You thought it would be a simple task;

Getting all of your shoes organized.

I mean seriously, how hard can it be?

Well, truth be told, before you start organizing your shoes, you have to figure out how you are going to do it.

Here are 7 ways for you to try out;

1. The 6 step method (eHOW);
2. The “kinda useless” method;
3. The “keep’em where you can see’em” method;
4. The “long winded” method (learn to use point form!!!);
5. The “other cool stuff you can do with a hanging shoe organizer” method;
6. The “Domestic Diva” method; and
7. The “Pay someone else to do it” method.

Keep It Neat!!!

You folks ready for this?

About to be blown away…..

And the #1 secret to getting organized is…..

HAVE A PLAN!

I know, it sounds simple, but it is true. The most important thing to do before you actually start “doing” is to map out what it is you want to “do”.

For example, grab a piece of paper and walk in to a room you want to organize, say your kitchen. Now write down in a few brief points, how you want this room to look.

Then look at the room. Are your ideas reasonable based on your space, lifestyle and personal habits? Be honest with yourself.

Keep working on this plan until it is realistic and executable. In other words, make it short and do-able.

Keep it Neat!

Yes, the basement, you know, the place where you store everything that you just know you are going to need very soon, but someone just never actually do.

Another thing that is often forgotten about the basement, of course until something goes wrong, is that there are usually some important things down there, like the furnace, fuse box, main gas line, etc. Bottom line is that sometimes you need to find something down there in a hurry. And on top of it, it needs to be a safe place. Storing your flammable chemicals and paints next to your gas furnace is not a good idea.

So what can you do with your basement? Here are 6 simple things you can do to make your basement a more organized, useful and most importantly, safer place…

1. Store dangerous chemicals (paints, cleaners, pesticides) above flood level. Flooding can result in dangerous chemicals leaking out. Even if you don’t live in a flood plain, heavy rain fall or a backed up sewer can cause you serious problems (as an aside, check your insurance policy for flood coverage).
2. Do not store items around the appliances or pipes in your basement. You need a clear path in the event of an emergency or when the repair man comes over.
3. Lighting – Make sure you basement, especially your storage area, is well lit. Much easier to find things when you can see them! Also, consider some sort of back up lighting that runs off of batteries, for those times you need to get into the basement during a power outage.
4. If you have appliances in your basement, like an extra fridge or your washing machines, try to place them on platforms that lift them off of the floor to protect them from damage in the event of a flood
5. What to keep? What to get rid of? First of all, if you haven’t used something in the last 2 years, get rid of it. The exception being luggage that is in good working condition. Second of all, do not keep something lying around just because at one point, you spent a lot of money on it. If you don’t use it, you don’t use it. If you are concerned about money, try to sell the item. Lastly – unless you are a teacher or professor – get rid of your old term papers and text books. Anything you could possibly want to look up again is available on the internet.
6. Now after you have laid waste to your basement booty, its time to arrange it in some useful order. The basic principle is to group things in some logical order. In other words, don’t keep your tennis racket inside of your suitcase. For one, you’ll never find the racket when you need it and secondly, when you pull the suitcase up stairs, you’ll end up leaving your tennis racket in your bedroom for the next 6 months. Consider the following groupings:

Tools: consider a wall rack for easy access to your tools and associated items, like screws, nails and fuses;

Home office supplies and old document: Store the documents off the floor in water tight containers. Do not keep things that are irreplaceable, such as original wills and stock certificates, in the basement;

Hobby and craft supplies: again, get the stuff off the floor;

Special occasion supplies: stuff for the holidays, parties, picnics;

Food and consumables: Canned goods, drinks, and other non-perishable foods, bath tissue, napkins, and paper towels, and

Luggage: place the small stuff in front of the bigger stuff. Take the items with broken zippers to the repair shop right away.

Who can’t remember their mother telling them to go clean their room? I still get a weekly phone call asking if I am still hiding my dirty laundry under my bed…

Well, after reading these statistics, I may have to admit my mother was right about keeping organized:

1. An enterprise employing 1,000 knowledge workers wastes $48,000 per week, or nearly $2.5M per year, due to an inability to locate and retrieve information - IDC
2. 400 – The number of hours per year the average employee spends searching for paper documents.
3. It costs about $25,000 to fill a four drawer filing cabinet and over $2,100 a year to maintain it
4. We wear 20 per cent of the clothes we own 80 per cent of the time. The rest hangs there, just in case.
5. 50 percent of homeowners rate the garage as the most disorganized place in the house and a place the entire family uses regularly.
6. No Sex Please, I’m organizing.  IKEA did a survey of customers in which 31% reported they were more satisfied after clearing out their closets than they were after sex.
7. According to a study conducted by a Boston marketing firm, the average American burns 55 minutes a day - roughly 12 weeks a year - looking for things they know they own but can’t find.
8. Americans waste more than nine million hours each day looking for lost and misplaced articles.
9. The average executive wastes 150 hours each year looking for lost or misplaced documents.
10. Record keeping constitutes more than 90% of all office activity
11. 25% - The percentage of enterprise paper documents that are misplaced and will never be located.
12. Getting rid of clutter eliminates 40 per cent of housework in an average home. Eighty per cent of the clutter in most homes is a result disorganization, not lack of space.
13. The US Department of Energy reports that 25% of people with two-car garages don’t park any cars in there and that 32% parked only one.

Maybe Mother Knows Best After All