You had a busy week and got behind on tidying up your home. No biggie!  When you're only a week behind on putting things away, just spend some spare time this weekend and you'll be back on track, right? That should work in theory but in real life that’s not always the case.

When you don't have spare time, one busy week can turn into busy weeks. Then weeks turn to months and months could turn into years, it snowballs and gets your whole life outta whack!  The cluttered space doesn't only affect how you feel in your home. Oh no... it doesn't stop there. It clutters up your mind too... even when you’re away from the mess.

You may even feel guilty for not having it all together.  Sound familiar? Don't worry, you're not alone! It happens to everyone at some point in their life. If your goal is to make being organized the norm instead of the exception, use the following steps to get started.

The very first thing is to book time for yourself every day to work on this.  It doesn't mean you're going to be organizing in that 15mins. Some of that time is going to go towards coming up with a plan to tackle the space.  But before you can even do that, you must give yourself the time to do it.

To make time try giving up some time wasters like watching Netflix, playing video games or spending too much time on social media. If you aren’t spending time doing that, try to wake up 15 mins earlier or go to bed 15 mins later.  Get creative, you deserve 15 mins a day to do something that’s going to end up giving you more time in the long run.

Set an alarm to go off on your phone to remind you every day that it’s time to organize for 15 mins!

Mindset can make or break your success. That’s why I ended up dedicating a whole chapter to that topic in my book Your Home: Organized because your mindset really is that important.

The kind of mindset you need to get into is a growth mindset, which is the understanding that abilities and intelligence can be developed. When you take on a growth mindset approach, you know that your intelligence and abilities are malleable.

Example of the Natural Planning Model:

Project: Organize kitchen pantry.

Purpose: 

I want to organize my pantry because in it's current condition, it's really hard to access anything. That makes me not want to cook or bake. I'm doing this because it will make me feel better and make it easier for me to cook dinner and make baked goods. It'll save me money from ordering in food or buying junk food.

Principals:

• Must stick to the budget
• So I won’t get stressed out, I’ll take my time and ask for help when I need it
• It should be ready by June since I want it to be easy to cook when my mom visits.