The following organizing principles are beneficial in maintaining an organized home and can be incorporated into your lifestyle.

1. One in – one out: When something new comes into your home, something must leave.
2. Being very intentional with what come in your home: Before you buy an item, decide where it will “live” in your
   home. If you don’t know don’t buy. Go home, look around and if you can find a place for the item, then you can buy
   it, otherwise you pass on the purchase. Also, consider if you really need the item.
   “Does this support the life I am trying to create.”
3. Containers: Buy containers only when you know what will go in them. Containers are often purchased to “solve an
   organizing problem” only to create more clutter because the owner doesn’t know what to do with them or where to
   place them.
   There are many benefits for containment but there needs to be a purpose for them not just to through the stuff
   behind eyes view.
4. Label: Label shelves, containers, drawers, etc. So, you know where to put away something, and more importantly so
   that others you share your home with know where to put away something. A label can be word, pictures, or
   combination of both.
5. File Fold: some benefits of to file folding are – you can see everything, save time daily getting ready, your sanity
   because aesthetically pleasing, fits more, easier to maintain. Try it – it is also ok if it doesn’t work for you.
6. Don’t zigzag: Choose an area to organize and stick with that area. If you find something that belongs in another area
   in your home, don’t move it until you are finished organizing the space you started in. Otherwise you spend to much
   time moving from room to room relocation stuff and you lose focus on your original task. Place items to move to
   another are in a box marked “relocate.” When you are finished with your task, then you can walk around your home
   and put away the stuff in the “relocate box”.
7. Prioritize: “Keeping everything makes nothing important” Decide what is truly important in your life and that will
   help you focus on what to keep and honor.
8. Be decisive: Clutter is caused by deferred decisions. Do not wait to decide about where something belongs; decide in
   that moment and put it there. Return it to its “home” whenever it wanders away.
9. Set a limit: Set a limit on how many of something you are going to keep. For example. Magazines. Decide to keep one
   year’s worth of each subscription that will refer to and recycle the rest. An other example is to set a limit on the
   amount of space you are allocating to a collection.
10. Paper: Ask yourself, “can I get this information somewhere else, such the internet or library?” If you can easily access
    the information somewhere else, you don’t need to keep the piece of paper – toss it! Only 20% of what you file for
    reference you will actually refer to. File wisely!
11. Maintenance: Organizing is not a one-time “clean sweep” event. Create and follow a maintenance plan for all the
    areas in your life and home. You can do all the grouping, reducing, and organizing you want, but if you don’t learn the
    skills and follow a place you will backslide.
12. HAVE FUN!