How to Organize Your Life for the New Year

The beginning of a new year is a great time to focus on organizing your life.  The thing is, you don’t have to wait until January 1st to get started!  These tips are ideal for helping you organize your home and life for a wonderful and productive new year.

Tackle clutter and disarray now rather than waiting another couple months to work it all out on the first of January.  If you want to properly organize your life, it actually begins with tackling little tasks each day.  Here are 6 tips on How to Organize Your Life for the New Year to make it an easy process.

How to Organize Your Life for the New Year

1. Make a plan. Take a look at your home, car, and any other location you want neat and orderly to help organize your life. What can you get started on right now? Perhaps a certain room in the home? Or your vehicle? Developing a plan of attack will help you get organized as we go into the holiday season.

I recommend making a standard to-do list.  You can do this with pen and paper, in a bullet journal, or on a chalkboard or dry erase board for everyone to see easily in order to help you manage to make it happen.

2. Sift through the paper clutter. There are likely mounds of junk mail, bills, school papers and more on your family desk. Sort through these papers and only keep what is necessary. Select a few of your favorite pieces of schoolwork your child has brought home and place it in a folder or small tote box. Place this in your child’s closet for safe keeping.

Use a file box for bills that are due or have just been paid. At the end of the year, transfer these bills to the trash or a shoe box you can store in your closet. Try not to keep bills more than 5 years to reduce your clutter. You can use a paper shredder to destroy them after the 5 years has passed.  If you really want to know how to organize your life, keeping your paperwork in order will make a number of things in your daily life easier to manage.

3. Store information on the computer. It’s nice to have paper copies of calendars, schedules, and other important documents. However, this can create a lot of disorganization in your home. The more you can track and record on your computer, the better off you will be!  You can set up spreadsheets for your finances, and use a Google calendar for your family’s activities and events.

As you can see, being able to organize your life for the new year is easy to manage.  You simply need to focus on one thing at a time and go slowly so you don’t get overwhelmed.

4. Take a look at the closets. Go through all the clothing in the closets. As you hang them back up, categorize them by type. Hang all the shirts together, then jeans, then sweaters, then jackets. Access what’s on the floor of your closets too.

For shoes, a tote box on the floor of the closet can keep them from being scattered. Shoe racks are a possibility too. In the hall closet, store no more than one blanket for each family member. This can also be where you hang coats (no more than two per family member to keep them organized).

5. Tackle the toy box. Many children have way too many toys, and if you add the Christmas gifts in on top of them, it can cause utter chaos! Sort through your children’s belongings now, before the new toys start flowing in.

Trash any broken toys, and donate the ones your kids no longer enjoy playing with. Consider separating different kinds of toys to make clean up easier. LEGOs can all go in their own plastic storage container. A bookshelf will hold all your child’s reading material, along with larger cars and balls.

6. Clean out the junk drawer. Almost every home has one…you know the one. The drawer you stuff take-out menus, extra batteries, straws, and everything else that doesn’t have a home. This is likely to be in the kitchen, but it may be a desk drawer or dresser drawer too.

Pull everything out of the drawer and assess what’s inside. Toss out anything you no longer need like old receipts. File the recipes, menus, and other paper items in a small binder, which will fit back into the drawer. Use small baskets or drawer organizers to hold the tiny odds and ends rolling around in the drawer.

Want to organize your entire home this year? Join the 52 Weeks to an Organized Home Challenge to break home organization down into manageable weekly tasks.

More Organization Tips:

How to Restore Order to Your Home After the Holidays

How To Organize Your Home On A Budget

7 Time Management Tips To Organize Your Life

Secret Habits Of Highly Organized People

10 Tips For An Organized Family