We all love those days when we manage to sift through a room and organise it’s contents, even initiating systems for our paperwork and other belongings. Setting up meal planners, routines for the kids and family. It all looks so great! You feel like you’re back in the drivers seat and you feel elated!
Fast track a few weeks and you’re back to square one 🙂
All your hard work has just gone down the drain. The kids aren’t listening, the paper piles have returned and you can’t find anything! You think to yourself ‘I’ll have to set aside another weekend to get myself back on track’.
So what went wrong? Setting up systems and routines for an organised home are fantastic, but a waste of time if you haven’t worked out a routine through which you can ensure is maintained.
Incorporate new systems and routines around already established ones. Consider a child’s rewards chart. Within it we teach them that one routine follows another ie pyjamas, teeth, story book then bed.
It’s the same for organising.
You can initiate mental/physical triggers into the routine such as not sitting down at the end of the night until the kitchen is clean, the kids lunches are made or the mail is sorted.
Once you have yourself set-up, be consistent in performing tasks within a set routine, this follows this, that follows that. It’s all about repetition and being ‘consistent’. Eventually, with time, these routines will become so second nature you won’t even know you’re doing it.
My motto is ‘see it, sort it’, ‘think it, do it’! and if it’s just not possible make a note of it to follow-up.
You’ll find yourself classifying your organising routine as a HABIT in no time – but a good one.