2. Buddy up for better results. For most people, organizing can be overwhelming and emotional.  Just having another person there to help you stay on track can make a world of difference.  Try to have an impartial friend (emotionally involved family members can make it even harder) or find a Professional Organizer that you connect with to help you through the process.

3.Organizing is creative. One of the biggest myths about organizing is that it’s boring, and that being organized means you’re uptight.  Not true!  Not only is organizing a great way to exercise your creativity by finding new uses for things, but being organized will also free up time for your creative endeavors.

4. You’re not a magician (and neither am I).  You can maximize your use of space, but you can’t create more space where there is none.  The solution?  Get rid of what you don’t use and love.  When you purge unnecessary stuff, you make space for the things that are truly important to you, and your home becomes a better (and roomier!) reflection of you.

5.Your home doesn’t have to look like a minimalist heaven for you to be organized.  You can have stuff (even, dare I say it, a lot of stuff!) and be more organized than someone whose apartment looks like it jumped out of the pages of a magazine.

6. Start small, stay small. Organizing your entire apartment quickly gets overwhelming, which is why most people get stuck at the “I’d sure like to get organized” phase.  Break each room into areas, and each area into tiny sections or tasks.  When I say tiny, I mean tiny. Your task isn’t to organize your desk, but rather to sort and purge any pens that aren’t working or you don’t like.  You’re not organizing your entire kitchen; you’re emptying one cupboard, tossing expired food, and putting everything back in groupings that make sense to you.  If you can do one of these tiny tasks every day, or even once a week, the job WILL get done, and with much less stress than trying to tackle everything at once.

7. It’s not a “once and done” process.  You don’t get organized and then never think about it again, just like you don’t lose weight and then go back to eating cookie dough for breakfast.  Organizing is not the destination itself; it’s the way you get to your goals.  After purging clutter and setting up great systems, you’ll still need to set aside time for maintenance.  Schedule organizing time in your calendar like you would any other standing appointment.