Troubleshooting for Easy Upkeep

Photo credit: Seemann via Morguefile

Did you get a chance to look at Putting it All Together? Check it out by clicking on its title in the previous sentence, or on the new "Charts" tab at the top of this page.

Why am I sending you to a chart? Because it's your road map. If you're honoring these styles, systems and choices, your organizational systems are probably working.

Want proof? Look at a system in your home that's working. Chances are it's simple, attractive and individualized to fit your needs and styles. It's no surprise that these systems are the easiest to maintain.

But sometimes systems break down. Three of the most common reasons for this are:

• Choosing the wrong container. It's easy to choose a container because it's pretty, the right color or the right price, and sometimes we can even make those containers work. But if a container is too small to be useful, too large for the space, or not a match for your styles, it can be the first domino in the demise of your organizational system. If you really love it, maybe you can find another organizational task for it to fulfill, but if not, let it go and replace it with something that makes your life easier.
• Choosing the wrong home. I know I put it somewhere organizers often fall prey to this one. Any empty space won't due; choosing an illogical or inconvenient home wastes time and energy, and can also cause an organizational system to come crashing down. Similar items should be stored together, close to the place where you most often use them. And if you use something often, it should be easy to access.
• Making the system too complicated. Have you ever set up a filing system where your categories have so many subcategories that you can't figure out where to put a simple piece of paper? In the interest of making a system thorough, we sometimes overcomplicate things. When in doubt, default to the smallest number of steps possible. Every style benefits from simplicity because simplicity is easier to maintain.

Alone, none of these is difficult to fix, but they can compound one another. While that can be overwhelming at first, the good news is that one small change can also have a positive domino effect. Choosing the right container or home or simplifying the system can reinvigorate everything.

Never underestimate the power of one small change. Keep it simple and style-specific.

Containers, Styles and Logical Homes: Where Did/Does/Should it Go?

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Now that you've got the right stuff, it's time to put it to use in a way that will establish a working system. When it comes to matching containers to your personal and organizational styles, the goal is not only to choose the right containers, but also to develop new habits that make the most of what you do naturally.

Remember my bathroom bins? When we organize by STYLE, we work with our habits, instead of against them. Two simple concepts lie at the heart of working with those habits instead of against them.

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We've already talked about the first one: the concept of a home for every item. A home is where something “lives.” While the containers we've been perfecting for a month are key to establishing home for our items, they're only half the equation.

In order to get from a pile of random containers to an organizational system, we need to master the concept of logical and consistent homes for all of our things. A logical home is one that:

• is close to where the item is most often used;
• is the right size for the item;
• takes into account how often the item needs to be accessed.

This is the reason we store food in the pantry, toys in the playroom and holiday decorations in the attic. It’s also the reason we don’t store a single pair of socks, for example, in an empty kitchen drawer. Too much space is wasted if we dedicate an entire drawer to a pair of socks, and, since we don’t usually get dressed in the kitchen, it makes no sense to store socks there. Location is just as important in storage as it is in real estate. 

Here are a few things to consider as you establish logical homes for your things:

• Store things that are used every day in places that are easy to access. 
• Choose a storage solution (container and location) that makes it as easy to put things away as it is to put them down. 
• Store things where you use them...or drop them...or naturally put them. 
• Store similar items together, and consider storing complementary items (things that go together or are used together) near each other as well. 

I'll have more on each of these next week. For now, take a look at some of those things you put down instead of away at your house and do a little strategizing. Do those items have homes? And if so, are they logical homes? Or, when you consider your personal and organizational styles, do they belong somewhere else?

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