Yeah! You’ve organized and set up your office space (closet, kitchen, garage – you name it) and you love it! You just want to stand in the doorway and admire it. A week or two later, you stand in that same doorway and wonder what catastrophic event happened and could it be declared a disaster zone. Well, what probably didn’t happen was following a maintenance plan. You clean your kitchen, do your laundry, tend a garden, cook meals, and pay your bills over and over again. All of these tasks are necessary maintenance tasks. Likewise, it is also true of any organizational project, certain tasks must be done over and over again to keep the area organized. Part of any organizational project should be to set up this maintenance plan. Checklists are a great help. Set up a daily, weekly, monthly, yearly checklist to match the area. I know this seems like such a boring tasks and takes time, but think back on how much time it took to get the project completed to begins with. After a while the maintenance gets to be routine – just like showering or brushing your teeth. If you have difficulty setting up a maintenance plan you can ask for help (wink, nudge) or you can look up existing lists ( check out http://listplanit.com/) and modify them for your own circumstance. If even with the maintenance, you have one area that just stays out of control, go back and do an analysis. You may need to make a major shift in your system to get this area under control. No sense trying over and over again to maintain something that is almost impossible to maintain. Now go back to that doorway again and admire that lovely office.
Jonda S. Beattie Professional Organizer
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