Get organized

The best way to eliminate chaos in your life is to get organized. I know that sounds simple, but like lots of things, it’s often easier said than done. You need to make a real effort to get organized and to abandon your old disorganized ways, but once you make the effort, you’ll find that life begins to run much more smoothly.

Start by de-cluttering. The best place to begin is by clearing flat surfaces. Lots of old papers, magazines and other stuff you’ve left lying around are really just trash and belong in the garbage. Separate stuff into piles: Stuff to keep and stuff to get rid of. Be ruthless. If you haven’t read that magazine article you were saving for over a year by now, then junk it. Chances are it’s not going to be relevant now anyway. Likewise ditch any clothing you haven’t worn for a couple of years. It’s just taking up space in your closet. Take it to your local thrift store, or put it up for sale on sites like eBay to generate a few extra dollars.

File away stuff you’re going to keep to make it easier to find later. Label file boxes, folders and drawers so you (and other people) know where things are. Be sure to put things back there when you’ve finished using them, otherwise it defeats the whole object of the exercise.

To keep things less stressful, develop systems and routines for handling regular tasks. When you can do things without having to worry about them, it makes life much less stressful.

To avoid nasty surprises, plan ahead. Create a to-do list for every day. Go through your list and rank all your tasks in order of importance. Put the least pleasant task (or the one you really don’t want to do) at the top of the list and get it out of the way first. Then put biggest or most important task next, followed by all your other tasks. Check them off as you go.

By following these steps, you’ll find chaos becomes a thing of the past.

PS. I go into more details in my from chaos to calm Course. Discover what’s inside here: