Give It A Home Base

How do you find something? There's an easy way to take care of that. Just give everything a home base.

What do I mean by that?

Assign everything a place of its own. For example, phone books go by the phone. Keys go in a basket or container by the door where you usually come in. Shoes go on the mat in the entry closet. Files go into the filing cabinet or your desktop file holder. Pens and pencils go in the pencil holder. Tape and envelopes could go in a desk drawer. And so on.

While others can make suggestions for where to put things, the most important thing is that you put them where it makes sense to you and where you will remember it.

Some things may need more than one home base. It's a good idea to have a holder with pens, scissors, paper, etc in several areas - your desk, by the phone, next to your bed, by your easy chair, etc.

The idea is that everything has a place. Then when you need that something, you know where to find it.

Of course, there is a caveat to that - you'll find it providing you have obeyed one of the cardinal rules of organizing, which is, when you've finished using it, put it back in its place!