1. Keep your laundry sorted. When ever you do your washing, make sure you fold and put away your clothes straight away. This will help to keep your clothes in top condition, and will also help you keep you wardrobe organised, which hopefully will result in purchasing less clothes too. Whilst you're putting your clothes away, start sorting your closets - by style, colour, type - however you normally choose your outfit is how you should sort it. This is slightly different for everyone.
2. Create a binder system for your receipts. This is infinitely helpful come tax time too. For example, I create a binder for each tax year and then use dividers to split that year into type... I.e. Tax correspondence, superannuation, motor vehicle, property, shares, work, donations, and so forth. I also create other folders for ongoing important information, such as study, Work, bills (also divided by supplier), children (individual folders), and properties (purchase information, installation receipts etc)
3. Instantly rinse dishes after using them. This makes it MUCH easier to wash up later, quicker by hand or a lighter cycle with a dishwasher.
4. Utilise your storage space. You can use boxes, and wire trays to store smaller items. Label these for future reference, and when you do your regular purging, ensure you check these boxes for items you haven't used for a long time.
5. Assign 10-15 minutes per night, before everyone's bed time, to do a quick clean. This can include putting items away, wiping down benches, sorting laundry, loading dishwasher. Ensure everyone is contributing, even the youngest of children can easily learn to put things away.
6. De-clutter your home, remove all the distractions from view that seem to make it ok to pile the mess. Remove as many kitchen gadgets as you can from the bench and into cupboards that are easily reachable for all ages. Also, remove as much ' decoration' as you can, as it only adds to how much you have to clean.
7. Put to use one of my favourite things... The to do list! Write a detailed list of the home maintenance (and possible improvements you wish) in a list, then re-write that list in a prioritised list and stick in a prominent place, such as your fridge. Cross these off as you do them (I also like to have my list of goals next to this list, as for me they go hand in hand)
8. Establish a routine. They say if you do something for 30 days straight, it will become a habit, so why not create a routine that will soon just happen naturally!?
9. Finish what you start. Seems simple enough, but once all those distractions start (um, hello child, what are your needs?), it can be easy to forget what you were doing, or want a change and move on. You may as well get the chore over and done with, otherwise that time you did spend on it will have been wasted.
10. Once your surface materials are organised, it's time to start on your digital mess. For example many people just save all the photos in one folder on the computer, and others have all their apps loaded on the phones home screens. Sub folders are great for sorting these out, you can use whatever system you like, but I love date order. I use the Japanese date order, for example when we went to Norfolk Island a couple months ago I sorted them in my pictures folder,with sub folders named '20130928_Norfolk_Is' (and so forth) so year - month - date - relevant search term. This keeps them easily identifiable at a quick glance, and also very ordered.
