Before making your way through this book, take a few moments to familiarize yourself with the following best practices.
Clutter prevents you from seeing a room’s potential. To pare down efficiently and effectively, employ the four-box formula (keep, toss, donate, sell) and the following guidelines, which will also help you maintain the space once it is functioning as it should.
Set realistic goals: Being too ambitious can sabotage the best of intentions. Instead of aiming to put your entire home in order in just two months, spread out the tasks over the year. Rather than digging through decades of paperwork in a single session, set aside an hour or two each day to pore over one year at a time, shredding, recycling, and re-filing as you go. Similarly, don’t expect sudden shifts in your everyday routine; recognize that any long-lasting change will take persistence.
Tackle one room or routine at a time: Start with high-traffic areas like the kitchen and bathroom, as this will give you the greatest sense of accomplishment and keep you motivated to go through the remaining rooms. If a whole room is still too daunting, pinpoint one component (kitchen cabinets and drawers, for example) at a time. When evaluating your routines, focus on what’s most important first, whether it’s cooking or gardening.
Do a little every day: In addition to devoting entire weekends to deeper organizational dives, make an effort to take quick and easy steps throughout the week. This will keep matters from getting too out of hand. You’ll find a few time-management tips in Part Three for when you have five, ten, or fifteen minutes; use these as templates for coming up with your own short-order tasks.
Schedule it in: Don’t leave organizing to chance. Using the calendars in Part One and schedules in Part Three, block off time in your planner for daily, weekly, monthly, seasonal, and annual to-dos. Set reminders to stave off procrastination. Reward yourself with a spa day or dinner with friends whenever you’ve ticked all the boxes.
Once you’ve pared down your belongings, you’ll need to establish a system for putting what’s left in good order. There’s no one-size-fits-all solution, but heeding the principles below will ensure you find what works for you.
Give everything a home: Stowing objects in attractive vessels, hanging items on hooks or peg rails, and even having handy catchall baskets and bins will make for a pulled-together dwelling. Knowing where it all goes also makes it easier to put it all back—particularly important for getting kids to pitch in with the on-going cleanup.
Group like with like: Sorting different articles by category (e.g., toy trucks in one bin, puzzles in another; hair products on a designated shelf, cosmetics in a drawer divider; metal spatulas in this crock, wooden spoons in that one) will save time and effort when using them and when figuring out where things go.
Keep it where you use it: Storing things where they are most often needed (pots and pans over an island, a mending kit in the laundry room) can shave precious minutes off your everyday chores. Consider frequency of use as well as proximity, putting staple supplies within easy reach and stashing the rest where they aren’t taking up valuable space.
Make the most of every inch: This maxim proves helpful no matter a room’s size. Exploit the space below a bed or coffee table or above a door or window frame; mine the far reaches of a coat or linen closet; optimize vertical wall space (such as with pegboard, shelves, or towel bars). Use a desk riser to open up space under a computer monitor and an over-the-door rack to create extra storage in a kitchen or bathroom. Add hooks and racks inside kitchen cabinets and doors. Put the side of a refrigerator to work with magnetized systems.
Use multitasking furniture: It’s easy to find versatile pieces that help sneak in more storage. Ottomans and chests are great for living rooms or bedrooms, benches and cubbies for entryways or mudrooms. A dresser can double as a nightstand, a chair in the bathroom is seating and spare-towel holder in one. Rolling carts can be parked anywhere and moved as the need arises. Same for a coat tree, which can be relocated to a guest room when its winter shift in the entryway is over.
Create zones: Similar to grouping like with like, visually or mentally assigning different tasks to different parts of a room can help you stay on-task. This could mean dividing a desk into bill-paying, correspondence, and creative stations, or housing garden and lawn tools, sporting gear, and auto supplies in separate zones in a garage.