I really want to get more organized, but I’m sort of all over the place these days. If you don’t believe me, just take one look at my instagram. I have my blog which is empowerment and healing, and I have my etsy shop which is selling products. Then I have motherhood and pregnancy and family. There’s baking and crafting and figuring out how to organize it all. It probably doesn’t help that I want to try a brand new hobby every week. My mind is sort of like a giant ball of chaos sometimes… And my social media is sort of a landing page for all of it. But I’m working on figuring that out; on how to tie it all together and make it all work instead.
That means figuring out how to get more organized is a major priority for me right now. I know that I need it in my business and in my personal life. It’s only going to become more important once my second baby comes this summer and the chaos in my house and mind grows. I’ve known for a while that some big time changes needed to be made, and so my life coach and I have been working on creating a plan to help me figure out what will work best for me.
I started with decluttering my physical space.
Each day I pick a different area to conquer and start going through everything there. Then I make the choice between keep, sell, donate or trash. Then I have to figure out how to best organize what I’m keeping so that the area is functional. So far it’s been going well- I’ve been filling up a lot of big trash bags and feeling lighter each time I put one out on the curb.
Some days the area is a big area- like my entire living room. Other days it’s one of the cabinets in my kitchen. Regardless of how big or small, I always feel so accomplished, not only when I finish the area, but each time I visit that place afterwards. For example, every time I am able to open the cabinet above my stove without Tupperware falling on my head, I get a little burst of joy. Sometimes it’s the very simple things.
The current phase of the plan involves being more organized in my digital space.
Primarily, this means my phone and computer. I have so many files all over the place, meaning I can never find what I’m looking for. It also means that I have things saved that are from years ago that probably wouldn’t interest me now anyway. My desktop is always cluttered, my downloads folder is always full and I have a folder with hundreds of screenshots containing god only knows what. Without having any organization, it’s all pretty much useless! (And definitely not conducive to running a productive business.)
Step one of this phase was to create three core folders on my hard drive. One is titled business, the second is titled personal, and the third is titled unorganized. Then I pretty much dragged EVERYTHING into the unorganized folder. Now I’m in the stage of creating subfolders so that as I start going through the unorganized folder, I have somewhere to put things. Every single file will need to go to its correct grouping, or it needs to be deleted. The goal is to get that unorganized file completely empty. It’s tricky though, because I have to figure out exactly how I want to organize things and what I don’t actually need. This could take me a while, but as long as I work on it a little bit each day, there will be progress. (Small steps are still steps.)
The next section is getting more organized will my time.
I know from experience that when there’s a newborn in the house, time is a precious commodity. I’m assuming it will be even harder to come by this time around, since I’ll also have a toddler to take care of. And so I’m trying to figure out the best ways to organize my time, for both business related tasks and personal.
One of the solutions I’ve come up with are making sure that I’m using a dependable scheduling tool. Right now, I’m using ASANA and I’m pretty happy with it. It allows me to keep track of all of my appointments and important dates. I also have sections in there where I can jot down ideas of things I want to get done in the future and easily add dates to them once I get them sorted. But my favorite part is the option to create reoccurring tasks. I’m able to sort of schedule things out and break up my to-do lists into manageable days.
I’m also using it not only for business tasks, but also to be more organized with my chores.
For example, rather than waiting until the laundry is overflowing and overwhelming, or trying to tackle it every day, I have added it to my Tuesday and Thursday tasks. This means every Tuesday and Thursday, as soon as my daughter goes down for her nap, the first thing I do is the laundry. This way I stay on top of it and it’s an easy routine. I do my meal planning on Saturdays so that I’m able to do my grocery shopping on Sundays with a thought out list. Things like wiping out the inside of the refrigerator, updating the pantry inventory, vacuuming- they all have an assigned day with a little reminder in asana. I’m able to stay on top of tasks much easier this way, and nothing builds up to be too overwhelming.
Time is important in my business too.
Being a multi-passionate entrepreneur with ADHD and chronic fatigue means I really need to get my shit together if I want to be successful and productive. It can’t just be keeping my files organized and then creating or writing whenever the mood might hit. I have to have a sort of plan for what I want to get done and the best way to do it.
Sure, there are going to be unpredictable factors. I never know how many orders I’m going to get, meaning I don’t necessarily know what I’m going to need to do production wise. I could have one week where I get several orders meaning hours of work, followed by a week of no orders at all. But, there are parts that I can predict.
I am in complete control of how many blog posts or emails I write each month and when I want to publish them. It’s up to me to decide how many new products I want to launch or whether current product listings need updating. That means these things can be planned out and therefore more organized.
It’s time to put plans into action.
An example of how I am getting more organized in my business is with blog planning. Once I made the decision of how often I wanted to post and how often I wanted guest posters, I was able to create a spreadsheet to plan them out. I wrote down the dates of the posts for the rest of the year, separated by month. Then I assigned a topic or theme to each month so that I can really start planning out each post. I also made notes of which dates were going to be guest bloggers and have already started scheduling them out. I think this will make it a lot easier to stay on track, especially once the baby comes. That alone is exciting and gives me a little endorphin rush just thinking about it.
I’ve been trying to figure out how I can take a similar approach in pretty much every area of my life, because I want to be able to continue pushing forward as an entrepreneur while still being able to be present with my children and not miss out on anything with them. I also want to make sure that I’m keeping my stress levels down because I want to continue being my best and most authentic self.
I believe that the more I organize my life, the more I’ll be able to focus on healing.
It will allow me to be able to let my mind and heart to fully recover from my past. Not only will I have more time to work on becoming the strongest and happiest version of me, but I’ll have a much more relaxing environment to do it in. And so it’s become a very important goal while on this journey of recovery.
On that note, if you have any additional tips on how to get more organized, I’d love to hear them! And I hope this motivates you to get more organized as well.
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