Keep Track.
Stay on Track.

Make Your Space “User-Friendly”

Think about how you use a space and then think about the things you need to have around you to make it happen. Those are your priority items and they should all be within arm’s reach. Everything else is superfluous and can be cleared out, making for more space and less physical clutter. Take the kitchen, for instance. Consider installing a pegboard for all the cooking utensils you use most often.

Minimize Your Stuff

If you find that you’re surrounded by a lot of things you simply don’t use, get rid of them. Chances are you’ll never miss them. Items can be given away, donated, or simply recycled. Magazines are a good example of how things can pile up. One great idea for losing the clutter while keeping the good stuff is to go through one magazine a day and tear out any articles you want to keep. You can store those in a folder and throw out the rest. One rule of thumb: If a magazine is more than 4 months old, throw it out. It’s old news anyway.

File it Away

A filing cabinet is a great way to keep all of your paperwork (bills, receipts, bank statements, etc) in one spot, so you can easily access them whenever you need to. Create folders for relevant categories like “Auto Repairs,” “Checking & Savings,” or “Utilities.” Once you decide what the categories are, alphabetize them to make filing and retrieving that much easier. In many cases, a two-drawer model will suffice. Any more than that and it becomes an archive, and it’s just more stuff to sort through. Keep files for the past two years in the filing cabinet. The rest can be stored in boxes in a less critical space, like the attic or garage — just as long as they’re still accessible should you ever need them. A helpful rule of thumb: 80% of what is put in filing systems is never looked at again, so be critical about what you decide to keep since statistics show you’ll probably never use that information.