Maintaining Order

No matter how much stuff you purged in step one or how well you planned your new storage systems, you’ll soon be right back where you started without a little discipline. That’s the bad news. The good news is you don’t have to be an organized person by nature to keep a tidy home. What you need are effective systems and handy storage spaces that allow you to take charge of your stuff with less effort.

Consider this real-life example: You’re a passionate foodie who subscribes to several cooking magazines. You seldom have the time to read each issue before the next one arrives in the mail, so the old ones start to pile up. You might even leave new issues lying around in conspicuous places (like the kitchen table) to remind yourself to read them. Does this work? If it did, you wouldn’t have a clutter problem.

Instead, store any unfinished magazines near your favorite reading chair. Don’t worry, you won’t forget they’re there. And when you get a few moments to read, you won’t waste precious time looking for them. The next problem to tackle is the inevitable stockpile of old, unread magazines at your reading spot. It’s time to separate the wheat from the chaff: look through the table of contents in each issue and tear out the must-read articles and recipes. Recycle the rest of the magazine (at this point, it’s mostly ads anyway). Prioritize the articles so you read those you’re most interested in first, and file any recipes you really want to try. Now you’ve reduced a stack of old magazines to a handful of select pages.