Organising your life in 2023
January 2023
Every year starts with a clean slate that we enthusiastically clutter with our good intentions. You might be promising yourself that you will be more physically active or shop more sustainably. You might be assuring yourself that this is indeed the year when you will make more time to read for your own pleasure or to spend quality time with your loved ones. In 2023, you might even have some career milestones or bucket-list items that you feel determined to tick off.
Unfortunately, for the majority of people, many of these resolutions won’t stick past the first couple of months of the new year. But you can still put your ‘fresh start’ mentality to good use by focusing on a specific, achievable goal – which is to get your life properly organised.
You may think that doing your admin and sorting out your clutter are amongst the least inspiring ways to kick off the new year, but you will feel differently once it’s done. Making a habit of organising our lives is part of the foundation of self-mastery that catapults us to a higher level of performance in all areas of life. If you are optimally organised you are more likely to find that it’s easier to achieve the other, more exciting targets in your sights. In addition, being organised is known to reduce stress as well as the time spent on housework, so that you can enjoy life more!
To get started, lean into the advice from professional organisers who divide the workload into macro-organising projects and micro-organising tasks. The first deals with your bigger picture, and the latter promotes day-to-day efficiencies.
3 Tips for a clearer big picture of your life
· Plan ahead for the year’s major events – Make a commitment to leave nothing to the last minute. Map out the major happenings for your year such as the kids’ school terms, booked holidays, special events such as birthdays, anniversaries and family weddings, home renovations or moving house. Wherever relevant, create an action plan with timeframes so that you are well-prepared for each important activity and so that you don’t have the stress of doing what has to be done just in the nick of time.
· Marie Kondo your house – When you feel your lighter load at the end of this exercise, you will be thrilled and grateful that you made the effort. It sounds simple but decluttering and tidying up changes your home life and your outlook. Start discarding the stuff you don’t need by sorting according to categories such as clothes first, then books, papers and mementos. Get rid of everything that does not bring joy. Once you have decluttered, reorganise and tidy all your storage spaces.
· Use an advanced digital solution for your estate planning and important personal documents – The start of a new year is an excellent time to update your estate planning and organise your important personal information. If you don’t have a current, signed and witnessed Last Will and Testament, get that done as a priority. Consider signing up for a solution such as Heritage Vault, which enables you to organise your financials, personal documents, lists of assets and detailed instructions to your loved ones into 13 easy to populate categories of data. Rachelle Best, Founder and CEO of Heritage Vault says, “Heritage Vault provides an ongoing mechanism for keeping all of your important information organised in one tightly secured place, making it available to you throughout, but also to your loved ones when you are no longer around. For example, if you’re ever stuck looking for your marriage certificate or you need one of your children’s birth certificates, or you have to know what one of your policy numbers are, your Heritage Vault captures all of this.”
3 Tips for smoothing out the nitty-gritty of your life
· Commit to using your calendar – Whether you go digital or paper-based, fall in love with your calendar this year. Take some time and start with filling in birthdays, anniversaries, and all other important upcoming dates. If you haven’t planned your 2023 holidays yet, start to work them out now so that you can budget, plan and book! Use your calendar daily, not just for reminders but for setting weekly and daily goals, making to-do lists, pre-planning, budgeting and tracking.
· Finalise or let go unfinished projects – Take an inventory of everything you are dragging in from last year. Are there errands you have not run? Are there DIY projects half-done? Is there a pile of documents waiting for you to sort out? Identify what has to be accomplished such as renewing annual licences or a collection you must undertake. Schedule these priorities in your calendar and get them done. If there are projects you haven’t yet started and you’ve lost your zeal, let them go now and find a different solution such as engaging a handyman.
· Sort out your digital life – Every day we’re dealing with passwords and a multitude of digital assets across our inboxes to our social media profiles and cryptocurrency accounts. Clutter happens easily in the digital realm too! It’s worth taking the time to sort out your emails, delete outdated files from your hard drives and clean up your digital images. Use an advanced digital solution such as Heritage Vault to collate all your important digital information, including your passwords and digital account numbers. Best says, “This is critically important in the event of your passing. Chances are that, when it comes to your digital life, your loved ones are never going to find everything they need in one place, even less so in any physical place. So much of what goes on in our lives today is happening in the digital world. For instance, all our bills and account statements are sent via email, and if someone doesn’t have the password to your computer and access to your email accounts, then there’s valuable information that they won’t be able to access. If something happens to you, your loved ones need to know what you want done with your email accounts, your social media profiles, your photos and videos. By populating your Heritage Vault, you can collate all the important information about your digital and physical lives and keep it well-organised.”