If you’re up for some serious spring cleaning of not only your home or work space, but also your schedule, Julie Morgenstern has written two books that can help:
1. Organizing from the Inside Out: The Foolproof System For Organizing Your Home, Your Office and Your Life.
2. Time Management from the Inside Out: The Foolproof System for Taking Control of Your Schedule — and Your Life.
She applies the following three basic steps to organizing both space and time:
- Analyze
- Strategize
- Attack
There are of course fundamental parallels between the two domains of space and time. The most important for practical purposes is maybe that the two skill sets — maintaining a well-organized space on one hand, and managing time on the other — both require dealing with a limited resource. Importantly, both skills, managing space as well as time, can be learned and practiced, and Julie Morgenstern offers a very useful and systematic approach, including many specific tips and helpful examples.
For the first book, I’ve written a 2-page summary of the practical steps, which I’m happy to share with anyone who asks me directly. (The only reason I won’t publish it on my blog is that there is nothing original about the content, it’s really just a summary.)
The brief outline was a helpful practical tool — sort of a cheat-sheet — for some of my own clients who have struggled with cluttered spaces, among other problems. I would however also like to point out that if organizing space is your main issue, there are specialized professionals who can help. I have three colleagues in particular whom I would highly recommend:
Felisa Contreras, specializing in office spaces and administrative systems:
savvyorganization.com
Sandy Parks, specializing in home reorganization, including downsizing etc that may come with major life transitions:
theorganizingcoach.biz
Anne McCallister, specializing in small business, self-employed and home office clients:
insidetheboxorganizing.com
by Ursina Teuscher (PhD), at Teuscher Decision Coaching, Portland OR