I get it, hiring an organizer can be a bit nerve-wracking at first. My clients feel at ease once they’re familiar with my process, which I’ve adapted from many leaders in the field, including Queen Marie Kondo, Gretchen Rubin, Laurie Palau, Amanda Sullivan, Julie Morgenstern and many, many library trips worth more.
Once they understand the process, clients are able to work alongside me to see profound results in their home. So, here’s what we’ll do, step by step, so you can feel more at ease, too.
Let’s make some S.P.A.C.E. in your home. First things first:
Sort
You bought thank you notes in January and stashed them in a desk drawer. You bought thank you notes in June and stashed them in a file cabinet. Then, you need a thank you note in December and look in the bin of wrapping paper, gift bags, and bows, and upon finding no thank you notes there, head to the store and buy them again.
Repeat a similar process with batteries, black cardigans, chapstick, jars of almond butter, etc.
The first step to bmore minimal is to sort. Like with like, in one visible spot, thoroughly and completely. Every single jacket is heaped onto the bed, whether you pulled it from a bedroom closet, a hook by the front door, the off-season bin in the hall closet, or from a pile of clean clothes in the dryer.
Sorting helps you confront the sheer volume of objects you have and get a handle on what you need to replenish and what you need to use up. Plus you get to spot redundancies and compare your well-utilized treasures to your least-favorite versions of those same items and prepare for the purge.
Purge
I couldn’t call this thing bmore minimal without encouraging a good purge, right? So you’ve done the sort, and now you’re ready to put those big black garbage bags to work. It’s time to cull.
Touch everything and commune with your objects to see if it sparks joy.
Or, touch nothing at all, and have me hold them up from across the room so you can bid them adieu with impunity.
Just be honest, ruthless, and decisive. Use the “maybe” pile sparingly. Question yourself about all of the things in that category: is this a treasure imbued with special memories or an unwanted anchor to the past? Is this supporting my present life and ambitions, or am I holding onto this out of anxiety about what the future holds?
Sell it, donate it, gift it. If you can’t do those things, dispose of it responsibly.
Unburden yourself from these things and reclaim your time! According to the National Soap and Detergent Association, 40% of household chores are caused by clutter in the home. And those soap nerds put a lot of money into studying this stuff.
And obviously, reclaim that real estate in your home for your newly curated set of possessions.
Assign a Home
You don’t just live in Baltimore. You live at X house number on X street in Baltimore. Knowing that address is the only way the post office knows how to find you and deliver your junk mail.
Give all of your possessions an address. Be as specific as you can. Pens don’t just go in the office. Pens go in the third compartment of the drawer divider in the top drawer of the desk in the office. That’s how you’ll know where to find them and where to return them. It’s the image of all your great pens in that third compartment of the drawer divider in the top drawer of the desk in the office that will come to mind as you’re offered a flimsy, underinked promotional pen from that conference and help you say “Nah.”
And while we’re on the subject, a storage unit along a desolate patch of highway is not an address. Your possessions belong in your home, or they probably shouldn’t be your possessions anymore. Short-term storage due to the timing of a move or the gap between the birth of your babies is one thing. We’ve all spent a night sleeping in a crappy hotel knowing full well that we’d get to come home to our own beds. Your possessions can spend a few nights in a crappy storage unit but they deserve to come home sooner than later. Otherwise, let them go.
Contain
So you have all your favorite objects assigned to logical spots in your home. Now is the time to contain them. This could mean literally, as in putting things into containers. Or it could mean metaphorically setting boundaries on where these things can be by putting them in zones.
Here’s what that looks like in my home, from the most literally contained to the most metaphorically contained.
I have a container for meat on a shelf in my fridge. This leaves the produce drawers just for produce (okay fine, sometimes beer, but mostly fruit, I swear!) and prevents raw meat from contaminating other food. I also can’t keep buying Aidell’s sausages until I’ve used up what I have, because the container sets the boundary. I open the fridge multiple times a day every day, so having an actual container within is reasonable.
I have a small canvas closet system in my basement. All the things I buy in bulk from BJ’s are there. Toilet paper, paper towels, etc. There are no additional containers, no cute labels, and, frankly, it’s not pretty in there. But the point is it’s IN THERE. The closet sets the boundary for bulk toiletries and paper goods, and I refrain from buying more until there is space within that container. I access that space once a month or less, so there’s no need to have it more containerized than that.
I have a open space in my basement. One on side of this little room is summer stuff: beach chairs, camping equipment, patio cushions. On the other side of this little room is winter stuff: Christmas decorations, snow shovels, a super awesome extendable windshield scraper (thanks, Dad!). There’s a tiny section with our firebox of serious adulting papers, and one file box for each of us of other papers we’d like to keep for now. I can’t accumulate more summer stuff because then it would cross the invisible line into winterland. I can’t get another file box without it crossing over to summerville. These categories of objects have to stay in their lane, “contained”even without traditional containers. I access the stuff down here on a seasonal basis, so it only needs to be “contained” in zones and it really doesn’t need to look great to be functional.
If you’re going to buy containers, measure twice, buy once. And don’t buy a single container before the sort and the purge, or you’ll be containing things that shouldn’t even be in your home at all. Not to mention the fact that you probably have all the containers you need hiding in your home, waiting to be liberated from holding the expired medicine you’ve hoarded.
Matching all your containers in a space is great for reducing visual clutter, but simply coordinated is fine, too. Go for all wood, or all acrylic, or all canvas, so that even if you purchase at different times or from different stores the result is a clean look.
Skip the labels if you’re not into that sort of thing, but get your containers/zones to be specific enough that they could be labeled if you wanted them to, e.g. baking supplies, hats and gloves, bulbs and batteries, almonds, etc.
And no, “miscellaneous” is a not a viable label.
Establish Routines
Congratulations! You’ve sorted, purged, assigned, and contained your belongings. That is no small feat.
I have good news and I have bad news. Which do you want first? I’ll assume you’re on this organization blog because you tend toward the neurotic, so I’ll assume you want the bad news first.
The bad news is that clutter is like a weed. If left unchecked, it will return, slowly growing through the cracks in your system until it has reasserted itself as a presence in your home. Your organization efforts are not over, and in many ways, they are just beginning.
The good news is that you will never have to lay out the same expenditure of time and energy towards organizing your home again. The truly demanding stuff is behind you, and your task now is to maintain your systems with brief and intermittent periods of vigilance against clutter.
This final step is to establish routines. What is your routine for incoming mail? I check the mailbox daily, open mail standing over the desk in the kitchen right away, recycle junk immediately, and store bills and papers to be filed in the little organizer on the desk in kitchen. On the 20th of each month (arbitrary date, but before bills are due) I handle each paper that has been stored. Your routine will look different, but it must keep you from succumbing to piling envelopes on a dining table for weeks on end like before.
Have a routine for doing and putting away laundry.
Put your keys in the same place every time you come home.
Dedicate a bin in the closet or basement to clothes your kids have outgrown.
Have a spot near the door for library books you’re ready to return.
Check your pantry once a week before heading to the store.
Think about the system as you design it, and then put it on autopilot.
Sort. Purge. Assign. Contain. Establish.
That’s it. That’s S.P.A.C.E. in 1500 words. There are no “industry secrets” here. Just make sure everything in your home has a purpose and a place.