The Organizational Snowball

If you're a fan of Dave Ramsey (who I seem to talk about a lot here!), Gail VazOxlade (who taught me how to get out of debt and manage my money all those years ago!) or any other financial guru I haven't mentioned, then you have definitely heard of the debt snowball. The premise behind the debt snowball is to pay the minimum payment on each individual debt, and then focus on the smallest debt first by throwing all your additional income at it. Once that debt has been paid, you would then start tackling the next biggest debt and then the next and so on and so on until you are debt free!

Here is an example of the debt snowball method:

The Organizational Snowball 

What occurred to me the other day was, what if we took the premise of the debt snowball and applied it to organizing our home?! Treating our home the way we would treat debt would ensure that all of our living spaces would be tackled in a small amount of time! Each day we would do a normal routine tidy and clean around our home and then we would allocate an additional amount of time to throw ourselves into organizing one small space at a time.

Time Replaces Money

Since we are using this debt snowball method for our organizational snowball, we need to replace the key factor from money to time. So, in our case we will be using time as the main factor as opposed to income.  

Working on our organizational snowball, we will allocate an amount of time - for my example we will spend a total of 30 minutes a day doing routine tidying and maintenance on our home (you can include cleaning to this as well! Totally your call and based on how much time you have.) Or a general sweep of each room to put things in their proper place. And then we will introduce the organizational snowball.

Allocating an additional 30 minutes to our day (the organizational snowball time) we will devote that time to one specific space.  

Smallest Space to Largest Space

What is the smallest space in your home? (My bet is it's a bedroom closet, a pantry or a hall closet!) Identifying the smallest space in our home, we will use that additional 30 minutes a day to declutter, clean and organize that space. That may take you a day (so the total 30 minutes) or that may take you several days to get done (which is totally fine!). Just ensure that you are using that 30 minutes allocated organizational snowball time to organize that specific space. Once you have finished with that space, turn your attention to the next smallest space and repeat this process.   

Here's an example of an organizational snowball plan:

Using this organizational snowball technique will absolutely, 100% get your life, your home and your living spaces decluttered, cleaned and organized. I encourage you to use my "Becoming Organized Series" to assist you along the way! The two in tandem (especially keeping a notebook and designing your perfect space) will work perfectly together. Or, try just using this organizational snowball technique to get all aspects of your life organized! And be sure to comment or tag me in social media with #organizationalsnowball!