by Megan Marsiglio
I’m excited to share some fun news – on Tuesday, May 26th (yesterday), I appeared on The Marilyn Denis Show sharing my favourite organization tips for the ‘morning rush’. It was pretty neat to go through all of the motions, from sitting in the green room, getting whisked away to the make-up chair and getting clipped with mics before I met Marilyn. The whole experience was very quick and I loved every minute of it.
I’m not sure if it’s a first child thing or what, but I’ve always enjoyed organizing. I may have not always been great at keeping my room tidy when I was young (or even in my mid-20s), but I’ve always felt comfort in having things in their place. When I was seven/eight I got my first digital organizer, a “Dear Diary”. I loved it. I’m not sure what the heck I had to organize at that age, but I appreciated the categories. When I was 13, I labeled my closet drawers (shirts, pants, underwear, etc…) – didn’t every teen girl do this? Around the age of 15, I would take time to re-organize the kitchen pantries and fridge. I know my parents appreciated the kitchen clean-out, but I also loved having a super organized fridge!
I believe organization is a bit of an art. It’s a practice. If you don’t practice it, it doesn’t come easy. Just like everything in life. There have been stretches in my life when I certainly was not organized…such as a couple years during university – however, once I would do the big room clean and get back on my organized track, it would be easier to stay on track.
Trying to stay organized may be easier for certain people, but it’s just part of personality. For me, I find organization easy, but that’s me. Trust me – as much as I love keeping organized, I am envious of those who can get ready in 15 minutes and run out the door with a bagel – especially a “regular”, non-gluten-free bagel.
If I don’t have my routines, I find it harder to stay on track.
Weekday mornings are the time I’m most organized. If I don’t have everything figured out before I go to bed, I feel rushed and fuzzy-minded. I like having my morning routine, I know exactly how long I have in the morning before I leave for work and once I walk out the door, I don’t feel like I had to run around like a chicken without it’s head (because that’s how I feel when I do)!
Before Bed:
On weeknights after dinner, I take 15-20 minutes to pack my lunch and think about what I’m going to have for breakfast the next morning. One of my favourite go-to breakfasts for the next morning are overnight oats. It takes five minutes to throw everything into a jar or bowl and in the morning, once all the oats have absorbed the liquid, it’s a delicious breakfast. You can find a recipe here.
I then plan my outfit for the next day. I’m sure I’m not the only one who dislikes picking out what they’re going to wear for the day – sometimes it turns into a bit of a dilemma…don’t you agree??? If I have my clothing dilemma the night before, it doesn’t create as much stress as it would in the morning. Question for the men: are us ladies the only ones with outfit predicaments?
Sometimes I even take it to the next level and plan out three or four outfits on Sunday afternoon before the week ahead. If I know I have any ironing to do for the upcoming week, I’ll ensure to get it all done so I don’t have to worry about it the evening before work – trust me, it saves so much time.
I used to colour-coat my closet – it made it very visually appealing to open my closet and see a beautiful colour spectrum…I just didn’t find it very efficient. Soooo, I began clumping my clothes into various categories. Jackets in one section, blouses in another…pants in one drawer, skirts on a different rack. Much easier! If you want to make it every more organized, you could colour-coat your categorized sections.
Rise and Shine
I usually give myself just over an hour to get ready in the morning. I start my day off with a little morning yoga routine (supposedly it works better than caffeine…) and then I get dressed in my chosen outfit. I’ll eat my breakfast and my lunch is all ready to go.
At Work:
Last year I learned about the kanban organization method. It was an exciting day friends – and I’m not being sarcastic.
To give you a bit of background context, ‘kanban’ translates to ‘sign’ or ‘board’ in Japanese. It was a process that was initially implemented at Toyota to plan processes and since then the idea has erupted. Some organizations have huge kanban boards (check out this one) – tracking employee ‘to-do’ items and what’s in progress. It’s a way to keep people on track by having visual cues. Like I mentioned on the show, as humans we like to see what we’re doing. I also meant to mention that although we all multi-task daily, our brains aren’t actually wired to multi-task. We may do it, but we’re obviously not as efficient as when we take one step at a time and put our full focus into one task. The kanban board lets us see exactly what we have to do and we can focus our attention on the one task as we go through our day. It lets us see what we have on the go and once we’re finished it, the ‘done’ column gives us a sense of accomplishment. Feelings of accomplishment motivate us to move on to the next to-do task.
There are so many ways of implementing the board and you can really create it however way you want. There are lots of websites explaining different methods, you just have to find the one that works best for you.
It may seem like a drag to plan for the next day once you get home from work, but it only takes around 30 minutes and it saves a lot of time in the morning…which means extra sleep.
Maybe you like the rush or maybe you don’t need to practice organization to feel ready for the day, but for me, I need to practice organization to feel relaxed and prepared.
I loved sharing my tips on The Marilyn Denis Show and I hope I’ll be able to share more in the future!
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