Friday, November 28, 2008

30-Day Organizing Challenge Wrap Up

In this 30-day challenge, we've learned workflow management, email management, and clutter busting. We didn't get to some of the bigger challenges, like tax organizing and that sort of thing. But I'll do another organizing challenge next year, and I hope you'll check in then.

I'd especially like to thank our guest bloggers this month: Wonderful professional organizers June Bell and Janine Adams and fung shui and design coach Alison Marks. You've been so much fun to work with and I thank you a million times for all the great suggestions you've shared for addressing a problem that stymies most of us at one time or another. I'll add links to their Web pages and blogs to the main page so you can find them in the future if you need to.

And now, a summary of what we've learned this month. Kind of like a clutter-busting table of contents:

Figuring out your organizing priorities.

Overcoming organizing overwhelm so you can get started.

Set realistic goals to avoid perfectionism and paralysis.

Organizing systems for email, filing, and mail.

Staying productive on Election Day.

Learning to let go of things you don't need anymore.

Five biggest organizing mistakes to avoid.

Identifying organizing tools and prioritizing organizing in your end-of-year shopping.

Using the buddy system to tackle the hardest organizing challenges.

Creating workflow organization.

Creating systems to manage paper.

Secrets to successful paper organizing and sorting.

I hope you enjoyed the challenge as much as I did.

As I look around my desk today, I can see a tremendous difference from the day the challenge started. I still have magazines under my table, but the massive piles to the left and right of my computer have been replaced by a plant on one side and a small pile to the left. (Progress, right?) I have a heavy-duty shredder that makes getting rid of unnecessary paper easier. And I feel better in my office.

How about you? What changes have you noticed as you've applied these principles?

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