Welcome to Day Four of the 31 Days of Organizing Tips series! I'm so glad you've joined me. Throughout this series I'll be sharing organizing ideas that I've found around the web that I love and that will help you on your journey from overwhelmed to organized.
You'll find a complete list of all the posts in the 31 Days of Organizing Tips tab above, or at the end of this post.
Today's tip is from Laura at I'm an Organizing Junkie. I love her blog! Laura developed a series of steps to follow with any organizing project. I followed these when we cleaned out our garage a few months ago and I use them regularly when I'm organizing any area in my home.
Laura describes her process here. She also created a bookmark to remind us of the steps. Part of it is pictured here but please go to her site to download it or pin it. Laura goes into more detail on each of these steps on her blog too.
I love how simple this is and how easy it is to remember!
Each of these steps is important. We've talked already about planning (P) and de-cluttering (part of O).
I kind of skipped over removing all the items from you space (R) but it's definitely an important step if you can make it work. {Organizing is one of those things where you look like you're making more of a mess while you're in the middle of it but in the end it all pays off!}
Whether you're organizing a drawer, cupboard, shelves, closet or even a whole room, emptying everything out gives you a chance to start with a clean slate. Look at your space with fresh eyes. If things didn't work before, you can change them! Move shelves around to accommodate your needs. Change items from one cupboard to another where they are more likely to be used. Whatever you need to do to make the space more functional, it's easier to do that when it's empty. Plus, you can use that opportunity to
Back to Laura's steps. I'll be posting tips related organizing (O) and containerizing (C) over the next few days and I'll cover evaluating (E), solving and simplifying (S) later in the series. Hopefully you can follow the Smile (S) step throughout the series as you go from overwhelmed to organized!
Thanks Laura for sharing this fantastic organizing system and the bookmark to easily remember it! I want to be an Organizing Junkie just like you :)
For Day Four, remove everything from the space you're organizing (if you didn't do that yesterday when you de-cluttered). Take the time to clean it out and go back to your plan to see if you need to make changes to the space. Also, check out Laura's post and familiarize yourself with each of the steps and why they are important in the organizing process.
Tomorrow I'll be looking at grouping like items with like.
And just a reminder that as the series progresses, I'll be sharing tips for various organizing challenges. Feel free to leave a comment with any particular areas you'd like me to cover. I look forward to going through this series with you and hearing your tips too!
How did your de-cluttering go yesterday? Have you used steps like Laura's when you've organized before? Which step do you think is the most important? What is the best organizing tip you've implemented?
Have a great day and happy organizing!

Here are all the posts in the series:
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