I have dedicated the holiday break to wasting my time and enjoying myself without worrying about future plans, backlogs, and things I need to do – but part of my system is pushing me to stay productive so I decided to organize my life for the coming year. I started with organizing my room.

I am halfway done with the things I needed to dispose, give away and donate. It feels awesome! I should be spending more time sorting stuff but (again) part of my system wants me to share this (you cannot really separate a blogger from the blog).

You might learn something or find inspiration from this list.. so here you go:

1. Organize your room. 

My sister who came over for a short visit recommended that I buy more storage boxes for my room. I told her, I don’t want more storage boxes because that means more space to keep my stuff which makes me forget about them – that leads me to shopping for more stuff. Such a waste of money and space. Yesterday, I have decided to bring out some of the plastic boxes I stored inside my closet so I can see them.

Time to send all the gifts I have wrapped and saved for my friends (I have not seen for the longest time), return the stuff that I borrowed, donate the things I no longer use and throw away stuff that just eat dust in my room.

My next project is to finish all the books I bought so I can donate them. I have started to appreciate reading ebooks. 🙂

2. Organize your closet. 

I shouldn’t be surprised to see tons of new, unused clothes in my closet. To be fair to me, I spent less time and money on shopping this year. My next plan is to make sure I wear most of the clothes I have in my closet. I don’t want to buy any more stuff that I do not need.

3. Review your Collection.

I was such a pack rat and collect a lot of things – receipts, candy wrappers, clothes tags, books. stamps, accessories. When our house burnt down 8 years ago, I lost all my collections – I thought, it was such a waste (of money and space)! I have decided to collect experiences, travels  and small stuff – like different currencies, immigration stamps and charms. Small, inexpensive things. Today, I have unearthed some stuff in my room and they all went to trash.

 

 Some of the things I have unearthed: ID tags from events and bar pin from previous work. I am keeping the bar pin but the ID tags should say goodbye. Can you see those clothes tags I have kept? Yikes, I can see H&M tags from Beijing! That was 3 years ago! And that vintage scrapbook I kept (with vintage pictures of local stars I didn’t know!). I kept it because I thought of recycling, but I didn’t find the time. 

4. Check your Dresser and Makeup.

I have a couple of expired lotion and makeup that were sitting in my dresser for a couple of months. Time to check their expiration dates before even thinking of using them. In case you didn’t know makeup and beauty products have expiration dates too.

5. Check your Food Cupboard

Time to check what’s in the food cupboard – you might have fine ingredients that you can use for your New Year’s Eve feast. Oh, and don’t forget to check the expiration dates (do this check quarterly).

6. Check your Battery Operated Gadgets and Watches

I remember when I was a kid, I have a battery-operated cake organ toy which batteries had leaked. I was blamed for that (what does a kid know about battery and leakage?). Since then, I always check battery-operated gadgets and make sure to dismantle dead batteries before storage, especially for watches. Reminds me, I have a couple of watches which battery need replacement. I will include this in my to-do list.

7. Balance Your Finances

It is time to check your assets and liabilities. Check how much you have saved for the year, and if you have met your target (then plan for the adventures next year). Pay outstanding credit card balances and pay debts.

As for me, I have already cancelled my HSBC credit card (they asked me why, and I said – worse customer service. They offered to waive my annual fee – and I was firm, I said, I don’t like the customer service). And thankfully, BDO waived my annual fee for the 6th year. 🙂

8. Free Up Data Storage

This is on top of my to-do list, especially I need to transfer my files from my old Yoga to the new Yoga 3 Pro. 🙂 

If your desktop is filled with icons and folders – it is time to spend a few hours to organize your files, pictures and documents. There is something about the messy computer files that relates to the user’s mood and productivity.

Free up space of your cloud storage, camera and smart phones too. Delete files and pictures you no longer need – and prepare storage for next year’s adventures.

9. Re-visit your Friends List

I used to be very careful with the way I handle my Facebook Friends List and privacy setting, but things got crazy when I started blogging full time. So many people wanted to stay connected and I thought it would be good to connect with more people. Maybe it is time to re-visit the list and review the information I am sharing with each group; same goes for albums.

10. Clean Up My Inbox

My email inbox(es) started to function like an external drive to keep information, documents and references I might need in the future. I am not sure if it is the same case with you, but I have totally abused my free storage and I thought I would start cleaning up my inbox (and reading and replying to most of the emails I received ) 🙂

Looks like I have added a lot on my to-do list, but of course, priority is choosing who would own my preloved Lenovo Yoga 2 11. 🙂

Do you have tips you want to add on my list? Comment below!