Today’s blog is by our newest team member, Kristen Badowski, Production Coordinator

Kick off 2016 using the SEO (Sorting, Editing and Organizing) Strategy in one small area of your home each weekend.

Here at Styled & Organized, we use the terms “sort , edit and organize” a lot.  These words are at the heart of all that we do.  It struck me recently that the SEO we use to organize our lives bears some resemblance to the SEO in the internet marketing world.  When a business wants to make their website work better for them, they take steps to ensure good content and organization so that potential customers can find them easily on the internet.  They utilize a marketing strategy called “Search Engine Optimization”, or “SEO”, to achieve this.  In our business, we use “SEO – or Sorting, Editing and Organizing” to also help our clients achieve good content and organization in their space so that they can find things more easily, work more efficiently and simply enjoy their surroundings.

This “SEO – Sort, Edit and Organize” strategy can easily be used to tackle any area in your home, no matter the size.  Use the start of this new year as your excuse to start small.  Pick some less time-consuming projects to tackle on each remaining Saturday in January 2016.  The areas I selected to tackle and apply our SEO strategy to were:  Kitchen Catch-All Drawer,  Garage Shelving Units and Cosmetics Drawer.  Each of these required only approximately one hour of my time, but the feeling of accomplishment I had at the end of each project was immeasurable and motivated me to keep moving forward.

1st One Hour Project:  Kitchen Catch-All Drawer

The first small space I applied our “SEO” strategy to was one of our catch-all drawers….yes, I have to admit that we have more than one of these unwieldy drawers in our home.  Here is a “before picture” so that you can see what I started with.

I started by removing everything, which allowed me to clean the drawer.  Once the items are removed I used the Sort, Edit and Organize strategy.

1. Sort:  Group like items together.  You will quickly discover things you forgot you had (those keys to the old car you no longer even own!) and that you have way too many items that you could never seem to find when you needed them (we had over 30 pens!)

2. Edit:  Remove broken, worn-out and unwanted items.

3. Organize: Use the best container/grouping of containers to properly fit your newly sorted items.  Place groups of items in the each container.

It’s amazing what you can accomplish with just one hour and the right containers.  Now, time to step back and admire your work!

Kristen Badowski is the newest member of our stylishly organized team.  More tips & ideas to come through this week’s posts on the Styled & Organized Living Facebook page, @StyledOrganized on Twitter & the Styled & Organized Living Pinterest page.  These Daily Tips will show you how to gain more control over your life through organization because Life is Better Stylishly Organized!