How to Organize Your Life
Tips for Getting Organized and Staying That Way

If you do at least five meal plans for the week then you can probably have at least two meals from the leftovers for a total of seven meals.

If you eat out regularly it will be less but you should be eating out because you have planned to eat out not because you have not planned what to eat.

With a meal plan in place it is easy to prepare items ahead of time.

The first person home can start the meal preparations and cooking the family meal can be a shared task.

A shopping list is a must.

Regular meal planning allows for the creation of the grocery list so that all the items for the planned meals are on hand.

Shop on a regular day of the week for the next week and buy enough to last the entire week.

The only exceptions to this rule might be for milk or some other perishables that you cannot store in your fridge. A midweek stop at the grocery store to pick up some extra milk or eggs might be necessary if you do not have the space in the fridge to store enough for the entire week.

Plan regular shopping trips for clothing or household items. Unless you have someone in the house growing at an alarming rate you should be able to manage clothes shopping twice per year (per person) to stock up for the change of seasons.

Never go shopping for recreation or emotional satisfaction. These needs are much better satisfied in other ways.

Uncontrolled shopping is just a recipe for clutter.

Sort your mail every day.

Choose a time of the day when you can spend 5 minutes (no more) going through the mail.

This preliminary mail sort should be to assign priority to those items that need action first, those that can wait until a later date, and those that can be ignored.

You should have an appropriate place to put each of these categories of mail.

See How to Organize Paperwork

You have to know how to control your money if you want to know how to organize your life.

Nothing will cause your life to be out of control faster than poor money management.

Becoming organized and staying that way means being in control of your money.

Have a set time when you sit down and attend to financial matters like bill paying.

As much as possible automate your bill paying through electronic transfers. At the very least you should set up internet banking so that you can pay your bills manually, but online.

Set a regular laundry day and stick to it. Unless there is some sort of catastrophe each person in the family should not need to do laundry more than once per week in order have clean clothing to wear for the next week.

Linens do not have to be changed more than once every two to three weeks providing good personal hygiene practices are followed. Regular bathing decreases the necessity for frequent changing of bed linens.

Set up a system of daily, weekly, monthly, and annual chores and house maintenance tasks.

Write them on the calendar or use chore charts for delegating household cleaning tasks to family members.

Review these regularly at family meetings and make the necessary adjustments as children grow and can take on different reponsibilities.

Hire out anything that requires skills or expertise that you do not have. If you can afford it hire someone to do some of the regular house cleaning or outdoor maintenance so you can have more time together as a family.