Planning and proper preparation can make all the difference in the success of a project. Admittedly, I can get caught in the trap of over-planning (some may call that procrastination). But I'd like to share an example where I embarked on a project without doing enough preparation and paid a price for it.

About ten years ago, I discovered a love of gardening and began landscaping my backyard. Because it was so shady back there, the lawn was nothing more than a big patch of red clay with an occasional grass sprig or weed.

To cover up some of the bare spots, I created mulch paths surrounded by shrubs and plant beds. After digging up many wheelbarrows of dirt and laying down almost as many loads of pine bark, the paths were done....or so I thought.

What I failed to do back then was lay down a weed barrier or edging. Over the years this oversight has led to many hours of weeding the paths, pulling up grass that encroached into my neatly laid lines (after losing some trees, the grass magically began growing), and trying to control the path mulch from washing into the yard when it rained.

Fast forward ten year later and I'm finally investing some sweat equity and planning into fixing my former mistakes. After waiting until the most recent batch of old mulch had broken down. I weeded the paths AGAIN, installed new path edging, laid weed fabric, and filled the paths back up with countless loads of mulch that I had left over from a tree removal. Now I can rest assured that I won't be weeding or re-mulching my paths for the next couple of seasons.

And to simplify my yard maintenance even further, when THIS batch of mulch eventually disintegrates, I'm investing in rubber mulch made from ground up recycled tires. That stuff won't need to be replaced for years. By doing the prep work that I should have done a decade ago, I'll be saving myself hours of back breaking weeding. Now if I can just figure out a way to keep those oak trees from shedding so many leaves in the fall.

What type of prep work do you do to make your gardening projects more efficient long term?

Earlier, I posted about planting strategies that you can use to make gardening easier and more fruitful.

One of the organizing tools that I have used since I first began gardening in our yard some fifteen years ago, is a Gardener's Notebook. I started with a gardening hanging file and after quickly outgrowing that, I upgraded to a three-ring binder with a cover that zips closed. When choosing my notebook, I gravitated towards the kid's section of the office supply store because their notebooks are always so much more fun. The one I use is covered in some kind of heavy-duty microfiber with fuzzy flowers on the front. You could also make your own like the ones in the flickr photo above. The photographer, Lana Stewart, uses cool scrapbook paper to dress up her three-ring binders.

Inside my handy Gardener's Notebook are:

• Tabbed pages to divide the sections. My sections include:
• Annualized Schedule - list of when to fertilize and prune different plants. I've also loaded this schedule into my Outlook calendar to help keep me on track with these chores.
  
• Hosta (I LOVE hosta so they get their own tab)
• Misc. Shade Plants
  
• Soil Amending
• Landscaping Plans
• Feng Shui Gardening
  
• Vendors for Plants, Stones, and Supplies

• Plastic 8 1/2 x 11" sleeves to hold gardening catalogs. I only keep a few and throw out the old when the new one arrives. I mostly use these for the inspiration that the pretty photos provide.
  

• Zipper pocket to hold receipts and plant markers. This has been helpful when I have needed to determine what variety of a particular plant I have. Because we have so many leaves in the fall, garden markers get raked up in my garden. So now I just slip them in my notebook for safekeeping.

• Plastic picture sleeves to hold photos of the garden. My favorite feature of my Gardening Notebook! It's so inspiring to see how small plants, shrubs and trees fill out over the years. If you stick with it and are lucky enough to stay in the same place for a few years, gardening really teaches you patience.
  

By keeping all of my research notes and plant lists in one spot, I have saved myself lots of time and energy whenever I have built a new bed in the garden or have needed to replace a plant that has outgrown its space. The notebook also helps me stay on schedule with all of my gardening maintenance chores and enables me to better track which plants work and don't work in my yard. What tools do you gardeners out there use to keep your info organized?

I had a delightful conversation with a client this weekend. We've been working together to organize her entire home and are very close to completion. She told me that she felt that she was "slipping" in some areas and wondered if I could give her some tips to help her maintain the progress she has made. I suggested that, in our next session, we could look at the areas that are becoming cluttered again, and I could coach her on some tips and new habits that would help in the problem areas.

"Yes! Coaching is exactly what I need. " she said. "Like, you could remind me that, if I would just spend ten minutes per day picking up after myself, I could avoid spending an hour doing it over the weekend. "

I giggled and said, "I believe you just coached yourself! The next time you find yourself falling into your old disorganized habits, remember that 10-minute rule."

You see, the secret to maintaining an organized house and office, is creating new habits. For example, after you have decided on a home for an item, put it back in its home every time you have finished using it. Or always put your keys in the same place when you arrive home. And my personal favorite, always take the mail to your bill-paying zone and sort it immediately into Trash/Shred/Bill/Read piles.

Heck, if you simply did a quick before-bed walk through of your home, picking up "homeless" items and putting them away, clearing out and wiping down the kitchen sink (my favorite FlyLady suggestion), and hanging up or tossing clothes into the hamper, you'd easily and quickly improve the calm, clean, orderly state of your home.

And if you have children, make a chores list and monitor that the chores are done regularly. Help teach them, through your example, good organizing habits that will serve them in school as well as the rest of their lives.

Trust that little voice in your head to remind you of the habits that will keep you on track. Push laziness aside in favor of results. Know that you will feel so much better if you "just do it" than if you keep stepping over clutter or piling unsorted mail on every flat surface of your home.

You, and only you, have control over your personal habits and the results that these habits reap. Make those results positive!

What habits have you found to be effective in maintaining order in the house?