Monday, November 19, 2012

Get It Together Girl! - Home Organization edition


This brief four-week series will introduce the workbooks in the Get It Together Girl series.

The first, and most successful, in the series is the original. Get It Together Girl: A 28-Day Guide to Practical NOT Perfect Home Organization is built around the power of the Focused 15. I am constantly amazed at how much can be accomplished in a dedicated quarter of an hour.

I gave a series of 15 minute assignments to be completed Monday through Friday. We move from the kitchen to the bathroom to the bedroom (and the closets!) and finally the living room and work areas. If just the Monday through Friday assignments are done, you've spent over 5 hours organizing!

For example, Day One is the Refrigerator Run-Through. You aren't cleaning the fridge out so much as you are getting rid of everything that is "moldy, hairy, furry, gooey or otherwise inedible."

At the end of the week, I provide a series of steps that help you stay organized. Most can be accomplished in less than one minute. For example, get undressed while standing in front of the hamper. This way your dirty clothes go directly into the hamper without making a pit stop on the floor. Also, if you keep your hangers on the hamper or in another accessible place, it is easy to hang up things that can be worn again.

Weekends are free ... unless you want to do more. For the overachievers in the group, I give some longer weekend assignments that make great projects (or possibly punishments for the kid! LOL!).

Challenge: Try the power of the Focused 15 for yourself. You don't have to limit yourself to organization, it works in almost any area. Devote 15 minutes to a specific task: walking, cleaning, organizing, reading, filing, talking to someone on the phone, budgeting.

At the end of 15 minutes, one of two things have happened. Either you have made a dent in whatever you are working on or you've gotten your momentum going and are ready to keep going.

The key to an effective 15 is to seriously devote 15 minutes to the task at hand. This is not 15 minutes spent multi-tasking or with a split focus. It's called the Focused 15 for a reason!

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