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What for you is the hardest thing about getting organized? For some people, the challenge is coming up with a plan. For others, it is staying organized once things are where they belong. But for others still, the hardest part of organizing the home or workplace is following through on plans and goals.

Indeed, one of the primary psychological reasons for clutter for a lot of folks has to do with a mindset which is great for starting projects but not so great for finishing them. If this describes you, the following tips should help you to actually follow through on your plans.

1. Make it a commitment.
If you are one of those people who complain, “I never follow through on anything,” one thing you can do is learn to make commitments to your plans. “I might organize today” is replaced by “I will organize today.” When you wake up in the morning, the decision is already made—you do not have to make it again each day.

The reason this is helpful is because you can only make so many decisions effectively before you run out of decision-making juice. This is because willpower is a limited resource; you can read more about this over at the APA.

2. Start small.
Failures are particularly common with organizing projects because people try to take on too much all at once. Doing this is overwhelming, and if you fail to meet your goals (as is likely if you set the mark too high), you can become very discouraged.

Instead, you should start small. Organize for 15 minutes a day several times a week, or even just 5 or 10 minutes. Do what you need to do to make progress, even if it doesn’t seem like a lot. Over time, it will add up. And as you see yourself making progress, you may feel encouraged to do more.

3. Set up your environment to support your goals.
It is pretty hard to get organized if you do not have what you need in your environment to support your activities. That means that you should purchase plastic bins for organizing and other supplies as needed to make organizing tasks easy.

4.Create reminders for yourself.
Sometimes failure to follow through on goals has nothing to do with poor intentions or taking on too much too soon—we simply forget that we set those new goals in the first place. We follow our old routines by rote, and when we reach the end of the day, we realize we completely blanked on the new routines we have been trying to create.

To deal with this, you can set reminders for yourself using email or other online tools, or you can tie one task to another you never forget to do (i.e. always do your organizing before starting dinner).

Learning new habits isn’t easy, and following through on organizing goals presents a number of challenges. Hopefully the tips above will help you complete what you start. Discover more helpful advice in Tips for Following Through on Organizing Goals, Part 2!