11 Tips To Stay Organized In 2013

Anyone who has ever made a New Year’s resolution knows that keeping it is the hardest part – especially when that resolution has to do with getting (and staying) organized.  Lifestyle expert and President of Corporate Concierge Solutions, Jan Kaplan, has some easy-to-employ tips to ensure that this resolution is one that sticks:

1. Do one thing at a time – Sometimes life can get hectic.  Projects and assignments can stack up fast and seem impossible to complete.  Make sure to pick one project at a time and complete it before moving onto the next one. Completing the more important or difficult assignments first will keep your stress levels down as you move through each project.
2. Keep a to-do list that syncs with your mobile phone – With major advances in technology over the past ten to twenty years has come an increasingly more efficient way to keep tasks organized.  Set alerts on your phone to remind you of upcoming events or meetings you have planned to keep yourself in the know.
3. Have less stuff – Go through your belongings and figure out what you need and what you’re keeping around for no particular reason. Chances are you’re never going to use that broken stapler ever again, so pitch it and don’t think twice about doing so. Toss out those boxes or craft projects you won’t finish that are taking up valuable room in your office or garage, you’ll probably never use them or their contents again anyway.
4. Use a planner – This goes with the previous tip. If you’re not into storing all of your info on your phone, go out and buy a notebook planner instead. Keep all meetings, events and personal dates in the planner to keep organized and to make sure you never double book a time or day.
5. Say no to junk – This applies to both physical junk and things like junk mail.  Unsubscribe from that daily email chain you never even open. You may think it doesn’t take much time to just delete it, but you’ll never have to delete it again if you stop getting the unwanted emails altogether.
6. Set small goals that you can finish – Often times people have a hard time sticking to goals because they focus on the end result and not the beginning of the process to reaching their goal.  Make small goals that can be easily finished that lead up to obtaining your larger goal.
7. Grocery shop for one week only – Buying too many groceries at once often leads to produce or other perishable food items going to waste due to having too much food.  Make a list of every meal for the week and shop specifically for those items.  You will cut down on both the amount of food that goes to waste and the amount of money you spend monthly on groceries.
8. Put wastebaskets in every room – Having a place for you to throw your trash in every room cuts down on the probability that there will be unwanted waste floating around your house or workspace.
9. Everything in its right place – Organize folders, binders, clothes, etc. into their proper places. Keeping business files separate from personal files and coding them in chronological order will help you avoid future confusion. Personally, take all of the socks out of your sock drawer that don’t match and put them in a bag in your laundry room and use them for dusting mitts.
10. Avoid “miscellaneous” folders – Label everything you file with specific titles. Two months from now you may not remember that receipt for the copy machine you bought is in the “miscellaneous” file.
11. Let Go – Jan has a story to highlight why you need to let go of old files and how to do so. “My girlfriend was cleaning her office out as they were moving.  She had files from the 1980’s in her office!  She couldn’t let go of her “first” deal and all the subsequent ones.  Thick binders and thick files that took up 10 File Drawers.” She adds “I took the top page from (just one page) from each deal and put them in a binder for her – so that it didn’t feel like she was letting go of her past deals . . .I took 10 file drawers and put them in 1 neat binder.”