Everyone has a morning routine. Perhaps yours
involves crawling out of bed, heading to the bathroom to do all of your morning stuff, getting dressed--underwear first, pants second, shirt third.
Maybe you have a glass of water and
your vitamins/medication, you make the bed, let the dog out to do his business. Maybe you get the car warmed up...ready to go to work or to drive the kids to school.
You get the idea. Most humans follow a fairly specific routine every morning. The same is true for every evening for that matter. And
sometimes it stands true for all that time between waking up and going back to bed.
We humans are creatures of habit. Sure, occasionally we'll do something fun like get on an airplane for a planned vacation or wake up to an unfortunate challenge, like discovering that the washing machine is
broken.
We will change our routines occasionally or our routines will sometimes get thrown off course unexpectedly.
But for the most part, today's routine is the same as tomorrow's routine, is the same as the next day's routine...
This isn't a bad thing. We all have developed habits
throughout our lives...things that we do over and over and over again, without much thought.
So, if we all have good routines going that help us get through the day, why not improve those routines to get our homes and lives better organized?
You can do this by adding one TINY organizing or cleaning task into your routines. Here are some examples:
Current Routine: You already choose an outfit to wear each day, so you're looking in your closet and/or drawers already.
Add On: While you're looking inside your
closet/drawers, pull out one item you're not wearing and add it to your Donation Box.
Current Routine: You get in your car to head to work or to drive the kids to school.
Add On: Before you begin driving, weed out the glove compartment, toss out any visible trash, OR dust off the dusty dashboard (keep a car duster in your car at all times). Choose just one add-on task. Current Routine: You flip through today's mail at home and/or at work. Maybe you even
recycle what you don't need right away.
Add On: Walk on over to your filing cabinet and weed out ONE file folder. Recycle papers in that folder that you don't need.
Current Routine: You cook dinner for you and/or your family. You already have to reach into the fridge, cabinets, pantry, etc.
Add On: You weed out one stale or expired food
item at the same time OR tidy up one section of a shelf.
Current Routine: You sit down to watch TV and relax after dinner.
Add On: Right before you sit down, you do ONE 5-minute organizing or cleaning task, like pulling a book off the book shelf that you'll never read again and adding it to your Donate Box, clearing some items off of your dining room or kitchen table, or deleting some DVRd programming that
you're never going to watch. Again, just ONE of these.
So, you don't have to find additional hours in your day to get your cleaning and organizing done. You just have to build small bits of it into the routine that YOU'RE ALREADY DOING.
And once you do your ADD-ON organizing and cleaning task consistently, it will become part of your routine...an everyday good habit, just like brushing your teeth.
