28: Step 7: Maintain. Keeping the Organizing Party Going
For the last time in this series, we go deeper into Step 7 of our 7 Steps of Organizing *almost* Anything framework. This week it’s all about why it’s important to maintain the organizing habits and practical tips on how to keep the organizing party going! Tune in to learn practical tips to help bring organization and flow back into your life!
In this episode we talk about:
- Why Maintaining your organizing project is important
- Practical tips on how to maintain your system
- How to have long lasting effects
Mentioned in this Episode:
Episode 1: 7 Steps to Organizing (almost) Anything
https://theorganizedflamingo.com/7-steps-to-organizing/
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The Organized & Productive podcast is brought to you by The Organized Flamingo and hosted by Stephanie Y. Deininger! For those of you who love the thought of organizing & being more productive, but don’t know where to start or constantly up against hurdles that don’t let you advance the way you want to, this podcast is for you!
Review full show notes and resources at https://theorganizedflamingo.com/podcast
Connect with Stephanie
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Review the Transcript:
Welcome to the organized and productive podcast with organized Flamingo. I am your host, Stephanie, a professional organizer and productivity expert, ready to explore the right organizing and productivity solutions for you. Yeah, well, then let's go.
Welcome to our next episode of the organized and productive Podcast. I'm Stephanie, your host, and today we are finalizing the seven steps of organizing almost anything. It's our last step of this particular series. If you are new to the podcast, there is a whole series of episodes that came before this, you technically can listen to this episode on its own. But I think I would suggest that you go and listen to at least the very first one which outlines all of the steps so you know what's going on, and why and how we got to this step to begin with.
And then there are also detailed steps for each one, excuse me episodes for each one. So you can listen to the overview one, and then there are six episodes that outline each of them in detail. And today, we're on to Step seven, which is the maintenance step of organizing almost anything, by the time that you got to this step, we are assuming that you've already gone through all the other six steps, everything from laying out your plan and assessing your goals from sorting decluttering, finding a home for everything, making sure you have the right containers, and evaluating if the system even worked for you. So we've already done all those steps. So that by the time that you're maintaining, you've already established that this new system that you created works for you, it works for you in this chapter of your life. And this episode is to remind you why it's so important to actually have this as a step. Because this is the part where you remind yourself why you even did all this hard work, why you got to this place, and why it's so important to maintain it so that you don't end up having to do that hard of a work all over again, you might do it for a different space in your house or in your environment. But that the project that you just finished is something that for going forward, you will only have to maintain that you're not going to have to do that whole, you know that whole journey ever again, because at this point, it is now living and it's like part of you, but it's not overwhelming you.
So let's talk about a few of the benefits. First of May of you know, of maintaining this organizing project. The first is that the primary goal of organizing is to create a more functional and efficient living or working space, right. So regular maintenance will ensure that you continue to enjoy the benefits of this new organized environment. Long term. When you maintain it, it ensures that that feeling that you had the first time will be carried out over and over again, it might not be obviously the like the you know, the the first feeling you had, which was oh my gosh, I'm so glad that I you know, it's all done, it'll be a little different. But it allows you to continue to enjoy this space that you worked so hard to clear out. It also keeps a clutter at bay. And it really reduces state of stress and and promotes a sense of common order which something we talked about and write about all the time. Now let's talk about the time and energy savings. Obviously, this piece, which I mentioned earlier, is one of the most important parts where you don't have to redo this whole thing over again, I mean, I'm sure that this whole step took you a little longer than you might have expected. And that is normal, because you've never either you've never done it before. You've never decluttered you've never sorted, you've never really gone through a process like this on your own. So it was probably a lot of hard work and a lot of emotional hard work. When you maintain it, you ensure that you're not having to do this over and over again. And you don't have to go through all this really heavy emotional chaos that you probably have to go through, especially if you were decluttering or sorting your emotional items. And then of course, there's the Okay, well, now I have a system so you can find the things that you need much quicker and easily.
So that in itself is just going to give you more efficiency and save you so much time. So that in itself is going to be awesome. Let's talk about the cost effectiveness, which is hey, you finally found a system that works for you. And so the next time that you're at the store, you are not going to be buying more bins. Okay, that's usually the thing that people buy or whatever like the basket is or whatever says or whatever like item that you think is going to help you get more organized because that's what ends up happening. We overbuy when we're overwhelmed. We don't know what we need so that we get it all and so this way it's going to reduce the likelihood of of losing the misplaced items. Yes, but then not having go by duplicates, for instance or or find or buying more bins that you think is going to work. Because if you already found your system, you don't need to go buy a whole new system anymore or like one offs. So that in itself is going to save you a lot of money. The next thing that I want to point out here, when you do the maintenance, you know, the step and you don't skip this is that if your life does change, like your chapter changes, you now have to move again, or there's like a big life event that happened, then your system is going to be dynamic, dynamic enough to move and change with you, it should, because you're not recreating the wheel. At this point, if you if your life changes, all you have to do is it just needs to change or tweak a little bit with whatever this new chapter is of life. Like you don't have to redo everything again.
So that's another benefit. The last tip that I'll give you here as to why this step is super important to complete is the enhanced, like the positive habits that will inevitably come out of it. Whether you intended to build new habits or not, what ends up happening is when you do all this work, and then at the end, you are so proud of it that you do want to sustain it and you want to maintain it, you will start practicing maintenance, which fosters the good habits, and it encourages that discipline and responsibility that you didn't even think you had, which will help you develop in a proactive approach to keeping your space organized, which is really what you need, right with the with the ongoing efforts of keeping a space that's a little more tidy, and that works for you. It's that habit, in the good habits that you'll need to to complete and do. But what I love about doing our step is that for some people creating new habits feels really overwhelming. Like it's a whole lifestyle change for some people. And when you do a space within the steps at the end, what ends up just happening naturally, organically is that you end up just building positive and good habits for yourself. And that's what we want. We want it to work with your lifestyle. We don't want to force anything. Okay, so now that I've given you some of the the why we want to create a maintenance system, or just to make sure like what are the some of the positives of having a maintenance system, let me give you a couple of tips on how to maintain your space.
Um, you know, it'll depend on where like what space you ended up working on. But for most people, some kind of checklist is how they like to start something that is either a reminder on your phone or a paper like a paper type of checklist, something that you are always looking at on a consistent basis. So two very important things. One is create a maintenance schedule that you will stick to and that's realistic, that's the most important part, something that's realistic, like if you're you know, don't do a maintenance checklist at the end of every Friday, if on Fridays, you're exhausted. And the last thing that you want to do is go through your closet and declutter, don't do it. If it's once a month and you're doing it once a month when you're you know, once a month, you're always traveling for work, and you come back and the last thing you want to be doing is going over your kitchen cabinets, you know, don't be realistic about about your schedule in the checklists that you will create for yourself. This is the part where if you have questions come join me during our office hours, which I post on our Instagram stories all the time, but we try to meet once out once a week, usually on the clubhouse app. But sometimes that changes and sometimes it's like via web, but it's a free one hour open office hours with me.
And so if you're trying to figure out what's the right checklist for you to use for your maintenance, now that you've finished your organizing journey or you for this particular space, then come on over and join us there. But like I said, for most people like a checklist will work really well. And that checklist will entail just going over the things that are important to you. So if for you the important parts are go back to to your first step, which is the assessed step and go back to your why like okay, well, why why is so that every time I go into this to this area, I don't feel overwhelmed that I feel at ease. And so if that's your goal, make sure that you're always decluttering or editing so that that feeling is something that you get, if it's Hey, I don't the reason I'm decluttering my closet, it's because I'm tired of being late to work all the time. So if that's your why, then your maintenance, why you and your maintenance checklist should reflect that.
So your checklist for your maintenance will be making sure that you have you know, easy access to your wardrobes in the morning when you're needing to get ready for work or that you have a capsule wardrobe so that you you know everything's like mix and match and it's easy for you. So that checklist. The maintenance checklist will go right back to your why and it should be easy to connect the two But like I said, if you have questions on what type of checklists could work for you, then just shoot me a message over on Instagram. You could also like I said, find us on our during, during our open office hours every week, which I do post where we'll be over on Instagram stories.
And that's it. We're done. No, just kidding. Okay, so this is just the seven steps of organizing almost anything framework that we like to use for one particular project. So this step, you could always just mimic this step to the next project or working on it could be a digital project organizing project may be the next room that you're working on. So each space each project is the seven steps. And basically just go ahead and go back and re read or re listen to the podcast episodes. They're not very long, I made them short and sweet, very intentionally short and sweet for you, so that you can go back and repeat them whenever you need a refresher or motivation.
So just remember that maintaining your organizing project ensures that the effort and time invested in creating this organized space has long lasting efforts and benefits for you. You worked really hard to create this amazing space for yourself and your family and your friends and the people that you're around so you don't maintain it. Don't let it go so far that you regret having to have gone through all these steps. We want you to continue to have success and to associate organizing in a happy positive matter. Okay, so until next time, happy organizing. Thank you for listening to the organized and productive Podcast with your organized Flamingo. If you enjoyed today's episode, I would love it if you'd leave a rating and review on your favorite podcast player. It helps with letting people know that we're here. For full show notes and resources head on over to the organized flamingo.com/podcast Happy organizing.