How to Use Technology to Stay Organized

Hi guys! Despite my efforts to post every week, I've clearly missed a couple. Sorry! It's going to continue to be a little sporadic for a while. Things in my work life are still super chaotic and that has me really distracted. So I will continue to post when I can, and hopefully you all will continue to read when you can.

I have seriously struggled with what to post each time I sit down to write. I feel that because I've left you all without a post every week that when I do post it should be something amazing, like shake your brain, drop your jaw, fantastic {is that even possible with an organizing blog?}. Anyway, I kinda need to get over that and just get back to posting like I used to.  So this week is not a jaw dropping post, but I still think it's pretty cool. I want to share with you a techie way to stay organized. Don't worry, if you're not a techie person, I promise this is simple enough you'll be able to do it!

First I want to revisit this little app I talked about a few weeks ago called 30/30. It acts as timed task list and has helped me drastically in the clutter clean up process. If you don't have a smart phone, or aren't interested in downloading a new app, don't worry. You can pretty much use a timer the same way. But let me tell you why this has worked so well for me. 

Every now and then our home gets a little... messy. I may be an organized person, but I am also human and sometimes putting things away after I get them out just doesn't interest me. I think I have tricked myself into thinking that small chores {doing the dishes, hanging up clothes, picking up clutter, etc.} is going to take me forever to accomplish, and I'd just rather, well, not do them. This is when the timed to-do comes into play {aka 30/30 app}. Here's how it works. I created a list of things that need to be done {I have actually saved this list and used it multiple times}, then I set a time to each item. The timeframes started as just a guess then became more of a challenge. 

I am a little bit competitive. Ok, a lotta bit competitive. So I really push to get everything finished within the timeframe. When the timer goes off, it immediately switches to the next task and time starts ticking away. I probably look like a mad woman running around our apartment trying to get everything on the list accomplished within the timeframe, but in the end, the chores are done and somehow I've made it into a game {I'm hoping I don't seem as crazy as I sound}.

I adjust the time on the task list based on how bad the chore is going to be, but most of the time I try to only dedicate 20-30 mins to complete all of the tasks. This is especially helpful when I know Brit is on his way home. Brit travels frequently for work and during the week there will typically be about 1 or 2 days that he is not home. This somehow becomes the time when I revert back into a 14 year-old girl with little or no responsibility in the home, and things get messy.

When I know he's about to come home, I start the timer and get to work. {Don't ask me why his getting home is the motivation, he does not notice or care if the home is a bit disastrous. I guess I still want to impress him}. Here is our living room just before I started.

We still have snowflakes sprayed on our windows. As long as it's snowing outside I might as well make it look fun from the inside, right? 

Can you tell what I was doing? Sitting on the floor, working on a recent Wedding Binder order, and watching Real Housewives {why can't everyone just get along?}. Normally, I may look at this clutter and think, "ugh, that's going to take so much time to put everything away and I just don't feel like it". So I'd leave it. Instead, I started the timer, and 7 minutes later...

I even had time to light a candle. I don't know why that impressed me. I think because I finished and still had 10 seconds left over and lighting a candle is about the only thing I could think to do in that amount of time.

To prove that large messes can be cleaned up within this timeframe, I am about to show you an image that is just downright embarrassing. But it's unedited, un-staged, and 100% real life. Here is my bedroom after a stressful morning of "I have nothing to wear". 

Yes, that is an Elmo, Gizmo, and dancing sock puppet monkey sitting on our heating unit. I think that's all the explaining I'll do about those. 

Aside from the absolute embarrassment above, imagine my joy when I knew this was what I got to come home to. Not cool. After a day at work the last thing I want to do is spend all evening cleaning, so I didn't. After I finished up in the living room, the timer started for the bedroom. 7 minutes later our bedroom looked l like this. 

I'm not going to say the room is perfectly free of clutter, but it is a substantial improvement. 

I finished up in the kitchen, and had a clutter cleaned apartment within 21 minutes {sorry, no pictures of the kitchen. It wasn't in as rough a shape as the other rooms}. 

I particularly like this app because it's so clean and organized, but again, if you're not an app person, a simple kitchen timer would work. Or just saying to yourself, I will dedicate 20 minutes to fixing up and then I'll stop. I think that's the key. Once the timer goes off I stop working. Every now and then, the 20 minutes clean up motivates me to keep going, but most of the time I'll simply stop once the timer ends and feel quite accomplished. I don't have children, but I would be interested to see how this could work with children and cleaning up their toys as well. Anyone willing to test it and share with me? 

Ok, I think that's enough about technology, timers and tasks today. I actually do have more tips for technology, but I'll save those for later. 

How do you keep up with the daily clutter in your home? Are you a competitive clutter cleaner? Because it's the new hip thing that all the kids are talking about. 

Thanks for visiting!

 

PS - this is NOT a sponsored post. I just seriously like the app.