Secret Sauce for Staying Organized: Routine Resets
It’s one thing to get your home organized, but keeping it that way takes a whole different skill set. Whether you call it chores, “notice-and-dos,” or maintenance, it’s essential to regularly reset your spaces. If you start with an organized space, and then build routines to maintain it, you will reduce the mental load and make it possible to delegate to others as well. Let’s talk about three reset routines that are essential for every household.
Annual or Seasonal Reset
The Christmas holiday season brings an influx of new items to our homes. Gifts to wrap for others, gifts received, seasonal food and beverages, decorations, and so much more. If we aren’t careful, each year we gain additional stuff and the collective weight of it all can be overwhelming. An annual reset just after Christmas is a great time to declutter, donate items no longer needed, and clear our homes to make space for the year ahead. But this is a major undertaking and can’t be done in a few minutes here and there around the edges. Take some time today to block out a space on the calendar, your own personal “boxing day” or even an entire week. Make an appointment with yourself—and keep it—your entire year will go more smoothly!
Daily and Weekly Resets
Many home care tasks need to be done daily or weekly to keep things running smoothly. Just as we need to keep the dishes and laundry running through their cycles, we also need to build time into our schedules for an organizing reset. Tidying up the kitchen and main living area should ideally be part of the daily wind-down routine. This isn’t a time to make decisions about where things go, it’s just a time to mindlessly put things back in their proper locations so they can be easily found the next day. Make time to properly put groceries away, not just throwing perishables in the fridge, but pulling older items to the front, with newer in the back so things don’t spoil because you forgot they were there. Make time to unbox, try on, take off tags, and incorporate new purchases into your life. When I’m working with clients, we often find new items they forgot to unpackage, test, and try on before the return window closed. Your weekly routine needs to include restocking: time to incorporate new purchases into your home, break down boxes for recycling, and possibly take returns to the store or post office.
Monthly and Quarterly Resets
This is where a lot of households get off track. Some tasks, such as financial checkups, auto maintenance, and deep cleaning need to be done more than once a year, but less than once a week. I recommend setting aside a few hours a month and a full day each quarter to reset your home space, schedules, wardrobe, and finances. Put it on the calendar and protect it, and start adding things to your “reset” list as they occur to you. Need to schedule a routine physical? Add that to your monthly list. You’re basically blocking off time to be your own personal assistant. Request PTO from work on a date that is good for you to get these things done and dusted. You’ll feel so much relief when you know you have time to take care of a huge chunk of your to do list in one fell swoop.
First Things First: Rest or Reset?
Resting is different from resetting, but both are important. When you rest, you’re ideally relaxed and enjoying the moment while reading a good book, taking a nap, or engaging in a favorite hobby. It can be hard to experience rest in a home that is crying out for attention. When you do a quick (daily/weekly type) reset of your space, you communicate to your body that things are taken care of and it’s fine to rest. But sometimes, you need rest before you can tackle your monthly/quarterly/annual reset. Rule of thumb: take 15-30 minutes to tidy before you rest for the evening. Take a couple hours off doing something you love before you tackle a bigger reset/overhaul project. You want your brain to be fresh and ready to go when making decisions and setting up new systems.
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Wishing you a restful holiday season,
Karina
