I stumbled upon something in my meditations this morning that would, properly employed, save a lot of people a lot of times and go a long way to improving life on earth for everyone. That something is a simple habit that I had the good fortune of learning at a relatively young age, after admiring my grandfather’s fastidiousness and organizational skills during a family trip to the lake one summer.

Put simply, it is a habit that I call “clean-as-you-go.” You have no doubt heard of this approach and many of you likely embrace it in your daily affairs. If you don’t, it’s a life-changer. If you do, there is always room for improvement.

Disorder and disorganization are a cumulative phenomenon. They both start small and compound over time. The piece of clothing left on the bed or the floor soon has company and if no intervention is made the bed and or the floor are quickly lost in a sea of chaos. Likewise, one drink cup and a food wrapper exert a magnetic pull on other refuse and castaways in the car of one who has not mastered the art of this simple, yet potent approach to organization and cleaning.

This habit is powerfully destructive when put in the hands of two or more people who share a common, public space. Just look at the roadsides of our cities and now our countrysides and there is ample evidence of the failure to clean as you go on a large scale.

Our resources are much too precious to squander by virtue of this careless approach. While human beings have proven to be remarkably inventive when resources become scarce (during wartime for example), the earth’s resources are ultimately finite and so too, I venture, is her capacity for self-purification. Taking the clean-as-you-go approach allows you to “stretch” the useful life of your personal pool of resources.

This approach, like all others, must be practiced in balance if it is to be valuable. Taken to the extreme, fastidiousness becomes an annoyance to others, especially when it is rubbed in the faces of those less concerned about order and cleanliness. Take care with your own affairs and those who are ready to be inspired will be when they find themselves in your presence. That said, I feel it is extremely important to nurture a care for this approach in children and employees from day one.

The same goes for the care of less tangible resources. Your friendships, for instance, and your conversations must be carefully handled for the same reasons. Be sloppy in either and you will have a mess on your hands, one that is harder to clean up the longer you carry yourself with impropriety.

When you are faithful over few things, you are then in position to become ruler over many things. Having to rule the “many things” before you have proved yourself faithful can be traumatic and is likely to cause an implosion, so if you find yourself with few at present, take heart, take note and take care!

More resources are just around the corner when you learn to clean as you go.