Being organized means putting things in a place where you can easily locate them. Today, in addition to organizing physical things, one has to organize non-physical things, such as files on your computer.
Organize Similar Things Together
So how do you organize things so that you can easily find them. You need to put similar things together. So for papers, you set up hanging files with folders, and you file the papers in those folders by categories.
Here is an example of how I set up folders for the dozens of manuals I have. I came up with 15 categories; and I labeled the hanging files and folders, and hung them in alphabetical order. They are: Air & Water, Appliances, Auto, Basement, Furniture, Health, House, Kitchen, Music, Office, Outdoors, Pet, Sports, Telephone, TV. Whenever I buy a product, I file the manual in the folder I think it bests fits into. And whenever I get rid of an item, I go to the folder where the manual is stored, and I get rid of the manual.
Fine Tuning your Organization
Organizing needs fine tuning every once in a while. When you feel your filing system isn’t working as smoothly as you would like, you may need to rename a folder, combine folders, or split a folder into multiple folders.
For computer files, I do the same thing. In My Documents, I set up folders for my business, volunteering, my hobbies, and one called My Folders, which is for everything else. Then I have subfolders, and sometimes subfolders of the subfolders. Within the folders are my files. As I do with paper folders, I also need to reorganize folders and files by renaming, separating, combining, and moving them.
Personal items are also organized by category. So for example, I have food, clothes, books, supplies, and tools organized by category so that I can easily locate items when I need them. As with files, I reorganize when needed. And when I buy new clothes, I look to see what old clothes I can give away.
Work at Becoming Organized
I was not born organized. I worked hard at getting organized once I found that I could not function very well being disorganized. So for example, I do not have a good memory, so I learned to write everything down. But I found that lists were too cumbersome and difficult to work with. So I use an individual sheet of paper to write down one thing I need to do. I then file that sheet of paper in one of the folders I have set up in my file cabinet. There is a folder set up for each day of the week, the weeks of the month, the next month, and long term. Then when I get to the day that has my paper in it, I know that I have to work on that thing that day. For a more detailed explanation and a demonstration on how this system works, check out my YouTube video.
