Maintenance is Your Foundation. It may seem like putting the cart before the horse to talk about maintenance before your system is in place. The clutter is all over and it's out of control! you say. However, if you learn to manage small pieces of it and recognize that you're making progress, the bigger job won't seem so intimidating. Making a habit of maintenance now will help you troubleshoot your current way of doing things, i.e., is your current system too confusing or time consuming to maintain? Try starting with what's happening now and deal with the backlog little by little.

Maintenance Requires Time Management. Getting organized is one thing, but being able to maintain it requires another organizing skill, which is good time management. If you don't budget time to keep yourself organized, it's not going to happen. It's not enough to install a good system, no matter how simple it is. You must use the system and use it regularly and that means spending time you are using some other way now. With a good system, you will have extra time on your hands since you aren't spending 20 minutes looking for the keys or half an hour scanning through old emails. The other good news is that maintaining your new systems will not take all of that new extra time. You'll be spending five minutes here and five minutes there. All your maintenance COMBINED, that's the entire house, soup to nuts, should take you just under an hour.

Finding Time. You can often find time in between activities. When you get home from work is a good time to go through the mail. Throw out the junk mail, pay bills or keep them on your desk with the other bills, divide other mail into desk trays for action and reading, put mail for others in designated spots for them. When you get up in the morning or before bed at night can be a good time to go through common rooms and do a quick tidy up by putting things that don't belong there into a decorative basket by the door, to be put away during your regular housekeeping time. If you talk on the phone a lot and the phone is cordless, you can put things away as you talk.

Making it a Habit. Habits are easiest to form when you attach them to existing habits. Even if your schedule is different every day, you generally still get out of bed at some point and go to bed again later that day. You may wash dishes everyday, or brush your teeth. So tack another activity onto that habitual activity. When you've finished brushing, don't leave the bathroom until you toss clothes in the hamper, pick up towels and put away toiletries that don't belong on the counter. If you do this every night it will take you 5 minutes or less. If it takes longer, your storage system needs work or your family members aren't pulling their weight. To become a habit, an activity must be performed regularly for about three weeks straight. Put a Post-It on the mirror to remind you. After that, it will become natural, something you hardly have to think about.

Congratulate Yourself. Recognize the progress you've made. It seems to be easier to notice the negative rather than the positive. If the bathroom is tidy when you go to bed, you've done a good job. You've made a change for the better. Take some “before” pictures so you'll really see what you've accomplished. Don't wait until the entire house is perfect before you congratulate yourself.

Audition As You Shop. Whenever you consider acquiring something new, audition it first. Will it work with what you already have? Will it solve the problem? Is there room for it? If not, can you get rid of something to make room? Is its function worth the price and space and maintenance it will need? Do you need it or do you just want it (wanting is okay, just be clear about it)? Could you borrow or rent it occasionally instead? Everything that comes into your home after your system is in place needs to be integrated into the system so it can also be added to your maintenance routine.

Avoid Perfectionism. What you want is a home or office that makes you feel good and helps you be your best. What that consists of is entirely your decision. If you are happy and things are working, don't torture yourself that the socks are not sorted by color. Organizing is just a tool. Use it to create the life you want rather than getting stuck in the process.

Summary. Maintenance is critical to staying organized. To give yourself a better shot at success, complete a small organizing project, such as assigning a place to open and handle your mail, and then practice maintaining it. Be diligent about opening your mail there every day for at least 21 days. At that point it should be a habit, or you'll realize that it doesn't work and think of a better system. In this way, you'll develop a system customized for you and you'll reinforce your maintenance habit to ensure the system does what it's supposed to. A fantastic organizing system is just a concept, a daydream, until you put it to work by maintaining it.