Your home is the place you wake up each morning and return to each evening after the day is done. To ensure that it is a soothing sanctuary, the space should be neat and organized. But, organized doesn’t just mean that everything is put away. Your home should operate smoothly, allowing you to complete tasks like cooking, hobbies and recreation with ease. By incorporating a few Zen organization habits, you can make it simple to make your home a soothing and relaxing place to be.
1. Choose the best spot for every item you use.
Items that are used often should be quickly and easily accessible. Those you use less can be put away where they are not in the way. If you find that you tend to leave certain tools or other objects out after use, it could be that the place you’ve chosen for them is not effective. You may need to try out a few spots before you find the place that makes daily use of the things you use most the most intuitive.
2. Make your home visually restful.
Not every space needs to have something in it. If you have a small table or shelf that seems to serve no purpose besides gathering clutter, get rid of it. The open wall space will be restful to your eyes and removing the clutter catching surface means that junk mail, magazines and other detritus have fewer places to accumulate.
3. Make a practice of putting things away immediately.
Whether you are in your kitchen, living room or home office, make a habit of putting items away immediately after use. This dramatically cuts down the time spent later on returning everything to its place.
4. Sort new items before they come inside.
Each day when you get the mail, sort it by the recycle bin. Only bring inside the items you want or need. Envelopes, advertisements and packaging never come into the house, so they never need to be brought out. Then, sort items into stacks based on where they will go. For instance, bills can go to your desk for payment while reading materials can head to your den or bedroom to be perused that evening.
5. Don’t be afraid to delegate.
Often, we feel that we have to be solely responsible for organization in our homes. Give family members responsibilities to keep each area of your home organized and tranquil. For instance, one kid can be tasked with putting away all DVDs and game controllers in the evening, another can be tasked with wiping down kitchen counters.
By incorporating tidy habits into our daily activities, we can make it easy to keep our homes organized and relaxing spaces. Work out what works best for you and see how your home becomes a more satisfying place to start and end each day.