Why Now Is The Time To Get Organized!

As we've been discussing in recent blog posts, January is a time when most people take stock of their lives and work on making positive changes. It's also the perfect time to get serious about getting organized. Why?

One reason is because January is National Clean Up Your Computer Month as well as National Get Organized Month. (In fact, today is both National Clean Off Your Desk Day and National Organize Your Home Day--some people really want to help us get inspired to get organized!)

Another reason is that being organized can help you reduce stress. Clutter slowly and subtly drains you of energy when you're surrounded by it (in Feng Shui, the art of placement, they call that energy chi), as not only does it serve as a visual reminder of all the cleaning and organizing that needs to be done, but it can rob you of time as you search for lost items, and rob you of usable space in your home. (Read more about the hidden costs of clutter.)

Therefore, in the interest of stress relief (as well as all of those national observances), I'm bringing you a useful and diverse group of stress relief resources that can help you organize your work space, keep your home clean, and more. Enjoy!

Organizing Resources From Elizabeth Scott and About.com

• How Cleaning Can Help Relieve Stress
  Cleaning, if done in a certain way, can actually serve to help relieve stress. Learn about how you can make your home beautiful and de-stress at the same time!
• How To Organized A Desk Quickly
  This quick video can walk you through the steps of organizing a desk, which can relieve stress and boost productivity.

• How To Organize Your Tax Documents
  If you'd like to reduce tax season stress, now is the perfect time to start (or finish) organizing your tax documents. Here's a simple document that can explain what you need to keep and why, making it easy to get organized.

• Organize Your Home Office
  From About.com's Personal Organizing Site, we ahve this resource that helps you organize your home office space in an organized way, to take the stress out of organizing.

• Student Stress Relief
  These de-cluttering and de-stressing techniques can be very helpful for students. De-stress and excel in school!

Many people have certain areas in their homes (my desk!) or certain types of clutter (incessant paper clutter!) that are particularly challenging for them. What types of clutter are especially difficult for you to cull? Do you have any organizing tips to share? Visit the Stress Management Forum, or leave them in the comments section of this post!