Getting organized! For many, that phrase is synonymous with "Buy Me!" Savvy retailers know that Get Organized Fever breaks out at predictable intervals, and tailor ad campaigns to capitalize on the desire to create an organized home. Too often, CEO hears the cry, "But I can't afford to get organized!"

No doubt about it, there are many marvelous products on the market to help achieve better home and personal organization. But getting organized doesn't necessarily require spending money.

Try these tips to get organized without becoming a spendthrift:

Do you know where your tax records are? Chances are, they're swimming in a stack of paper ... somewhere.

Rafts of paper flood into the average home each day. The mailbox discharges letters and bills and bank statements. Briefcases explode with professional journals, pay stubs and calendars. School backpacks unload children's artwork, meeting notices and sports schedules.

Paper clutter costs money, time and stress. A missing permission slip derails the entire family on the way out the door. Hide-and-seek bills lead to late payment fees. Lose the roster, and it's back to the Yellow Pages each time you need to contact the soccer car pool.

Without a plan for paper management, a household can drown in a rising tide of paper. Take back your time with these simple tips to pull the plug on paper clutter:

Every year, one in five American families makes a move --- and this year, it'll be your family on the road.

No doubt about it, moving can present the organizational challenge of a lifetime.

Every habit, every routine, every tiny piece of the mosaic of your life is tossed at random into a huge, cluttered van, to be shaken out and reassembled at the other end.

Moving on? Try these road-tested tips for an organized move:

Wheeling my shopping cart down the aisle at the supermarket this week, I was forced to take notice that it was, indeed, football season. With my attention distracted by a flashing soda display, my cart crashed into the corner of a miniature football field, constructed entirely out of beer cases. What deranged hearts and minds live in the person of advertising executives!

Untangling my cart (and trying, unobtrusively, to shove the cases back into line before anyone noticed that I'd creamed the goalpost), it occurred to me that I could learn a lot about goals from football players.

Face it: it's January. Dreary weather is matched only by the dreariness of a house stripped of holiday decorations. Children slog through the great dull stretch between New Year's Day and Spring Break, no longer distracted from their schoolwork by the excitements of the holiday season.

December's crowded calendar gives way to January's social slump. Video rentals soar as comfy sweats replace dress clothes on Saturday nights.

Take heart! There's another side to January!

The freshness of a new, un-scribbled calendar. The clean lines of household furniture, freed from December's tinsel, trash and clutter. The sweet silence of a second cup of coffee after the children mount the school bus. The delicious feeling of energy to spare, energy released, but not expended, by December's holiday frenzy.

Tap that energy to get organized in the new year!

New Year's Eve ... a festive beginning to a new year. For most of us, it's a time to take stock and to move toward a happier New Year. But what looks so easy as the minute hand approaches midnight falls away in the cold light of January days.

For most of us, New Year's resolutions die a slow and quiet death. They're tossed aside, along with the party hats and noisemakers. As January winds down, so does motivation, energy and desire for change.

Too often, resolutions wither along with the Christmas poinsettias because they lack strong roots in real life. It's not the resolution that's at fault--it's the follow-through. New Year's resolutions are easy to make, but much harder to make real in the noisy bustle of everyday chores and concerns.

Stop! Don't let those resolutions slip away so quickly! Each one represents a longing of the heart, a reach toward better health, happiness, knowledge or wisdom. Try these concepts to revive and strengthen your New Year's resolutions:

Who among us hasn't squandered a happy afternoon in a store specializing in organizing products? Drifting from aisle to aisle, we make a mental list: this for the bathroom clutter, that for the computer desk.

All is bliss until we consider the bottom line. Specialty organizers can be costly! Someday, we vow, we'll get organized at home, but for now, budget realities step firmly on organizer dreams.

Stop the presses! Over the years, these top tools have proved their value, and they cost a fraction of the price of specialty products. These everyday products from office supply and discount stores can take us 80% of the way to total home organization--for 20% of the price. It's a frugal application of the 80/20 rule.
Ready? On to the power tools for home organization!

Systems analysis. So weighty. So professional. So mysterious. Yet nothing can streamline an organized home like a well-crafted set of household systems. Today, we focus on laundry and clothing systems. What do they do? How do you develop them? What benefits will establishing laundry and clothing systems give to you and your family?

Chances are, you already have these systems in place. After all, a system is just a set of organized items, decisions or actions, designed to work together to achieve a common end. In terms of an organized home, a clothing system, for example, would be a set of related decisions, actions or items, designed to work together to supply family members with an adequate supply of clean, well-fitting and appropriate clothes.

Imagine the television pitch:

"Special offer! Not sold in stores! The amazing Household Wonder Worker will take your house from chaos to castle in only 21 days. It'll speed your cleaning, calm your chaos and cut your clutter. Backed by scientific research, our product is guaranteed to bring order and serenity to your disorganized home. Don't wait! Get it today--and put our 21-day Wonder Worker to work for you!"

You say you have the phone in one hand and a credit card in the other? Sounds that good, does it?

Sorry, television viewers. Yes, the Amazing Household Wonder Worker is the most powerful secret weapon in the war against disorganization and clutter--but you can't buy it, not in stores, or anywhere. You have to build your own, but it's free for the making. Put it to work for you, and it'll lead you, step-by-step, out of the darkness of disorganization and into the light.

The Amazing Household Wonder Worker? Habit.

How to handle household storage? It's a battle. You, the innocent home manager, want only to find holiday decorations or seasonal clothing. Your nemesis? Bins and bags and boxes. Crammed cabinets, bursting basements, and inaccessible attics. The Garage from The Black Lagoon. For most of us, an efficient household storage system seems like an impossible dream.

Squeezed by the storage shuffle, many home managers yearn for larger quarters. Let me burst the bubble (as one who knows): a bigger house is not the answer. Stored stuff has an amazing bread-dough quality--it rises to fill the space available, and then makes a sticky mess as it slops over the sides of the container. No matter how many closets, cupboards or square feet of attic space, surplus stuff will find a way to take over while your back is turned.

The answer? A household storage plan. Yes, it will take some work, but the principles involved are as easy as ABC: