Does it ever seem like starting bad habits is super easy? It takes no effort for a bad Habit to form, but we have to constantly fight to get a good habit going. It can be daunting and frustrating. The best way to create new and better habits is to start slowly and take baby steps. These steps you take today will help you organize your life – and therefore, your mind.

Creating New Eating Habits

Unless you have a medical condition that you need to address immediately with completely new eating habits, it’s best to create a new eating plan slowly. Start by replacing one junk food item with a health food item.

When you feel like you’ve succeeded with that, pick the next unhealthy food item and replace it with a healthier choice.

This will not cause you to drop a lot of pounds in a short period of time, but it will eventually help you to lose weight at a steady rate.

Creating New Exercise Habits

Instead of jumping into a full-blown aerobics class or other fitness class, you need to ease into it. Start by doing a five minute walk each day if you’re in really bad shape. If you’re in better shape and can do more, then do more. Start gradually and add to it each week. With a few weeks or few months you will be able to take an aerobics class if you’d like.

Personally, I am a huge fan of the courses offered by the folks at Transformative Learning (The Ayurveda Experience). They have a wide array of courses to help anyone on the journey to holistic health and wellness. One of my favorites is the Modern Ayurveda Course, which blends both Yoga and Ayurvedic methods to put you on a conscious path to a fuller life.

Creating New Habits to Help You Organize Your Life and Your Mind

If your home is unorganized and seems to always be a mess, you can take small steps to reclaim it and end the chaos. Instead of tackling the whole House at once, start by doing it room to room. Even one room can feel overwhelming, so in each room you want to tackle just one area of the room. Pick an area of the room to start and get it cleaned and organized. Do at least one section of the room per day until it’s done.

If you have a full time job and other duties, you may want to do one section per week. The trick is to get started and stay on top of it.

Whatever new habits you want to start, remember, you don’t have to jump in and start everything all at once. Simply determine that you want to organize and make changes to. Break everything down in easy to do, manageable steps. This may not be the fast track to getting things accomplished right now, but it will gradually ease you into changes and they are more likely to stick.

Too many people have come to think that everything needs to be done immediately. This sets you up for failure if you give up within the first week. A better solution is to start off at an easy pace, make a timeline of the habits you want to create and break them down into things you can do each day that doesn’t feel so overwhelming. Please check out my post on transforming unhealthy patterns.

As they say, Rome wasn’t built in a day. You can’t create new habits in a day either. Another tip is to try and have fun with them. Do your new task each day and enjoy the feeling of accomplishment, no matter how small it is. Let’s get to work with how you can plan your organization.

Here are some things you can do to organize your life so that your mind stays organized as well:

1. Write Down Things You Need to Remember.

Never rely on your memory to keep things straight. You want to organize with lists. Lists can be very beneficial, especially if you live an otherwise hectic life. Use a small notebook or a digital notebook to put down all your to-do lists so you don’t forget anything.

2. Back Up Everything.

This means having duplicate home and automobile keys backed up computer files, and backups of anything that is important and that would be problematic if lost.

3. Put Everything in its Proper Place.

Make sure your clothes are folded and sorted, returning to their usual location. Organize your cooking spaces so that you can always know where to find anything. This can take a while but it will save time in the end.

4. Make Backups of Your Photographs.

If you’re concerned, you may lose any of your precious photographs, take then to the photo shop and get a duplicate. They can be scanned onto a DVD disc or you can make paper copies of those photographs you never want to lose sight of.

5. Organize Your Space By Keeping Things Clean.

This means removing any clutter that has a tendency to build up if you aren’t on top of it at all times. If your house is clean, you won’t have to spend so much time finding things that have gotten lost in the clutter. Furthermore, research proves that when you de-clutter your spaces, it effects the mind much in the same way.

6. Keep Spaces Clean That Are Prone to Clutter.

This involves keeping the dining room table, the nightstand, and places like the bedroom drawers neat and tidy. These are places clutter tends to build up in and they need special attention to organize and keep them clean every day.

7. Get an App for Money Management.

Buy a money management app, such as Quicken in order to keep track of your bills and when they are due to be paid. You can even keep track of your grocery receipts and lists of those things that you forget you actually spent money on. This will help keep you sane and keep you on a budget.

8. Donate Things You Don’t Need & Recycle What You Can.

If you haven’t used something for a long time, the chances are good that you’ll never use it. This might be something that someone else can really use. Donate it to your favorite charity. In addition, anything that can be recycled should be put in a designated recycling bin.

9. Throw Something Away Before Buying Something New.

This will help keep your house from being too cluttered. Find something you don’t use and sell it, give it away, or throw it away before buying something new to replace it.

10. Keep Track of Expiration Dates.

It is bad for your heath to eat food that has passed its expiration date. The same is true of prescription and over the counter medications that you may be storing for a rainy day.

11. Delegate Tasks to Others.

You will find it easier to declutter your house if you get some help doing it. Make cleaning up a family affair so you don’t wind up doing everything yourself. It’s not just your mess in the first place.

12. Make an Information Center to Keep Track of Schedules.

If everyone in the family has things to do, put it all on a calendar so that you can keep track of where everyone is and can spot problems where two people need the car for the same time period. If you synchronize your life with your family members, everyone will stay on task and nothing will be left undone.

13. Put Things Away Right Away.

Now that you have a designated spot for everything, try putting whatever it is back where it belongs as soon as you are done with it. This will keep your house organized and will save you the time it would take to hunt it down again.

14. Keep All Your Passwords in One Place.

While passwords are important for security reasons, if you don’t remember your password, it will do you no good. Put all the passwords in a safe place so that you can look it up if you forget a password when you really need it.

15. Practice Unsubscribing From All Those Email Newsletters.

Since you usually just delete them anyway, why not unsubscribe from them before they take up all the room in your inbox. The same is true of catalogs and magazines that you never read. If nothing else, you’ll save a tree.

16. Make an Inventory of Things You Need.

Keep track of things like toiletries and home cleaning items so you don’t keep buying them over and over again. When you have an inventory, you’ll only need to replace things when you run out of them.

17. Label Perishable Items and Leftovers.

This keeps you from having them build up in your refrigerator. Many things in the refrigerator go bad and, if you label when you opened them, you won’t have to throw them out after they’ve gotten moldy.

18. Create Cleaning Schedules.

It is just too hard to organize and clean the entire house and yard all in one day. It’s impossible, really – Herculean, if we’re being really realistic. Instead, have a schedule for cleaning certain things on certain days. Simplify!

19. Get an App for Task Management.

Download a task management app to your phone so you won’t have to keep track of every little thing you have to organize and do.

It’s hard not to feel completely daunted. But remember, you never need to do all of these things all at once. After you have completed them, however, you will find your mind will be less cluttered, and you will have more time – and space – to explore more things in your daily life!