Getting organized is one thing, staying organized is another challenge altogether. If you want to stay in control of your life, you need to form a few simple habits to change the way you think about your ‘stuff.’

Here are seven easy ways to stay organized.

1. Make the bed
   Making your bed every day is a small but easily overlooked task that will make you feel instantly more organized and your bedroom look neat. Whatever else happens in your day, at least you’ve made your bed.
2. Clean up the kitchen and straighten the house
   Do the dishes, clean up the kitchen and do a quick tidy of the living areas of your home each evening, and you will finish the day with the right mindset for keeping the rest of your life organized.
3. Stay on task
   Finish one task before you start the next one. Multitasking is overrated and wastes your energy. By trying to do too much at once, you risk getting exhausted and never actually finishing anything. Focusing on one thing at a time will keep you calm, and soon you’ll have a bunch of checks on your to-do list.
4. Use your downtime
   Add up all those minutes of waiting during your day, and you have quite a lot of time when you just hang around. Whether it’s waiting for the coffee maker to brew or the washer to go on spin cycle, you can use this time to do little tasks like empty or load the dishwasher, wipe down the counters or sort through the mail.
5. Keep synched
   Make sure your family’s smartphones and devices talk to one another and that calendars are kept synced. You will not miss appointments, and everyone will know what’s happening and what’s coming up.
6. Stay on top of emails
   Schedule part of your day to deal with emails, so your inbox doesn’t get out of control. Aim for zero emails by the end of the day by using filters and tagging, and don’t procrastinate, just respond to emails straight away.
7. Stay on top of paperwork
   Work out a system to deal with the tide of papers that come into your home and stick to it. Action, scan and file important papers, and throw away or recycle hard copies. Make dealing with paperwork part of your evening tidy up, and you will never have piles of unsorted papers again.