A Checklist for Organizing for the New Year

The new year brings a restored commitment to new habits that hold the promise of living our lives with more intention and gratitude. There is wisdom in believing you can’t change what you don’t track. Organizing is a great way to discover what you have and may need to move toward whatever goals or new habits you want to create.

For example, if one of your goals is to get in shape, but your treadmill or exercise bike is buried under unfolded laundry, it is not creating a supportive environment for that new habit to be formed. In contrast, setting out our gym clothes in one spot to make it easier to get up, get dressed, and out the door will support that habit.

This checklist will help you get and stay organized in 2024.

A Checklist for Organizing

Identify your goals for organizing.

What is it you want to accomplish? Go in with a plan so that you can maximize your time by knowing the end goal. Do you want the kids’ rooms to be more tidy? Create a space for everything and make it easy to follow. This could be pictures, labels, or even bins that match the size of the items they contain.

Make a list.

Create a list of supplies you may need once you’ve determined your goal and how to set it up. This may include getting a shelving unit, bins for storing items or cleaning supplies. Consider what organizational system will work best.

An online search for what you are specifically working on can help. For example, a search for shoe organization will bring up different solutions than organizing a garage. Do some research to see what’s out there.

Get support from others.

Support is critical to success: recruit friends or family to help organize, hire a professional organizer or cleaning company, use habit trackers or accountability partners, join a group of people with the same goal, etc.

These are all ways to get support to help you achieve your goal and keep it working. The best way to create new habits is with repetition and reinforcement. Make it easier and fun to follow your new routine, and it will stick.

Use Lean’s 5 S’s.

Lean is a style of organization used originally by manufacturers, but the concept can be used in various ways. Founded in Japan, the English version is:

Sort
Set in place
Shine
Standardize
Sustain

The quick overview is first to sort out what you want organized so you know what you have, don’t have, and don’t need. Second is to set things into the place and order you want them; this may necessitate supplies in order to work well.

The third is to shine or clean. Often, when we sort through things to organize them, we find cleaning tasks to handle, and this is a great time to do it while things are out and easy to get to.

Fourth is to standardize, which means doing daily activities that support the maintenance of the new habit.

Finally, sustain, which means creating processes to keep the new habit in place. This could be as simple as setting a daily timer for five minutes to do a quick tidy. It could be making an agreement with yourself to take supplements right after brushing your teeth. Or it could be making a chore chart for the kids.

A Cleaning Service in Virginia, Maryland, and Washington, DC

Keep this checklist in mind as you work on setting up new habits and organization for the new year. Circling back on your progress and celebrating your progress will help you form a new habit, not just a resolution that fizzles before the spring.

A Cleaning Service is an award-winning cleaning company serving the Greater Washington DC area, including Virginia and Maryland. If you get your home organized and want help keeping it that way, we can help. And, if regular, ongoing cleaning tasks don’t bring you joy, consider letting them go into our professional and competent hands.