A well-organized home—whether yours is a country house, a city apartment, a cabin in the woods, or a cottage by the sea—makes living well that much easier.

If the kitchen is smartly arranged, cooking and baking will be more enjoyable. If your bathroom is appropriately stocked and well-appointed, then even guests can use it and feel as if the space is their own. When your closet is well designed—with designated places for shoes, bags, suits, dresses, and pants—then getting dressed will be a pleasure. And when kids’ rooms are neat, with toys and games and learning materials within easy reach, children will stay happily busy (and may even be more likely to pick up after themselves).

Good organization applies to all the spaces in one’s home, starting with the entryway, but also including those areas that some of us tend to neglect, such as the garage, attic, and basement. I have spent a lot of time organizing and reorganizing my homes for photo shoots, for television shows, and for my family and myself. This has afforded me the opportunity to test innumerable ideas for making each space livable, workable, and comfortable. In the following chapter, we share some of the very best of those ideas, room by room—even and especially the all-important, hardworking laundry room. We have also distilled decades of organizing advice into what we call the golden rules, which I myself find to be highly effective. My number one organizing principle? Give everything its own place; start there, and you will find the rest comes all the easier.