The moment you walk in the door of your home, the shoes come off, the car keys are thrown on the shelf and you are ready to move through the rest of your day. Our home is the one place that we can be ourselves and let our personality shine. But if you have to sort through stacks of paper to find a bill or about kill yourself tripping over toys and books, then your house is saying “Organize Me!”

A well-organized home saves you time, money and frustration. Yes, it takes a bit of work to get it there – especially for those pack rats and procrastinators - but it certainly pays off in the end.

Whether your house is clutter-free (minus a few closets and other unmentionable hiding places around the house) or a disaster, bringing an organization system into your life is rather painless. It will take some time – days, weeks, maybe even months – and some behavior changes.

Start at the Beginning

Right now you have decided to commit yourself to a better way of living, so kudos to you! But where do you start?

First things first. Take a notepad and pen and begin a survey of your home. Begin at the first room and finish with the last. Don’t forget closets, bathrooms, garages and attics. When surveying each room, look at how it is organized now, and how much clutter you see. Note what needs to be done – closets gone through and items you no longer use need to be thrown out, toys and personal items strewn throughout the home, bathroom closets stuffed with millions of towels and other effects, offices that look like a paper chase rather than a working space and so on.

After you are finished with the survey, rate each room based on the severity of the disorganization – 1 for the least disorganized and 10 as the worst mess. This system will help you figure out where you need to start your organization mission. The most commonly disorganized rooms tend to be the laundry room, garage and office.

Before you begin plundering through the worst rooms, design a systematic approach. Look at a calendar, and realistically schedule time for each room. You can do this on a daily, weekly or monthly basis. Try to avoid spreading the organization process too far out into the year, for your chances of successfully completing the mission grow smaller the farther out you schedule.

For example, let’s say you desperately need to organize four rooms – the office, your child’s bedroom, the living room and the bathroom. Review your free-time over the next two months and decide on times to organize. The office is the worst, so schedule that first. Give yourself the appropriate time to organize the room – let’s say about two days. This gives you one day for sorting through everything in the office – throwing away old papers, categorizing items into keep, garage sale and give away piles – and the second day can be used for arranging furniture, placing keep items in an organized manner and finding a place for everything. You then do the same for each room. Just keep in mind, the sooner you get the process done, the more time you will have to enjoy your life, so don’t procrastinate!