Clutter 101: Track Your De-Cluttering Activity [Organize IT]
Take a quick look around an average room and there are probably loads of areas that need to be regularly cleaned, and plenty of drawers, boxes and shelves that need de-cluttering. Apply all that to an entire apartment or house and that’s a lot of work and a lot of next actions to get through. It would make sense to have some sort of system for managing all those next actions around your home right? Oddly enough, this is an area that tends to get neglected, so in this post I will introduce my own system that I have recently been experimenting with.
The system revolves around one of my templates which can cover a monthly period or a weekly period, whichever approach works for you and your lifestyle. Currently I have all my rooms on one sheet but it becomes a little difficult to follow after a while so I may try having one room per sheet. On it I list every activity required in each room around the home, whether it be a surface that needs cleaning/dusting or a section that needs de-cluttering. Some examples include:
- Dust skirting boards
- Hoover carpet
- Wash floor
- De-clutter shelves
- Organize wardrobe
- Wash dishes
- Hoover under bed
- Clean windows
On the face of it, this approach does seem a little over the top (you can end up with quite an extensive list of activities). However, it allows you to go into each room knowing exactly what needs doing and it also helps in keeping track of what’s been done, when it was done and what hasn’t been done. For instance, by referring to the sheet you can tell when the last time you cleaned the bedroom carpet was or when you last de-cluttered the kitchen cupboards. Furthermore, it is a great motivational tool. I’ve found myself doing a lot more around the house, simply because I want to tick more items off on my chart. The key part of being de-cluttered is that you stay on top of what comes into your home so any approach that encourages you to do this regularly can only be a good thing.
Original post here: SpiKe
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