How to Organize Your Life (with Stamps)
Being good at organization is a learned life skill. Everyone who is good at organization had to learn the best organizing strategy for themselves. It’s a journey, but it’s worth it.
What you fill your house and life with shows people who you are. By being organized and decluttering, you honor yourself and get to fully use what you own. The best part about organizing is that your stamps help save you time! You can use them to color code, design or personalize anything you use to stay organized.
Developing a Routine
A good routine is built through habits. It’s not just born overnight. A good routine also helps you stay organized.
When you’re creating a daily routine, embrace your natural tendencies. Capitalize on your strengths. If you’re not a morning person, you don’t need to get up at the crack of dawn to get stuff done. Set aside time to get stuff done when you know you work best.
Your routine can be as simple as stamping weekly calendars on Sunday to prepare for the week or using your custom, self-inking stamps to color code and organize paperwork.
No matter how well your routine works, you’ll have days where you can’t seem to stick to it. Just know that’s ok! The key is consistency, not perfection. Set realistic goals for your days. Find a daily routine that works for you and prioritize your physical and mental health.
Planning Ahead
Calendars are your friend when it comes to organization. Whether it’s a calendar on your phone or a paper one hanging on the wall (which you can personalize and stamp!), it’s important to plan ahead.
Every morning or night set aside time to plan out your day. Write down the top 3 things you need to get done and then make a daily to-do list, scheduling in time for the big and little things to make sure it all gets done. If you really want to take your planning up a notch, grab your stamps and color-code your calendar or organizational binder.
On top of this, write everything down. Your shopping list, to-do list, gifts you have to buy, important dates. (You’re more likely to remember it and plan for it if it’s written - or stamped - somewhere.) Stamp a sign next to each category to distinguish it from another. Stamp your schedules with deadlines that you must meet and prioritize certain tasks based on this. And, remember to not procrastinate to save your sanity!
Prioritizing Tasks
When you’re using stamps to help you organize your life, you can create a system to show what’s most important.
Once you’ve created your list of priorities, tackle one at a time. The best policy, though, is to do something when you’re thinking about it. That’ll be the easiest way to ensure that it gets done. AKA if you’ve finished stamping that new calendar of yours, clean and put away your stamps away, right away.
If you’re into note cards, buy a bunch – in different colors or you can stamp different things on each. For every notecard, write down one task you want to get done. Then, rearrange them into the order you think they should get done. If you need to add another task later, you can just move them around again.
Simplify
A life full of clutter can never truly be organized. Declutter and simplify! It makes organization so much easier. Put what you never use in the trash or recycling or a bag for Goodwill or sell it on Craigslist.
One easy way to simplify is by dragging all of your stuff out of every nook and cranny, sitting down with it and deciding what you want, don’t want and where it’ll go. If you’re having a hard time deciding what you should get rid of, consider what a normal day, week or month looks like for you. Along these lines, give yourself permission to let things go.
If you keep only what you need, you’ll actually use what you own.
Now, we’ve gone over all the ways to declutter your physical space, but what about your mental space?
When we have to retain so much information and complete so many tasks, our minds become cluttered and can leave us stressed out. One way to combat this is by delegating responsibility to your spouse, your child, your friend, your coworker.
If it can be done easily and you know someone else can do it, then ask them to! Chore charts are a version of this. If you don’t have time to do all of the cleaning around the house (and who does these days), then create a fun chore chart that shows your individual style with your stamps. Use a star stamp or a cute character stamp to reward completed chores! Organization is work, but it can be fun, too!
Stay Organized
Now that you’ve put all of the hard work into organizing your life, you’ll want to keep it organized. This is really the hard part, but a little dedication and a daily routine go a long way. Just remember that staying organized is another way to care for yourself better.
An organized space and an organized life help keep you feeling sane and in control. If your organizational methods stop feeling natural and helpful after a while, try something else! It’s okay to switch it up after a little.
There’s no set guidelines or rules about how to organize well. It’s all about what works for you, and if you can use your stamps to make the process more fun and more you, then do it!