Clear the clutter in 2009

Clutter has a funny way of sneaking up on a person. One minute your desk or countertop is free of papers, and the next time you look you have a pile of items worthy of the recycling pail.
Keeping your home or office organized is a task that involves year-round dedication. However, some people forget to keep up the cleaning streak and find clutter creeps in.
Now is the time to start fresh and take a new approach to organizing. There are many benefits to getting organized. Initially, you can save money by knowing just what you have and not buying duplicates unnecessarily. Secondly, you can get more done in a shorter amount of time. Finally, you can feel more control and better about your personal spaces.
"How organized you are directly impacts how you feel about your work and yourself, but there is no 'right' way to get organized," says Jim Riesterer, vice president of marketing at Smead, a leading provider of filing and organizational products. "There are as many organizing styles as there are people."
One solution is to visit www.smead.com/organomics to take an online survey and learn ways to organize that will work best for your lifestyle. Other possibilities include hiring a professional organizer who can come to your home or workplace and pinpoint strategies for organization. Many other people choose to embark on getting organized themselves. Here are some daily ways to keep ahead of the clutter.
1. Keep up with the laundry: Laundry is one area of the household that can become unmanageable if not tackled on a frequent basis. Aim to do a load of laundry every day. Put in a load of wash before you leave for work. When you arrive home, or when the kids or a spouse come home, have them transfer it to the dryer. After the drying cycle, fold and put away. Broken down into smaller increments, laundry becomes an easier task.
2. Clean up dinner dishes: Although you may be tired, cleaning and putting away the dishes means you won't wake up to a sink full of dishes in the morning or be tempted to leave them until the following night.
3. Sort through mail daily: Take the time to sort and discard junk mail so that you're not left with a pile of unopened mail. Keep a shredder nearby to discard of solicitations that may feature personal information.
4. Run errands during the week: Make a list of errands that you can do during the week, such as on a lunch hour or en route to and from work. This way you won't have to devote your entire weekend to errands.
5. Invest in file products and organizing trays: These items are great for sorting homework and papers for each member of the family. Use file folders on computer desktops to organize digital files according to the month, week, or a system that works best for you. TF091765