Laura Torres - The Organized Mom: Tips and Tricks to Find More Time

How many times, at the end of the day, have you wondered where all the time went? How many times have you wished you could just have one extra hour to yourself, or to finish a project, or to spend playing with your children? What if I told you that you just might be able to find that extra hour? According to the National Association of Professional Organizers , women spend an average of 55 minutes a day looking for stuff. 55 minutes! That is time that is much, much better spent elsewhere.

To reclaim that extra hour, among other just as worthy reasons, you need to get yourself organized. This book is full of tips that can help you do that, even if your hands are full with kids, a job, a spouse, and a plethora of other commitments. These are real-world tips, from my own experience as a busy mother. Ive been a stay-at-home-mom, a mom with a full-time job, a single mom, and a mom with an at-home business. At one point, I was teaching an early-morning, before-school high school class, working part-time, doing a graduate program double speedand being a mom. Organization wasnt a hobby; it was a necessity. Ive also culled tips from the experts and from my organized friends. There is not anything revolutionary here. There are tips, steps, systems, and ideas to make your life easier. Getting organized is a series of replacing bad habits with good habits, along with getting rid of clutter and keeping it away. Put all of it together, and I whole-heartedly believe you can accomplish more in a day than you ever dreamed possible.

Disclaimer: I am not a neat freak. My natural state is on the slobby side. I hate to clean. I battle hoarding tendencies. My home is not in perfect order. There are craft projects on the counter, a half-disassembled bicycle in the laundry room, and the carpet could have used a good vacuuming three days ago. My home is, however, organized and clutter-free, and I overcome my natural tendency to not be organized because the extra time and resulting happy, smooth-running family is well worth the effort.

There is a big difference between organization and perfect order and projects-in-progress and clutter. I am suspicious of anyone who has a house that looks like a showpiece. A home is meant to be lived in. There should be paper bits under the table from your kindergarteners experiment with scissors. There should be a dirty bowl in the sink from the afternoons cookie baking. There should be evidence of work, hobbies, cooking, pets, and school projects.

Amidst the good stuff that makes up living, however, there can be organization. There is no need for lost permission slips, hastily packed backpacks and lunches, and chores that pile up until they are overwhelming. My idea of organization is making sure that the tasks of life are done in the most efficient, practical manner possible to leave more room for family time and free time. Time is precious, and nothing wastes more of it than wading through the clutter of disorganization.

Each family is unique, and every system wont work for every family. It takes a little bit of experimentation to find the tactics that will work for you. Try the tips here, and adjust them to your needs. The point is to have a system or plan. The default system is chaos. By incorporating these ideas into your daily routines, your family will soon be humming along, organized and happy.

Its hard to get organized if you are drowning in clutter, both physical and mental (and physical clutter creates mental distress!). De-cluttering your home and your schedule is an essential first step to getting organized. Part of de-cluttering is identifying the situation that is causing the problem in the first place. If your kids come home from school and dump everything on the kitchen table, perhaps you need to set up an organized, convenient spot for the backpacks and jackets, and invest a little time to install hooks and a shoe rack. If the mornings are chaos, you need to reconsider what you can accomplish the evening before to help limit forgotten lunches, missing socks, and fighting over bathroom time. If you simply clean up and de-clutter without addressing the underlying issues, it wont be long until youve got the same problem all over again. So while youre getting rid of all the excess stuff in your house and identifying areas that need work, always ask yourself why it got that way in the first place.

The best methods for dealing with clutter are often dependent on the area of the house you are trying to manage, such as a closet or kids rooms, which we will cover in individual chapters. There are some basics for cleaning up and avoiding general clutter in your home, however. First, heres what NOT to do: