Simple Systems

I turn to Zen­Hab­its once again for this week’s post on Organize-Your-Life 101. This is some­thing that I am try­ing to use for my own life. Yes, I have become quite Obses­sive Com­pul­sive about so many things in my life. I think it comes from know­ing that I do not have any­one to turn to and nobody will clean up after me.

Here is Zen­Hab­its’ post on cre­at­ing sim­ple systems:

The key to cre­at­ing calm and sim­plic­ity in your life is cre­at­ing sim­ple sys­tems, instead of hap­haz­ard sys­tems of chaos that form nat­u­rally when we don’t give thought to these things.

From Com­pli­cated Sys­tems to Sim­ple
First, let’s take a look at some of the com­pli­cated sys­tems we might have for these things, when we don’t give them much thought, and how they can stress us out. See, when you don’t inten­tion­ally design a sys­tem, one will form any­way, and it prob­a­bly won’t be an opti­mal sys­tem. But it’s the one we use, so we just con­tinue to use it.

For exam­ple, let’s look at a com­pli­cated sys­tem that might form for clean­ing our house if we don’t inten­tion­ally design it:

• We intend to keep things clean, but our lives get busy, and things come up, and we’re tired when we get home. Things start to get messy.
• Com­pany is com­ing over! We clean like crazy at the last minute, rais­ing our stress lev­els. Still, we only do a quick clean, which means there’s still a lot of clut­ter and mess even when the guests do come over.
• We let things dete­ri­o­rate some more until the next guest comes over, or until we’re sick of things. There is really bad dust under the fur­ni­ture, grime in that “crisper” drawer in the fridge, and we don’t even want to talk about the bathtub.

Now, you might not be this bad, but you can kind of get the idea. No sys­tem is designed, so things get com­pli­cated. And we get stressed out at the last-minute clean­ing, and by the con­stant mess.

The solu­tion: design a sim­ple sys­tem inten­tion­ally, mak­ing a rou­tine that works for you, and alter it if it doesn’t make sense. Write out the sys­tem, so it is for­mal, and try to stick to it as much as pos­si­ble — reli­giously, if possible.

House Clean­ing: A Sim­ple Sys­tem
For all of these sim­ple sys­tems in this arti­cle, please remem­ber that they are just exam­ples. You should mod­ify them to fit your life. And another impor­tant guide­line: write them down, put them some­where you’ll see them, and focus on mak­ing them a habit for at least a month.

Here’s a sam­ple sys­tem for house cleaning:

1. First, have a big week­end ded­i­cated to clean­ing, so you can start your sys­tem with a clean slate. Get the whole fam­ily involved (if you have one), and clean one room at a time, from top to bot­tom, clock­wise, until you’re done. It also helps to get rid of clut­ter. You might need two big week­ends if there’s a lot of clean­ing to do.
2. From now on, have a clean-as-you-go rou­tine: when you’re get­ting ready in the morn­ing, do a quick wipe of the sink and toi­let and bath­tub. Put things away as you go through the day, wash dishes when you’re done using them, wipe the coun­ters and table when you’re done cook­ing or eat­ing.
3. Also have a daily rou­tine: Every morn­ing, make your bed, take out the trash, and do a quick pick-up. In the evening, sweep the kitchen/dining room, clean up after din­ner, and do a quick pick-up before bed.
4. Have a weekly rou­tine: either des­ig­nate one day for a quick 1-hour clean (it shouldn’t be that dirty if you’ve been clean­ing as you go), or have dif­fer­ent days des­ig­nated for dif­fer­ent things — vac­uum the liv­ing room, for exam­ple, or wash the linens, etc.
5. Every few months, do a deep clean: clean out the refrig­er­a­tor and oven, clear out the cab­i­nets and clean them, etc.

Other Chores: A Sim­ple Sys­tem
Besides clean­ing your house, you prob­a­bly have other chores you need to do on a weekly basis. It’s good to get a weekly rou­tine going as your sim­ple sys­tem, so you never for­get to do them and you know when you have to do what.

Here’s a sam­ple weekly routine:

* Mon­day: Yard­work
* Tues­day: Clean car
* Wednes­day: Pay bills, update finan­cial soft­ware
* Thurs­day: Errands, gro­ceries
* Fri­day: Laun­dry
* Sat­ur­day: Clean house, put away laun­dry
* Sun­day: Fam­ily Day

Errands: A Sim­ple Sys­tem
Run­ning errands through­out the week will stress you out, and cost you time and money. Here’s a sam­ple sim­ple sys­tem for errands that works well for me:

1. Keep a run­ning errands list, adding to it as you think of things, so when errands day comes, you know exactly what you need to do. Also keep a run­ning gro­cery list.
2. The night before your errands day, you plan your din­ner menu for the next two weeks and com­plete your gro­cery list, then look at all the errands on your errands list and plan out the most effi­cient route.
3. On Errands Day, you spend a cou­ple of hours doing all the errands on your list and then buy­ing all your gro­ceries. One trip, planned effi­ciently, saves gas and mul­ti­ple shop­ping trips.