Time-Saving Organization Ideas

• Organization begins at home with a strict regimen and schedule that you must follow. Jeffrey Coolidge/Photodisc/Getty Images

  Organization is key to utilizing your time in the most efficient manner possible. It's not really possible to determine exactly how much of your day you waste due to leading a disorganized life, but you can bet it probably adds up to several years over the course of a lifetime. Gain back that precious time, and provide yourself with more leisure time by organizing your lifestyle to keep from the most useless wastes of time.

Lost Keys Means Lost Time

• Pick a spot in your house where you will place your keys as soon as you enter the house. Make a habit of placing your keys and wallet in one and only one location so that you never again have to speed on the road to make up for time lost looking for keys.

Family Bathroom Schedule

• Create a family bathroom schedule for high-traffic periods of the day like morning and night. Give each person in the household a certain time and time period in which to bathe, shave, brush teeth and get ready to either face the world or face the bed. Arrange this schedule according to need based on things like the time needed to get to where you're going as well as time spent on bathroom issues. Give the family member who is notorious for taking forever in the bathroom the final slot unless she can prove she will speed things up.

Next Day Preparation

• Instead of just sitting there on the sofa watching your favorite television shows, kill two birds with one stone. Enjoy your leisurely entertainment in the bedroom while you lay out your attire for the next day. Investing in a coffee maker programmed to greet you in the morning with a hot cup of coffee can shave time off your morning rush as well.

Work Files

• Rearrange your work files in a way that makes them more efficient. Look over the contents of your filing cabinet and think of the first noun that comes to mind when you are looking for something. Instead of wasting time trying to remember whether you filed papers under D for dog, A for animals or W for wills, go directly to Stupidest Customer Requests. Formal filing titles like Research Resources can often lose their meaning, but a file labeled Best Books and Web Sites About Buying Foreclosure Property tells you exactly what the contents are likely to be.

Grocery Shopping

• How many times have you come back from the grocery store only to remember that you forgot to get that one thing you really went to buy in the first place? Cut down on unnecessary trips to the supermarket by placing a chalkboard or dry erase board right next to both the pantry and refrigerator. Each time you use something that you need to replace, write it down. Copy the list and take it with you to store, but only after you have first eaten a small snack. This will make you less likely to waste even more time buying things on hunger impulse. Arrange to buy your groceries for the entire week on Sunday morning when the supermarkets are less crowded due to churchgoing and recovering from Saturday night partying.