My mom worked at home for over 20 years.  Her articulate habit of keeping things cleaned and organized drove me nuts.  If I took something out and didn’t put it back, I heard about it.  There was no such thing as a catch all surface in any room in the house.  We had junk drawer in the kitchen, but even that was organized.  Nothing was out of place.  I went through most of my teen years convincing myself that I would never follow in my mother’s footsteps.

I am now 38 and I’ve worked at home for over 4 years.  My home is organized and I wouldn’t be ashamed if someone dropped by unexpectedly.  At the top of the list of things that irritate me the most is clutter especially my office and desk area.  If there are too many things on the counter or table, I can’t relax until it’s taken care of.  I will sometimes get up early just to get things ‘just so’ before I sit down to work.  I have become my mother.

Let’s face it.  Life is messy.  One tiny section of clutter usually snowballs into something much greater.  Trying to keep up with things before that happens is usually impossible.  There are ways that you can get your home organized without going completely mad…and keeping it that way.  It does involve some time, but the time you’re going to save in the long run exceeds that by miles.

*The first thing you have to do is break each room down.  If you look at the entire picture, as in getting the whole house done in a day, it’s not going to happen.  The house didn’t get out of control cluttered overnight.  It’s not going to get completely organized overnight.  If you have to take one room at a time or one area in a certain room at a time, than that’s what you do.  Some folks that I’ve talked to make out a 30 day planner.  Each day they tackle one small area.  It’s less overwhelming.

*This may sound completely out of sync, but one of the last things you should do is buy totes and other organizing accessories.  I’ll be the first to admit I’m guilty of running to the store and filling my cart with totes, shelves, containers and accessories to get organized.  This leads to filling each and every container and stock piling them in a closet, basement, attic or spare room.  Think about it.  What have you really accomplished?  You haven’t gotten rid of clutter.  You’ve just packaged it up and put it someplace else.  These items should be purchased after you’ve gone through each room.  Only buy items for areas in your house that you’ve completed.

*Organizing means getting rid of the clutter.  Getting rid of the clutter means just that.  Get rid of it.  Most of us have too much stuff.  Our closets, drawers, shelves, and even our kitchens are packed with things that we don’t use or need.  You know I’m right.  Check your closet.  How many items of clothing do you have versus what you’ve worn?  Same with shoes, toys, office supplies, kitchen gadgets, etc.  My rule of thumb is if you haven’t worn it or used it in over a year, it’s time to part with it.  Start packing some boxes to donate to charity.  Your other option is to have a yard sale when the weather gets warmer, but the problem with this is yard sales sometimes never happen for one reason or the other.  The clutter sits.  Donate items that you don’t use or need.  Get the kids involved and have them go through their toys.  This is a great lesson to teach kids how to share with those who are less fortunate.

*Find a place for items.  Tables and counters become a catch all for clutter because the stockpile of items don’t have a home.  The chairs and sofa become a haven for coats, hats, backpacks and other items because, more than likely, where they are supposed to go is too out of the way.  If you have kids, this happens a lot.  The kids burst through the door from school hungry for a snack.  Running up to their room to hang a coat is not the first thing on their mind.  If the pile of coats on the chairs irritates you then think of a convenient way to solve that problem.  You can battle them each day to run upstairs (which takes too much time and energy) or you can get a coat rack or some really nice wall mounted coat hangers.  I did this recently.  I was tired of coats flung over the chair so I put up 4 coat hangers.  Problem solved.

*Get rid of duplicates.  This mostly pertains to the kitchen area, but there are other hot spots for this to happen.  Open up a kitchen drawer.  Do you really need 6 whisks?  How about the cupboards.  Is it really necessary to own 32 coffee mugs?  Check the bathroom.  That’s another haven for too many duplicate items.  Do you really need 9 hair brushes and 4 curling irons?  You can only use one brush at a time and that’s really all you need for one person.  Getting rid of all these duplicates will tone down on the clutter.  The old rule is if you bring in new, get rid of an old item.  For example, if you buy a new brush, get rid of your old one.

*Limit the shopping excursions.  I’m guilty of this too.  When I hit up a good sale and I’m knee deep in items that are 75% off or more…I go a little crazy.  Problem is, I don’t have a lot of room to put items and they end up getting stuffed in drawers and cupboards.  This is that snowball effect to uncontrollable clutter.

*Once you’ve gone through every space, every room, bought the totes and storage accessories and all is done, now you have to maintain it.  Old habits don’t go away easily.  The house looks great, but your efforts are a waste of time if in a week you can’t see the top of your table or half the counter space in the kitchen.  It only takes a few minutes to maintain a neat and organized house.  For me, the most important area is my desk and office because that is where I spend about 16 hours a day most days.  Every few days I wipe down my desk, straighten things out and put things in place.  It takes me 5 minutes tops to do this because I keep up with it.  I can’t stand dust on my desk or things out of place.  You’ll find that once you get on a routine of maintaining, it’s a cinch and you do it out of habit.

For some great deals on everything you need to get your home organized, check out Get Organized.  You can save up to 90% off clearance items and shipping is only $4.95.  You can also take an extra 10% off your order through January 10th with code GETORGNZ.

Jack Dorsey, Twitter’s co-founder described his creation as “… an idea to make a more ‘live’ LiveJournal, Real-time, up-to-date, from the road. Akin to updating your AIM status from wherever you are, and sharing it.”

Google’s CEO described Twitter another way when he called it a poor man’s email system, “Speaking as a computer scientist, I view all of these as sort of poor man’s email systems.”   Although, his statement is rudimentary, it does have merit.  If you think of Twitter from a technical standpoint, it is easily a poor man’s email system, but a SPAM proof one at that.

You can SPAM your followers who, for better or worse, actively opted in to follow your conscious activity.  However, you won’t get your follower’s tweets unless, of course, you choose to follow them.  So, what we really have is just the evolution of a poor man’s email system that happens to solve what today’s email system can’t, that is SPAM!

Everywhere we turn information is being pushed on us – from ads, emails, text messages, RSS, etc. – we are living in a world of information clutter. Do we really need another communication system?  Does it really matter what your friends or Ashton Kutcher are doing right now?  “Brushing my teeth, just got off the elevator, flying the red-eye in a silver tube at 600mph over the Rockies,” can be too much.  Who really gives a tweet?

Either way, Twitter has become unbelievably popular and is most likely here to stay. Twitter’s active users have increased 900% in a year which leads all social networks including the all-powerful FaceBook.  So for now anyway, the clutter is here to stay.

You can follow DealTaker on Twitter at http://twitter.com/dealtaker