This is part 2 of our posts on orga­ni­za­tion.  Check out part one here –> First: Tangibles

Orga­ni­za­tion.  It’s the buzz word of the month of January. 

How do we stay orga­nized? How do we even start? 

We start with a com­mand center. 

A brain for our house­hold and fam­i­ly.  A place that hous­es all of our tasks, papers, mail, and events. Sav­ing our brain from over­load is a good thing!

Sec­ond: Intangibles

The intan­gi­ble items in our life seem like they don’t take up space and are thus eas­i­er to keep orga­nized, but that sim­ply isn’t true.  Every email, event, and project takes up space in your brain.  Valu­able space.  Space you can’t afford to give up.  How do you keep the impor­tant intan­gi­ble items in your brain, while elim­i­nat­ing those insignif­i­cant lit­tle details? 

• Emails: they are every­where.  How do you keep them orga­nized?  Treat your emails much like you do your mail.  Delete every mes­sage that is junk or irrel­e­vant to your life at the moment.  For exam­ple, I receive mul­ti­ple emails from mul­ti­ple stores each day.  But I’m not shop­ping each day.  As those come in, I delete them.  My mail­box is set­up to per­ma­nent­ly delete them after a month.  If I delete one today and then decide that I need to see the spe­cials at that store tomor­row, I can just find it with an easy search. 

Anoth­er way to sort these is to have your email pro­gram do it for you.  Sim­ply cre­ate a rule that every email from cer­tain senders is put into a fold­er, the shop­ping fold­er maybe.  You can have all of your edu­ca­tion emails includ­ing Scio Acad­e­my’s go to an edu­ca­tion fold­er that you read through when you have time. 

These sim­ple rules will help keep your inbox clear and ready for the impor­tant and urgent emails that are not to be missed. 

• Events: How do we keep track of events.  Most peo­ple used to keep cal­en­dars on their fridge for events.  My grand­moth­er used to even track the weath­er on hers.  While keep­ing a cal­en­dar on the fridge can be fun and nos­tal­gic, it is hard to cre­ate changes and share events with oth­ers from the fridge.  That is where the shared cal­en­dar with google or apple comes in handy.  You can even col­or code events for each per­son in the house, and only share cer­tain cat­e­gories.  My hus­band shares my house­hold cal­en­dar, but not the home­school one.  He does­n’t need to fill his mind with our music les­son sched­ule.  Each time a new event is planned or you set­up an appoint­ment, put it in the cal­en­dar right away.  I get such a kick out of adding the next den­tist appoint­ment to the cal­en­dar while wait­ing for the lady to fill out our reminder card.  I know, I’m weird. 

• Ideas, Projects, Thoughts:  What do you do with all of those great ideas that float through your mind while you’re vac­u­um­ing? I used to jot them on index cards and then I’d have a stack to go through when I need­ed inspi­ra­tion for a project.  Talk about crazy.  Have you ever seen a woman fran­ti­cal­ly search­ing for a note­card?  Now, I bul­let jour­nal.  When I have an idea, I put it in the jour­nal.  My bul­let jour­nal has been the answer to most of my orga­ni­za­tion­al needs in the past two years.  The idea of an index to sort and orga­nize has released my brain from unnec­es­sary atten­tion to for­mat­ting.  I’d rather be spend­ing time fig­ur­ing out how to help my son learn stop motion videos than won­der­ing where I put that course descrip­tion.  A bul­let jour­nal is a great tool for adults and stu­dents, and can be a hard­back jour­nal or even a 3 ring binder.  For stu­dents need­ing to add mate­r­i­al to their jour­nal like print­outs — our stu­dent roadmap per­haps? A three ring binder is per­fect.  You can even sort things by cat­e­go­ry.  I keep a bul­let jour­nal for me, and a three ring binder for all things edu­ca­tion.  In my binder I keep course descrip­tions, stu­dent roadmaps, atten­dance records, syl­labi, etc.  It’s all in one place. Super simple. 

When it comes to orga­niz­ing life, sim­ple is the key.  If you make your orga­ni­za­tion com­plex, then you won’t want to stick with it. 

Join us for our month­ly edu­ca­tor ses­sion as we explore this top­ic of orga­ni­za­tion further!

When?      January 28^th @ 5pm est

How?    Register for the webinar below. You will receive an email with instructions on how to join the webinar.

How Much?     It’s Free! A recording will be available to Scio Academy members only.

• Space is lim­it­ed, so reg­is­ter now!