Want to Be More Organized in 2023? Professional Organizers Share Their Best Tips on How to Do It.
The New Year can be a wonderful opportunity to review and reevaluate certain aspects of your life and resolve to improve the ones you find lacking. On the other hand, New Year’s resolutions, however well-intentioned they may be, often end up being goals we struggle to keep. But it doesn’t have to be that way — at least when it comes to getting (and keeping) your home organized.
Ahead, professional organizers share their best tips for setting New Year’s resolutions that you can actually keep.
1. Be realistic.
You’ve heard this before, but it bears repeating: Don’t set yourself up for failure with grandiose goals. “Establish a minimum baseline that you feel like you can commit to,” says Shira Gill, home organizing expert and author of Minimalista. For her, that means a twice-a-month cleaning routine to “keep the house from falling apart.”
2. Give yourself some wiggle room.
Christine Platt, author of The Afrominimalist’s Guide to Living With Less, suggests establishing a firm but flexible vow. “Instead of saying, ‘I want to have a clean kitchen,’ [try]: ‘Except on those days where it is physically or emotionally impossible, I will ensure the kitchen is clean every night before I go to bed,’” she says.
3. Think small.
Both of our experts endorsed implementing a plan of smaller, more frequent tasks and routines over big cleans and organizational overhauls. “Have daily upkeep rituals,” says Gill. “A five-minute daily tidying routine of wiping down surfaces, folding blankets. That makes a difference.”
4. Try a simple nightly kitchen routine.
A little can go a long way when it comes to controlling the chaos in this well-used space. “At minimum, after each meal, wash and put the dishes away and wipe down the counters,” says Gill.
5. Get everyone involved.
Platt offers the following strategy for reducing clutter and sharing the load. “Instead of using random drinkware, try having dedicated mugs or glasses that each inhabitant is responsible for washing and reusing after use,” she says. “This is also a great way to get kids involved in the cleaning routine.”
6. Streamline your supplies.
Gill, who reports seeing a lot of “cleaning product clutter,” (example: under the kitchen sink) is a big advocate of using a single product to clean the entire house. She is a fan of The Concentrate from Branch Basics, which she dilutes according to the task at hand and describes as scent-free, kid- and pet-safe, and female-founded. “But the real reason I love it is because it’s one product for the whole house and I save a lot of money and space.”