Happy New Year! What better time is there for taking stock and getting organized? I read a wonderful book over the winter break that made coming back from vacation and facing my mountainous piles of paper and stuff a bit more tolerable. “Pretty Neat: The Buttoned-Up Way to Get Organized and Let Go of Perfection” by organizational experts Alicia Rockmore and Sarah Welch offers anecdotes and candid advice from experts and real people alike on tackling organizational overload.

Entertaining and helpful, “Pretty Neat” covers all facets of clutter-control, from tried-and-true tips for conquering to-do lists and wrangling family schedules, to ideas on excavating inboxes, eliminating excuses, and delegating housework. The book also urges readers to stop holding themselves to impossibly high standards, and focus instead on defining their own, realistic organizational goals.

Some suggestions for developing your own meaning of organized:

• Identify Your Problem Areas – What works well for you? What needs just a small tune-up? What needs a complete overhaul?

• For each of the areas you listed under the Needs a Tune-Up or Needs an Overhaul, try to articulate what you think being organized should look like in a perfect world. This will help you understand the underlying causes of your organizational stress.

• Now, establish your “Good Enough” goals, meaning what you really need to do, rather than what you “should” do, and outline some actions that can help you attain that good enough goal.

For example, one area that might need a tune-up is your office. You think it should look perfectly organized (i.e. no papers on the desk, pens and pencils in a holder, books on bookshelf) at all times. This, however, is not realistic. Instead, a “good enough” goal might be to straighten it up once week for 30 minutes every Sunday evening.

Regardless of your level of clutter and stress, establishing some rules and routines will help you tackle organizational overload. Remember, “it’s all about having a plan”. There is no doubt that being organized helps you save money, by paying your bills on time, managing your finances more responsibly, and caring for your possessions more carefully.