thing that underlies it all is our inherent desire to better our lives. We want to do better, learn better, grow better, and be better.
So let us give you a head start this New Year. Start with organizing your lives better and most of your resolutions will fall into place. Here are our best tips on how to declutter and organize your lives in 2023. You will be amazed at the wonders this works. You will automatically free up your time and space, be more productive and work on all the rest of your resolutions with ease and grace.
1) Reflect
The best place to start your organizing journey is to reflect on the year that was. This exercise, in itself, will give you enough fodder to organize yourself better for the new year. What did you do well, what didn’t go well but could be improved, and finally, what needed to be avoided altogether. Were there things you bought but realise you didn’t need or use at all? Were there things you hoarded, but you probably could have done away with ages ago? Were there things you bought that really helped you? Think, and then make a strong resolution to avoid those mistakes, make the best of what you can, and go all out on the things that worked for you.
2) Chunk
Unfortunately, most of our resolutions go for a toss before January is even over. Admit it, we all have faced this situation more often than not. It takes a strong will and a lot of discipline to stay focused on resolutions. But again, let us give you an important tip here. Whatever you decide to do, chunk it.
Chunking is the fine art of breaking something big into smaller pieces, which makes the large objective less overwhelming and more achievable. For instance, if your resolution is to lose ten kilos, don’t overwhelm yourself by trying to do it all in one go. It’s a sure-shot way to set yourself up for failure. Instead break down your resolutions into smaller, more doable, and achievable milestones. In this instance, say you will lose three kilos in the first quarter, another three in the next quarter, etc. By the end of the year, you will ultimately reach your objective. And because you have chunked down your goals, you will achieve them more easily, with a lot more motivation to stay on track.
3) List
What you focus on gets done. What you list down gets tracked. When you have a plan, even if you do go off-course, you are better equipped to course correct. If these are not reasons enough to list things down, we can’t think of a better technique to get yourself organized.
‘To-do Lists’ may be an overused term, but they sure work. We can’t always rely only on our memory to remember all the things we plan to do. Listed things down not only help us remember but also helps us be better organized.
4) Prioritise
Listing also helps in prioritizing tasks, which is one of the most efficient ways to organize yourself. At the end of the day, there may be things left undone, but if you have prioritized your lists, then it’s been out of choice, and probably not something that was urgent, to begin with.
There are many excellent techniques for prioritization. Here are two of our favorites. One is the simple A, B, and C classification. In this technique, you just classify your tasks as A, B, or C depending on the level of priority and get the ‘A’ tasks done first. Another useful technique is the ‘Urgent v/s Important’ grid. All your tasks fall into one of the four quadrants. While starting off, you may notice that many of your tasks are in the ‘Not Important, but Urgent’ quadrant, which means you have been procrastinating and aren’t very organized. But the more organized you get, the majority of your tasks will fall into the ‘Important, not Urgent’ category, which means you have enough time to do all the tasks that are important to you.
5) Declutter
This is a big one, which all the above groundwork was leading up to. The moment you choose to organize yourself, it implies there is a lot of decluttering to be done. It could be decluttering your home or office space, it could be decluttering specific areas of your home like wardrobes or kitchen, or it could be just decluttering life in general.
The beauty of decluttering is that you get rid of a lot of baggage that is doing you no good. By decluttering, you automatically lighten your space and yourself. You are also making space for new things to flow into your life. And as we welcome the new year, we all look forward to the new. New things, new experiences, new people, new places. And for this, we need to declutter.
6) Repeat
Organizing is a continuous process, and not just a one-off. Undoubtedly, when we start off 2023, there is a lot more organizing to be done. But once the major part is done, we shouldn’t leave it at that. Organizing and decluttering should become an ongoing part of our daily routines. There are always new ways to improve, and life is all about continuous improvement. Think about it, would Marie Kondo be able to make a global career out of ‘tidying’ if there wasn’t any merit to it?
This New Year, let’s aim to organize and transform our lives into spaces of serenity, inspiration, productivity, and achievement.
Reach out to us if you need personalized assistance in decluttering and reorganizing your home or any other space. Write to us at [email protected]
We wish you a Happy & Organized New Year!
