Ten-minute mission: Round Up the Pens (and Pencils)

You will need:

• 3, 4 or 5 containers (clean empty tins, soup pots, jars, or pen pots)
• a place to put them

Now set up your system:

• allocate one pot to blue and black pens, one pot to felt-tips, one pot to pencils
• you may need a further pot for red pens and one for coloured pencils
• whenever you find a pen or pencil, make sure it works and put it away in the correct container
• revel in always being able to find a pen!

 

Five-minute mission: Start a Household Notebook

You will need:

• a notebook (small enough to move around, big enough to write in)
• a pen
• optional: crafty stuff for decoration, elastic or string to attach the pen

Now set up your system:

• label the front of the notebook
• if you like, decorate it (washi tape down the spine? Stickers on the cover? Little moveable sticky tabs for the pages?)
• find a sensible and visible permanent location for it – perhaps a table in the hallway, or a windowsill in the kitchen
• put a pen next to it (this should not leave the notebook under any circumstances! You might like to tether it to the notebook with an elastic loop or a length of string)
• revel in having created somewhere to record useful household facts!

Some information which could be written in your notebook:

• the make and number of your printer, and the type of ink cartridges it takes
• a list of your favourite dinners, for when you are thinking about what to cook and your mind goes blank
• your standard grocery shopping list, arranged by area of supermarket or online classification, to help you to check what is needed before you go shopping
• a list of household jobs which need doing daily/weekly/monthly/quarterly/annually
• anything else which you find helpful

 

Keeping track: Decluttering

From Nourishing Minimalism, a post with a printable chart:  boxes to tick off 2016 items of decluttering in 2016.

Five-minute mission: Corral your Carrier Bags

Use this if:

• you want or need to keep any plastic shopping bags, and
• you don’t currently have a proper place to put them

You will need:

• a cardboard box, around the size of a large shoebox or slightly bigger, OR
• a sturdy bag
• any of the plastic shopping bags currently floating around your house

Now set up your system:

• find a sensible place for the box or bag
• empty each carrier bag and straighten it out, checking it is undamaged
• now fold it into a neat self-contained little triangle: have a look at Kelly’s post here for illustrations and video instructions for this
• fold them all up and put in your box/bag
• clear up as required (torn bags to recycling or bin, any receipts found to your receipts box/file, rubbish to bin, etc)
• revel in having created a little patch of order!

Ten-minute mission: A Place for Receipts

Use this if:

• you need to keep receipts, for example for returning items or budgeting, and
• you currently do not have a single place for them and/or your purse is overstuffed

You will need:

• a ringbinder
• 14 plastic wallets
• 14 sticky labels (or a labeller), or 14 sheets of paper to fit into your plastic wallets
• a pen

Or, for the recycled/free version:

• a shoebox
• 14 A5 envelopes (used is fine, as long as they are opened along the top edge and basically otherwise intact)
• a pen

Now set up your system:

• label one envelope or wallet ‘2015 receipts’
• label the next twelve envelopes or wallets ‘Jan receipts’, ‘Feb receipts’, etc.
• label the final envelope ‘Bank slips’
• place in order in your shoebox or folder
• find a place for this which can be accessed easily
• clear up as required (sticky label backing, wrappers etc to bin)
• revel in having created a little patch of order!