Five Things System of Cleaning and Organization

My life is very busy these days. Being a full-time student while working at a full-time job as a medical transcriptionist and having a part-time freelance writing career while at the same time writing my first murder mystery novel does not leave a lot of time for extras. The only way I can achieve all these things is to have a system. I call it my "Five Things System of Cleaning and Organization".

As I wrote in my previous article, "Personal Goal Setting - Why is it so Important to Set Goals?", the first thing to do is set your goals. You must know what you want to accomplish before you can actually set out to accomplish those things.

Once your goals are set, you are ready to settle into your daily routine. Here are my current daily goals:

• Do my medical transcription work tasks for the day.
• Publish 1 article on Associated Content.
• Write 4 pages on my murder mystery novel.
• Do today's school assignments.
• Do my Five Things System of Cleaning and Organization.

What I find that gets left out most frequently is my housework and laundry. It is hard to be as productive as I choose to be in an unorganized environment so I have come up with the Five Things System of Cleaning and Organization. This is a very simple system that anyone can do. Small efforts that we make culminate into bigger and better things in a very short time. I don't like housework. To me, it's that necessary evil thing that must be done. Here is how my Five Things System of Cleaning and Organization works.

Make a daily list.

I've been accused of being a compulsive list-maker. Guilty, as charged, but it works for me. Since you have already defined your goals as defined in my prior article above, you know what you want to do and in what time period you want to do it.

I use index cards to make my list which I then tack up on the cork board that sits next to my desk where I can just turn my head slightly to the left to see it.

For the cleaning portion of my list I include the following items:

• Put away 5 things.
• Dust 5 things.
• Wash 5 things.
• Throw away 5 things.

This is not only do-able, but it can usually be achieved in just a few minutes. If I have extra time after this, I either repeat the above process or add something like laundry or vacuuming.

This simple system can be applied to anything...your house, your car, your garage or yard, your work space. It's all up to you.

With this system in place, I achieve all my goals and still have time for the good things in life, such as going out for dinner and a movie, watching t.v., shopping, walking in the park or whatever I want to do in the evenings and on my days off.

I would love to hear your stories of how this Five Things System of Cleaning and Organization works for you.