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Do you have habits? In the past few weeks, I’ve been running a series about habits to put in place on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis to make life easier. This week I’m sharing simple seasonal habits to get and stay organized. I live in New England, so the seasonal shifts are noticeable, providing helpful reminders for periodic tasks. However, if you happen to live in a location where the weather doesn’t change, think of these as quarterly habits.
The benefit of developing these habits is that they add routine and predictability to the care of spaces and belongings. When you are just getting started, you may wish to add calendar reminders to prompt you to act. After a couple of years, the will hopefully become “automatic.” Here are four seasonal habits I highly recommend.
Seasonal Habit #1 – Refresh Display Boards
Seasonal Habit #2 – Clean Out the Car
Seasonal Habit #3 – Reset the Mudroom/Entry
Seaonal Habit #4 – Organize Your Bag
What habits do you perform at the turn of a new season to help you get and stay organized?
Great seasonal areas that need resetting! Especially the entry and exit are places that get piled up and need an update.
For some that also includes a closet swap for heavier or lighter clothes. This allows us to let go of some items we did not wear during the most recent season.
I think I need to do that closet swap myself!
These are great tips for keeping things running smoothly and resetting the organization. It’s funny how you mentioned refreshing a display area. I recently discussed this with one of my clients. She will work on ‘refreshing’ her bulletin board between our virtual organizing sessions.
I used to carry a large tote bag. When I hardly went out during the pandemic, I reduced my bag to a tiny one. Cleaning it out also became a lot simpler. There isn’t much space to store things, so I rarely need to clear it out other than a receipt or two. And isn’t that true of our homes? The more space we have and things we own, the more time we need to maintain things.
I’ll be thinking of your client as she refreshes her display board! It really is a satisfying little project, leaving the door open for possibility in the upcoming season.
I got a new bag recently as well, but it isn’t smaller. Full of pockets both inside and out so every piece of my organizing “toolkit” has a home!
Great series Seana. The car and entry way are probably the most areas that collect clutter in and out.
Going through the purse and cleaning it is satisfying. As the kids get older I find that the purse gets smaller, as you’re not carrying as much for everyone else.
I agree with the idea of closet swap, great way to get rid of unwanted clothes.
I carry less on my person, but now a lot in my professional bag. So always something to clear out LOL!
I’m into the closet swap idea. I’m adding it to my list for the week…
These are all great things to pay attention to. Homes here in Georgia tend not to have a mud room. When I lived in Connecticut, I loved straightening that area out after mud season. Putting those seasonal clothes, boots, and sports equipment away was such a relief!
Personally, I’m a bag person. I love changing out tote bags and my handbag. Getting rid of receipts or things I’ve stashed – just for now- helps keep the things I use regularly at my fingertips. Plus, I like knowing where everything is in the bags I carry.
Having small bags and organizers that can switch from one bag to another makes the process of switching out bags simple and fun. I worked with one client who loved bags, and had many of them, but each was filled with stuff, so pulling it out to use it was difficult.
In CT, we definitely are in “mud” season right now. I’m reading for a reprieve from the rain!
Thanks for the bag reminder! I find that receipts get lost at the bottom of my bag, so I must get them out regularly. I like to go through my bag once a month, especially when reconciling my accounts to match the receipts with my statement. It works well and keeps my bookkeeping receipts organized too. =)
I love that you mentioned rethinking why things are going in your bag. Being mindful is one key to staying organized and finding things easily.
Being mindful just seems to add value to almost all aspects of life. I’m becoming more and more convinced that I need to work on this.
Display boards is a big one for a lot of people. I don’t have one, but I’ve seen many in homes and offices that included info about events that are past and/or expired coupons. Obviously having it here isn’t helping them to remember! Making this a regular routine will help it be more functional – and less messy!
It’s surprising how much an ordered display board can enhance a space – and how much a cluttered one can distract from space. It’s an easy one, fairly quick, and offers a big positive reward: the trifecta!
Great advice, as always. LOL, I only put funny pictures and magnets on my fridge front, and I pretty much never change them, so a friend teases me about its static nature every time I Facetime from my kitchen. (My fridge is over 40 years-old, so I like keeping it as covered as possible. My fridge is less a display board and more of a hide-the-fridge solution.)
People should definitely clean out the car AT LEAST seasonally, but that would make me crazy. As I’m the only one who rides in my car, it’s rare that there’s anything in the car that doesn’t exit with me each evening, but I definitely clear the car of dust bunnies each time I get it washed (and use the carwash vacs). I have fun clearing car clutter with clients, because most of what comes out of the car can be trashed, washed, or stored, all without much mental effort for them. My purse gets cleaned out weekly so that receipts can get marked for expenses and that if I have to open my purse at a client location, I won’t be embarrassed by tissues, candy wrappers, or receipts. I sometimes have clients clear their purses when I lead workshops, treating it as a scavenger hunt and giving out awards for the oldest coupon or the least-purse-worthy item. (People pull out funny stuff!)
I don’t have a mudroom or even really an entry way — when you walk into my apartment, there’s nothing inside the front door except a square of floor between the door and the (carpeted) stairs, so if I put anything there, I wouldn’t be able to open the door fully. It’s a clutter-buster, though not entirely convenient. But I love working with clients to clear their entry way clutter, as it’s a super opportunity to refresh the energy in a home in a short span of time.
These are all super seasonal clutter-clearing projects!
Amazing that your fridge is over 40 years old. They used to build appliances to last! I think we have one in our garage that is probably a similar vintage. In addition to the general old/rusty vibe, it also has a square depression from when my daughter backed the car into it with a Thule bicycle hookup on the back.
I totally agree on the relative ease of a car clean-out. There often is quite a bit of trash. I have on client who seems to gather her life in the car until she eventually says, “We HAVE to do the car today!”
Such a fun idea to do a bag scavenger hunt. That is a great idea for a workshop or group gathering. You have wonderful, creative ideas Julie.
Also, you get double gold stars for using “detritus” in a video! 😉
Amusingly, this word tends to be a regular in my vocabulary. Perhaps a vocational side effect?
I did the car cleanout yesterday, just in time to get a surprise box or two of hand me down clothes for the little ones. Oh well!
The mudroom is a huge one for us. That’s when you know it’s really spring!
Exactly! I get so happy when I can finally move all the bulky coats out of the mudroom and make space for my beach bag. 🙂
The purse suggestion struck me although I could really do them all. I decided to clean out my purse and found among other things 8 paperclips! It really is important to empty out everything and start fresh It’s sometimes surprising to find something you’ve been looking for and couldn’t find-surprise it was hiding among the many unneeded things in your purse. Great ideas.
Dianne
So many things fall to the bottom of the purse, right? 8 paperclips is quite the find, Dianne. Good for you!
These are all really great areas that I think really benefit from attention at this time of year. Currently I am slowly going through my clothing. It feels so great when I find things that I have forgotten about.
Thanks for these reminders. They are next on my list. Will need to get the snow scraper out soon. Ugh!
Ugh is right – I never love when the snow scraper season arrives. Alas, it must come so that we can have the beauty of spring. Right now I’m celebrating a warm October day – such a treat!