Let’s set the scene.
You are standing in the middle of your home, papers scattered on the desk, trash needs to be taken, toys all over the floor and you just remembered that you have that newsletter you have to get out first thing in the morning.
You’re thinking to yourself, there has GOT to be a way to keep this all organized…
Well, I am here to tell you, there is! 🥰
I want to help you achieve a minimal-stress daily life. I’m going to go into what makes someone an organized person. Once you put these 7 habits of highly organized people into practice, you’ll feel such a relief and peace!
7 Habits of Highly Organized People
Can I be real with you for a minute?
I have always been a SUPER organized person. Like I’m talking OCD level organization. My mom taught me how to organize from a very young age and I’m so thankful.
Now as an adult, I have binders for everything, planners and editorial calendars for my blog (here’s the ones I use– since they are by the year, look for the free editable ones!), to-do lists and anything else to help keep me on top of my organizational game.
It comes naturally to me, but I also understand that this isn’t the case for most people. So I have a special treat for you guys! I am going to share the secrets to being a highly organized person. It isn’t all about binders and lists, but putting certain habits into place to systematize your life and make it peaceful again!
Let’s get straight to it!
Habit #1: They Tell Their Time Where To Go
Do you ever get to the end of the day, completely exhausted after running around? But you don’t have a ton of work to show for your effort??
God gave us ALL 24 hours in a day, and most days it can feel like there just isn’t enough time to do everything we need to do! This is a complete and utter LIE.
The hard truth is that most people are spending their time poorly, doing things they THINK are good or will matter, but really aren’t. They spend it on selfish preoccupations and not on God’s kingdom work. All those meaningless actions are just going to burn up when we face God face to face like wood, hay, and stubble.
Are they GOOD things to do? Sure. Someone could say you’re a “good person”, but what does that matter? If when you get to Heaven, God says, “What have you done in my name?” and you have NOTHING!
Do those things matter for eternity? NO!!!
And that’s where He wants our hearts to be. Not focused on OURSELVES or on THIS WORLD, but fully and whole-heartedly, unabashedly sold out for Him, running the race for HIM!
The first step toward being organized is with your time and you MUST, absolutely MUST, realize that we only have so long to do all the good for God that we can do, serve Him, love others in His name, and work hard for Him, before we go to Heaven and cannot do any more on Earth.
Life is fleeting. It goes quickly. It goes even quicker as you get older. The years pass and you wonder what you did with your life. Does it matter. BE SURE you’re spending it on the things of Christ. The things that He WANTS YOU to do!!!
This means that highly organized people do not let their time control them – they control their time, or rather, they let GOD control it! 🥰
Telling your time where to go is the first step to becoming a highly organized person.
Start by setting aside some time on a Sunday evening to first understand where your time is CURRENTLY going. Kids’ ball games, grocery store runs, doctor’s appointments, cleaning, and so forth. How much time do you spend on EACH thing and clump things together that are similar.
How much time are you spending on cleaning your home each week?
How much time are you spending carting the kids around to various activities?
Do these things matter for eternity? If God showed up today, listen! If God showed up right this very second, do you think He would give a flying LEAP if your home is spotless? 🤯
REALLY, REALLY think about this. Because it is SO vital to the life on fire for God. Do you think He’d care about your messy kitchen? Do you think He’d care if your dishes weren’t done? Do you think He cared with Mary and Martha in the Bible????? What was more important to Jesus in that same situation in the Bible? Spending time with HIM over worrying about the things of the world: cooking, cleaning, running around, entertaining.
Listen. The things that are important to US, are not always important to HIM and His eternal plan for your life and we must understand that.
I’m NOT saying don’t clean your house. Don’t take a license to be a slob. Your husband and family would have a few choice words to say to me if you did, 😜 but if your entire day is spent MORE on SELFISH things, on WORLDLY things (yeah, cleaning your house!) and not on God, your relationship with Him, and His redeeming work in your and others lives, you’ve totally missed the point!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 👈👈👈
And the last thing you want to do is to face God at the end of it, having missed the entire point and most people DO! That’s a sad reality. But the Bible is clear when it says the harvest is plentiful but there are few laborers. The most important thing you can do with your time, therefore, is to be a laborer for Him. Read Proverbs 31. Are you her? Is that a picture of your life?
And if you start to give some excuse like, “Oh, I can’t. You don’t know my life, Sarah. I’m working so hard just to make it through the day.” BULL!
No more excuses okay. Listen, I’m a SINGLE MOM!!!!!!!!!!! And I’m STILL her!!!! I’ve worked tirelessly to BECOME the Proverbs 31 wife. Taking one verse at a time and applying it to my life until I can stand before you, completely honorable in my ways while so many around me are just plain lazy.
You cannot have an excuse that is going to hold up to God. You can make excuses to me. You can make excuses to yourself, but they will never fly to God Almighty!
This is what He expects. This is what He wants. And most of society, even Christians are lazy. It says so in the Bible. FEW laborers. Don’t be one of them…the ones HE calls lazy!!!
Next, line up your time and make a priority of your relationship with Him, your service to Him, and THEN your husband, your children, your family and outside family, and next friends, and the world at large.
So your list of priorities should look like this, in order:
- God (this is your relationship to Him, your service for Him, your walk with Him)
- Husband (this is things like cooking for him, serving him, loving him, investing in his life in a genuine daily thing to the depths of your soul; you are ONE)
- Kids (this is meeting their needs, both physical and spiritual, this doesn’t mean taking them to every game on the planet so you can feel like you’re a good mom. You’re a good mom if you obey and serve the Lord and love your family, not because of some game. Okay!)
- Family (this would include others in your family and pets, and even brothers and sisters in Christ such as your church family)
- Outside Family (this is your extended family like brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles, cousins, parents, any blood family that is not living with you)
- Friends (those personal relationships that God has entrusted you with to serve, to edify, and to sharpen as iron with each other)
- The World At Large (anyone not inside the faith, people you meet on the street, your neighbor, etc.)
- Yourself (your wants and desires. This doesn’t mean your needs. Your needs are important, but this is dying to yourself daily, taking up your cross, and living your life in the pursuit of a meaningful-to-God life.
I know someone will ask the really great question…where do you put in that list your service to God, like say your blogging audience? What priority are they? For that, they’d be under #1 (your service to Him). That doesn’t mean you get to skip out on meeting your family’s needs or you ignore your husband) but it DOES mean that your family needs to understand that God has called you to DO SOMETHING and do it you must. If you are married, it should be a joint-effort if at all possible (if he works outside the home and you don’t, it may not be a joint effort in some cases like that, for example). It is a JOY to work for the Lord! A great honor and privilege and if you have something like a blog or ministry, write for a blog or ministry, or serve in your local church, that is super good and very well pleasing to the Lord.
Make sure your priorities to Him come FIRST. Moment by moment, day by day.
After you’ve lined up your day to day schedule TO the Lord, His work, your family, and all those things listed above, you can use these daily printable calendars to write out everything to keep track of it all – speaking of calendars and binders…
Habit #2: They Use Planners & Binders To Keep Organized
Now that we have established how to not let your time control you, but organizing your day in a way that glorifies God, let’s talk about the FIRST step to proactively get organized!
Before you can do anything else to be organized, keep a binder/planner for everything.
I do mean EVERYTHING!!!!!
This first step is essential to become a highly organized person. Everything can be put into a binder – plan out your meals, schedule meetings/important dates, birthdays, school activities, etc.
Your entire day (and in turn your life) should be streamlined and each one of my binders helps you do that. As a single mom, my binders are imperative to my organization and keeping everything running smoothly. I cannot do everything I have on my plate without a system and this is the system!
Here’s your step by step roadmap to get the organization process started, in order.
- Household Binder – this helps get your home in order
- Daily Planner – this helps organize your day to day activities and tasks
- Medical Binder – this helps get your entire family’s medical in order
- Budgeting Binder – this helps you get your finances under control and get out of debt with a system
After those main categories, you need to get your holidays organized. Holiday stress is SO major and you don’t even realize it UNTIL you have it all organized. To get your holidays organized, you’ll need:
- Valentine’s Binder
- Easter Binder
- Mother’s Day Binder
- Graduation Binder
- Christmas Binder
- Gifts Binder – this is to have gifts in stock and ready for all holidays to give at the drop of a dime when you need a quick gift
After that, you’ll want to purchase any other additional binders that help you organize the particular things you want them to organize, based on your own unique situation.
Each binder that you purchase, is designed to be inspirational and encouraging. You’ll find yourself actually using it and then you’ll be more and more motivated to keep organizing all of your life with each new binder you get.
Cute printables like these FREE cleaning checklists will also help you have a cleaner and more organized home!
Habit #3: They Batch Their Work
What exactly does “batching your work” mean?
Good question! 😊
Batching means to arrange or set things in groups.
So basically, setting aside a chunk of time to accomplish a lot of similar things at once.
Did you know that I batch my work every single day??
Getting all like items done at the same time, makes me go FASTER. I’m able to accomplish MORE and then I’m able to take more time OFF and rest BECAUSE I’ve gotten all my work done in record time.
Let’s take meal prepping for example. Say you do ALL of your dinner freezer meal prep the first weekend of the month (or towards the beginning). Spend an entire day only cooking meals and getting them freezer ready. Yes, you will essentially lose the day of prep, but you will save 29 nights that month of scrambling to cook dinner and get food on the table!
Not into meal prepping? No problem! You can still do it. Buy 5 pounds of hamburger at a time and cook it all at the same time. Baggie it up in zipper bags into 3/4 of a pound each bag and then use in your meals (why 3/4 of a pound? See why here). Hamburger is the slowest thing to cook in things like:
You can freeze the cooked hamburger and pull it out whenever you need it. It’ll taste the same! So if you cook it up in one batch, it’ll go faster in those meals when you need it.
This also saves money from being tempted to just eat out because you didn’t have time to cook! Those meals above go so much faster with the hamburger already made!
Another good example is in my blog. I like to batch all my blog posts I work up. So I’ll have my assistants enter in my posts or enter into blog posts the printables I create, etc. and then I go back and finalize them. I finalize/write/make pins/etc. for all the blog posts that will be going LIVE that month during the first week of the month. That way, the rest of the month, I am spending the bulk of my time creating products and updating courses.
I update my courses on a continual basis, anytime I see a hole. I’m also always creating more binders and printables. So I get to work on the blog posts once/month for a week, and then I get to work on printables/courses for the next three weeks of the month.
For emails, every day I spend about 30 minutes answering blog emails. It’s actually a big priority to me because I feel like helping others is serving Christ. While it’s a daily thing and not weekly, it’s still batching. 😊
Doing it this way really helps me go faster and accomplish more. Everything is batched.
You can apply “batching” to all aspects – work, cleaning (pick a day once a week for laundry, for example), decluttering, school prep, etc. Some things you can’t batch, it’s just not possible, but most everything you can!
Habit #4: They Declutter Often
Have you been in the habit of letting things pile up? Maybe you’ve moved and taken things with you to the new house, or you saved every paper you had from 10 years ago??
It’s time to declutter!
If you are new to decluttering or it’s been a while since your last declutter sesh, here are some posts to help:
- 30 Days to an Organized Home
- How to Declutter the Easy Way
- Organize Your Garage
- 30 Day Decluttering Challenge
- Paper clutter
Now that you’ve done that, its just maintenance decluttering!
Once you have done your BIG declutter of your home, garage, and other areas, it will be SO much easier to keep up. Plus clutter makes your mind go in a bunch of different directions at once and keeps you scattered, so if you feel scattered a lot, clean the clutter!
Set up practical routines so you know what to keep and what to toss right when it’s happening. Now obviously, things happen in life so I would recommend doing a big declutter every 3-4 months just to keep things on track. 😊
Habit #5: They Label Everything!!!
This is not something that I really do personally (I’m more about #7) but this is true of many highly organized people!
Labels! Highly organized people love to label everything. 😊
You can use all different kinds of labeling systems, but here’s a free pantry labeling system I have on the blog.
Habit #6: They Make Sure Their Family Is On The Same Page
Do you know what the most common reason I hear that people give up on trying to get organized?
Because they are trying to do it all on their own.
It is so important to make sure your family is on the same page with all of the above organizational tips you will be implementing.
Does this mean they have to be EXACTLY like you when it comes to organization? No. But will it help if they know your new goals for keeping your home (and self) organized? Yes.
Sit down with your family and have a family meeting. Talk about what you are doing and WHY you are doing it. It’s to help keep everyone less stressed and on the same page.
Ask them if they have some helpful suggestions and ideas to implement these new organizational strategies. Get them involved! 😊
Habit #7: Everything They Own Has A Home
For highly organized people, everything has a place, a home if you will, to easily access whatever you need, whenever you need it.
Highly organized people know where their stuff is.
They don’t have to scramble last minute to find their social security card, or the waffle maker. They know exactly where it is.
This can even apply to your things that don’t necessarily have a place! What does this mean? It means you can put the things that don’t have a home in its own area, or better yet… toss it!
I hope all these tips help you get your whole life organized very quickly so you can have peace!
