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81% of people consider themselves organized, yet 83% say getting MORE organized is among their goals.
– Scientific Survey of 600 adults commissioned by Franklin Covey Co. reported in USA Weekend, Feb 6-8, 1998

Home

Women don't wear much of what's in their closets. Only 6 percent wear all of their clothes on a regular basis. The excuses for not wearing things ranged from "too small" (33 percent) to "needs to be tailored" (36 percent.)

-- More than 40 percent of the women surveyed admitted to buying clothes they planned to fit into when they lose weight, while 33 percent said that the clothes in their closet were too small. 36 percent said they owned unworn apparel that needed to be tailored, while 20 percent said their unworn clothes no longer suited their lifestyle.

-- The survey found that women shop for size yet have "fat clothes" (60 percent), "skinny clothes" (60 percent), while what they desire are clothes that are comfortable but shapely.

Talbots Fit Survey, 2006.

According to Real Simple Magazine (US), women spend approximately 55 minutes every
day searching for items.

31% of those polled claim they feel more satisfied after reorganizing their closet than after having sex.

IKEA survey

23% of adults say they pay bills late (& thus incur fees) because they lose them.
Harris Interactive

Staged homes in the San Francisco Bay area spent just 25.3 days on the market and sold at the asking price, while "non-staged" homes languished on the market for 48.2 days and sold for 2% below the asking price. This information is based on more than 3,000 homes sold between Jan. 1, 2002 and Oct. 31, 2002.

2002 data from Coldwell Banker,

Staged houses: sold in an average of 14 days for 6.32% over the asking price
Unstaged houses: sold in an average of 31 days for 1.6% over the asking price

1999 Palo Alto real estate survey

February 27, 2006 – Sixty percent of Americans agree that springtime is the best time to rid their homes of dirt and clutter, according to the 2006 Soap and Detergent Association (SDA) Spring Cleaning Survey. More than one-third (37%) of respondents, however, prefer to conduct their major cleaning projects at other times throughout the year.60% Say Spring is the Best Time to Rid the House of Dirt, Clutter.
The Spring Cleaning Survey, conducted by International Communications Research for SDA, revealed the top benefits consumers realize from frequent house cleaning:

98% feel good about themselves when their house is clean
54% of Americans prefer to clean on a daily or weekly basis

A survey by Whirlpool Corp. found that 20 million women and 8 million men do laundry each day, and that the typical family does 8 to 10 loads of wash per week.

According to the manufacturers, a load of clothes takes more than two hours from start to finish, including collecting them, transporting them, sorting them, washing them, drying them, returning them to bedrooms, and putting them away.

With those numbers -- two hours per load, eight to 10 loads per week... that adds up to more than 16 hours a week spent on washing clothes for the average family.

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Work

A survey from Adecco Staffing, of Switzerland, found that the number two 2006 New Year's workplace resolution - right after getting a raise - was to be more productive.

Philadelphia Enquirer story March 2006

In 1982 there were about two dozen document shredding companies compared to between 500 and 600 now.
St. Petersburg Times, 2/1/02

The average executive spends 108 minutes daily reading and sending email messages
Survey conducted by Accountemps, 2000. Cited in Denver Biz Journal, 1/01

U.S. shipments of office paper increased 33% from 1986 to 1997
American Forest & Paper Association

15 percent of all paper handled in businesses is lost, according to the Delphi Group, a Boston consultancy group, and 30 percent of all employees' time is spent trying to find lost documents.

Philadelphia Enquirer story March 2006

The average time to retrieve and re-file a paper document is 10 minutes. An average of 3% of documents are lost or misfiled, and have to be recovered at an alarming cost of $120 per document
Gartner Group, Coopers & Lybrand, Ernst & Young

consultants for the Connecticut-based Gartner Group - the same folks who reported the lost-paper cost - estimated that, by 2003, the average professional would waste 30 percent to 40 percent of his time on "document-related non-value-added tasks," i.e., paper shuffling. Now some of that wasted time has moved from paper to electronics, with the volume of e-mail projected to rise 30 percent a year through 2008.

Philadelphia Enquirer story March 2006

Sales reps surveyed were most productive when they assigned themselves only three tasks per day. It gave them a greater sense of accomplishment when they were able to cross off those tasks.
Accountemps

In September 2005, Pendaflex launched its "Pile Smart" products. One is a three-sided, enclosed, clear-plastic folder with an extended color-coded tab. The contents are visible, the papers don't spill if the pile tumbles, and the tab is easy to see. Another product is a paper clip that can hold 20 sheets. It has a write-on tab attached, making it easy to spot in a pile.
Mann said the line had been extremely successful. Sales outstripped the last product launch by 10 percent. An online guide on how to pile (they need guides for this?) has been downloaded 10,000 times since December - an unprecedented response.

Philadelphia Enquirer story March 2006

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Information Overload

More new information has been produced within the last 30 years than in the last 5,000. Over 9,000 periodicals are published in the US each year and almost 1,000 books are published daily around the world.

Information Skills for an Information Society: A review of Research, Susan Hubbard

Amount of time the average American spends opening bulk mail over the course of his or her life:
8 months

Percentage of bulk mail that is thrown away unopened:
44%

5. A week day edition of The New York Times contains more information than the average person was likely to come across in a lifetime in the 17th century England.

Information Anxiety, Richard Saul Wurman.

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Time Management

People who multitask are less efficient than those who focus on one project at a time. Time lost switching among tasks increases with the complexity of the tasks.
Study in the Journal Of Experimental Psychology, as written in the Star-Telegram.com 3/1/03

Workers productivity decreases by 20 to 40% every time they multitask or "task switching"
University of Michigan study, 2001

42% of adults report that too often they feel that 'life is a treadmill and I can't get off'.

Franklin Covey

65% of people described themselves as 'very' or 'insanely' busy.
Day Runner Survey

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Cleaning professionals say that getting rid of excess clutter would eliminate 40% of the housework in an average home.

The document for a Boeing 747 weighs more than the plane itself.

Jay Davidson, Office Systems magazine, March, 1995

UPS and GM have implemented clean desk policies
Wall Street Journal, 5/29/02

25 percent of all resolutions fail within the first week and only 19 percent last for two years.

2001 survey conducted by Texas Instruments, published in its Work and Family alumni newsletter

A survey by the University of Washington found those who make several attempts at keeping their resolutions, even after failing multiple times, tend to achieve success more often than not.

Typical weight of 4 elephants:
17.8 tons

Amount of bulk mail delivered annually by each of the U.S. Postal Service's 293,000 letter carriers:
17.8 tons