Does the thought of picking up and organizing your house bore you to tears or completely overwhelm you? Make a game of it to keep engaged!

Timer Games

Using a timer helps maintain your focus. Set a timer for 5-10 minutes. See how many items you can put away before the timer goes off. Note that “put away” actually means that – not just shove out of sight into a random drawer, cabinet, or closet.

Need to purge an area? Set a timer for 5-10 minutes. Focus only on 1 area and see how many things you can get into a donation bag or trashcan. For example, focus on your sock drawer or hanging clothes or board games or colored markers or…you get the idea.

Engage the whole family and create teams! Have a simple reward for the team that gets the most points. The losing team has to do the dishes that night or take out the garbage.

Let The Cards Choose For You

This game requires a bit of preparation but helps conquer indecision.

Take a small stack of index cards and write out regular tasks that help keep you organized. If needed, you can be very specific. Here are examples of general vs. specific tasks:

General Tasks: do dishes, open mail, put away toys

Specific Tasks:

• Bring dishes to sink OR rinse dishes OR load dishwasher
• Open 5 envelopes OR throw out junk mail OR mark the due date on 5 bills
• Put all loose Legos in a box OR gather crayons and markers into a bucket OR put books on shelves

To play the game, pick a card from the deck and work on it for as long as you have set aside to work. Use a timer if that’s helpful. A variation is to pick out 2 cards and then choose the task you want to do.

It’s useful to make task cards for areas of the house that regularly get out of order. If you don’t want to make your own cards, Time to Organize® offers a card deck you can buy.

Under the Sheets

This tip comes from an article written by Dana Rayburn in ADDitude magazine and works great to reduce overwhelm. For large areas of clutter, such as your desk, a table, the floor, or a counter — any place with so much stuff on it that you don’t know where to start:

• Drape a sheet or a blanket over most of the area you want to organize, allowing only a small area of the clutter to show at a time.
• Deal with that bit of visible clutter.
• Once you’ve organized the first bit, slide the sheet over to expose another chunk of the clutter, and tackle it.
• Keep moving the sheet, clearing and organizing as you go.

Organizing can be fun and satisfying if you adjust your perspective. Most people agree that housework and filing isn’t a “fun” activity.  But you can make it fun with these tips!  Do you have any games that work in your household?  Share them here!