by Eileen Roth
Whenever you aim to contain, measure the item(s) and storage space first, and then search the house or hit the store for what you need. Containing options include:
Cabinets
Shelves
Drawers and drawer dividers
Bookcases and bookends
Magazine racks
File drawers and boxes
Baskets, boxes, and a variety of closed containers
Tiered and stacking racks
Each class of container comes in a range of materials, shapes, and sizes. Matching these characteristics to your containing criteria is your goal-—so isn’t it great that manufacturers have come out with just about every container you could ever need?
Selecting the material
In selecting material, consider the container’s weight, durability, safety, and looks, and whether you can lift or carry it easily. In general, plastic is lightest, lasts long, and doesn’t break. However, plastic is often not as scenic as glass or a pretty basket. You probably don’t want plastic in your living room, but boy, is it great in the kitchen, inside cupboards, and for storage areas.
Choosing clear or colored containers
Clear containers have a clear advantage: You can see right through them to identify the contents inside. Unless you’re trying to hide what’s in your container, choose clear and save yourself a step. Transparent containers are also great for showing young children how to get organized. Seeing what’s hiding inside — crayons, blocks, toy trucks — sends an easy visual cue for what gets put away there.
When visual neatness is your goal, go opaque with your containers to keep their contents hidden. In this case, you may want to use color as a code — for instance, a blue container to hold kids’ gloves and green for adults.
Doing geometry: Shape and size
Round containers waste space. Want to picture why? Square off a round container in your mind’s eye, and you can see the corners that you’re losing. Or put several round containers together and look at all the empty space in between. Whenever you can, choose squares or rectangles for your containers to avoid this geometric rip-off. Yes, you’ll need some round bowls, and a big round basket works well for balls, but otherwise stick to the squares.
Once you have the basic geometry down, match the shape and size of containers to what you’re storing there. Allow enough space to group things by like type, but not so much that things get lost or jumbled within the container or you’re left with a lot of room to spare.
Also ask yourself whether you need a lid on this container. Does it need a tight seal or stackable surface? Some containers, such as Tupperware’s Modular Mates, stack easily on top of each other, which can make good use of vertical space.
If you’re containing food, you might consider a pouring spout. Try this concept on your containers for cereal, sugar, rice, pancake mix, and biscuit mix.
Identifying with labels
A label can save loads of time by identifying a container’s contents with a quick look. Best for things you’re storing out of sight (nobody wants to sit on the living room couch and read a label that says “Extra Ashtrays”), container labels add information to your organization. Here are a few tips:
Be sure to use a washable label if you may be cleaning the container in question (for instance, the one you store your flour in). Skip the white computer labels and use a clear, plastic one or a tape made on a label-maker instead.
Clear labels are hard to see on clear containers. If you use a clear, washable label on a clear container per the preceding point, place the label low so that the contents behind it can serve as a background.
Use colored labels to code containers by type. Maybe all your baking supplies are in containers with blue labels (“b” is for blue and for baking), while pasta and grains are labeled with green (“g” for green and grains).
Just as firefighters talk about containing fires, use containers to contain clutter and spend less time putting out organizational fires. Containers provide a place for every important item in your life.
The Three Ds: Using containers as clutter busters
A major contributor to clutter is a basic law of physics: Matter is inert. The way to unclutter is to make matter mobile, and the Three Ds can help. What are the Three Ds? Three containers — boxes, baskets, or big sturdy bags — that you use anytime you tackle a space to distribute, donate, or dump the stuff you find there. Here’s how the Three Ds can ease the flow of things and keep you clutter-free.
Distribute box
Have you ever noticed how things tend to end up where they don’t belong? To bring them on home, take a container and dub it “Distribute.” When you find a cereal bowl in the bedroom, don’t rush downstairs to take it to the kitchen, and then go back up to collect the dirty clothes and run them down to the laundry room, followed by a stop in the front hall to grab the suntan lotion you had out for yesterday’s tennis game and return it to the upstairs linen closet, and so on and so on until you’re utterly exhausted. Five minutes of simple cleanup can wipe you out for the day unless you centralize operations with a distribute box.
Any time you need to leave the room to put something away, don’t. Put it in the distribute box instead, and then carry it along to the next stop, just like riders on the bus waiting to exit until they reach home.
Donate box
Maybe the item is not out of place but it no longer has a place in your life. When that’s the case, consider donating. Anything useable but no longer useful to you goes in the donate box, which sits there waiting to go to your sister, neighbor, or your favorite charity for a tax write-off. For instance, if you have three sizes of clothes in your closet, you obviously aren’t wearing two of them, so donate those. You probably don’t want to go back to the larger size, and when you reach the smaller one, you’ll deserve a treat of some new clothes in today’s styles. The same goes for appliances, equipment (donate or sell computer stuff the second it gets disconnected from your system; those things aren’t getting any younger), dishes, furniture — you name it. Letting things move on to people who can use them makes the world a better place, and your donate box can help.
Dump box, bag, or can
Then there are things that nobody wants or needs. You can designate a box, trash can, or big garbage bag for things you choose to dump as you unclutter. The trick is to keep it close at hand as you work and put anything you want to discard directly into the garbage. Don’t forget to recycle when you can. Garage sales, consignment stores, and charities are great ways to recycle.
You can organize your giveaways by establishing a donation center in the basement or another storage area where you collect things until you have enough to warrant a pickup or a trip to a drop-off center.
A Halfway House: A container for the undecided
I am well aware that some of you have a hard time parting with things. If you didn’t, you wouldn’t need to hire me. Sometimes, though, all you really need is time.
Let time heal the pain of parting by putting the items you can’t quite say goodbye to but know you need to into a box. Mark it with “Halfway House” and the date. If a year rolls by and you haven’t gone into the box for something you wanted, then give it away, unopened. This is important. If you open the box, you’re likely to pull something back out into your home. So don’t. If you really want something from your Halfway House during the cooling off period, go get it. Then close up the box and proceed to give the remaining contents away if you don’t pull them out within a year’s span.
The Six Organizing Secrets
Every professional organizer has her or his secrets, and when I was invited to write this book, the publisher asked me to give away mine. So here they are: six surefire ways to think through organizing any space or job, from the dining room to the desktop, from tomorrow’s meeting to where you want your marriage to be five years from now.
Five of the organizing secrets are acronyms, words in which each letter stand
s for a step of the process to make each one easy to remember. Technically, this is called a mnemonic device, also known as a way to help your memory. Whether you remember the technical term or not, this is a very organized way to think, and simply remembering the six organizing secrets and putting the secrets to work can help train your organizing mind.
Designing any space with a layout
When you start out to tackle a space, the ideal first question takes in the big picture: “Where do things go?” Is that the best arrangement for the desk and filing cabinets? Can you open up more space by moving the bed? What’s the most efficient use of the room’s wall space? To answer the big picture question, I simply ask you to think like an architect.
Even if you’ve never sat down at a drafting table, you can lay out any space by drawing, cutting, and playing. Specific goals and considerations for rooms in the home and office are covered in their individual chapters. For now, take a moment to review the basics of how easy it is to make like an architect and create your own blueprint for high-performance rooms. Just follow these simple steps:
1. Draw the basic blueprint: First, get out a tape measure and measure the dimensions of the space you want to organize, including the width of each wall, window, door, and closet, as well as the height underneath windows. Jot down each measurement as you go.
Now swap your tape measure for a ruler and draw your room to scale on a blank piece of paper, using 1 inch to represent 1 foot. Tape two sheets of paper together if you need to. After sketching the basic outline, mark the windows, including a note about the wall clearance underneath, the closets, and the doors.
2. Create cutouts: Now think about what furniture and equipment you want in the room, which may include what’s there now, new items as recommended in the chapters, or something that’s been on your wish list. Mea-sure these items if you already have them or estimate their dimension if not. Next, take some colored paper and cut out a rectangle, square, or circle to represent each piece, again using 1 inch to represent 1 foot as your scale. A typical desk is about 6 feet long and 3 feet wide, so that becomes a 6-x3-inch rectangular cutout.
Continue until you cover all the furniture and equipment you’d like to include in your layout. Be sure to write what each cutout represents on the front so you don’t lose track.
3. Play with your layout: Finally, put glue that allows you to reposition your layout on the backs of the cutouts so you can move them around on your blueprint but not lose their place, and play with your layout. Remember to use the space under windows for smaller pieces — a desk or two-drawer file cabinet in an office, or a dresser or short bookcase in the home. Also keep in mind that doors need room to open and close, so don’t put the fax machine in the door’s path.
Keep playing until you come up with one or more layouts you like. You may discover a whole new look for your room, or that there’s not enough space for the bedroom and bureau to share a wall, all without lifting a finger or straining your back. Not bad for your first organizing secret.
Saving or tossing
From clothes bursting out of closets to the constant assault of information, most people in our affluent part of the world are buried in a daily inflow and existing excess of stuff. How do you decide what to keep and what’s a waste of space and time — not to mention energy and money? Simply ask the five W-A-S-T-E questions, and you’re well on your way to an informed keep-or-toss decision.
I know from my experience as a professional organizer that the process of deciding what matters in your life and what to let go of goes as deep as it gets. I developed W-A-S-T-E to help separate the wheat from the chaff. As you work through the questions, think like a judge, considering past precedent, future ramifications, and sometimes-subjective differences between right and wrong:
Worthwhile: Do you truly like the dress or shirt in question? Is that article actually important to your job? Does the fax cover sheet contain any information you need to know? If the item isn’t worthwhile, toss it out now. If it is, move on to the next four questions.
Again: Will you really use this thing again, or is it just going to sit in a kitchen cupboard or take up space in your files? This question could also be rephrased as, “Use it or lose it.” If you don’t foresee needing something in the next year or you haven’t used it in the last one, clear it out. Maybe your waffle iron was used weekly for awhile but hasn’t been touched in months, because you broke up with the boyfriend you cooked them for or got tired of cleaning out the grooves. It was once worthwhile, but now, goodbye!
Somewhere else: Ask yourself: Can I easily find this somewhere else? If you have to make waffles for a special brunch, can you borrow a maker from a neighbor? Can you find a memo in your assistant’s files or in another department, or get the details by making a quick phone call? Can you hit the Internet, the library, or the local discount store if the need for this item or info should arise in the future? If so, you don’t need to save it. Sometimes, the somewhere else is quite close at hand, such as in your own closet, cupboard, or office. Do you really need half a dozen fix-it outfits for painting or messy plumbing jobs when you only wear one at a time? How about the old dot matrix printer; are you actually going to send documents there with that new high-speed laser on hand? A good way to avoid this sort of redundancy is to say, “Out with the old and in with the new.”
Toss: Many things have ways of slipping and sliding by the first three questions, so here’s the acid test: Will anything happen if you toss it? If not, go ahead, unless it must be legally retained. (Chapter 16 will give you guidelines for retaining information.)
This question often ends up taking people on a sentimental journey. Maybe something passed the first three questions because it had sentimental value, but the world wouldn’t stop turning if it were tossed. This question is the toughest to judge because it can’t be measured by anyone but you. The sentimental value of things generally accrues from the people who gave them to you, whether a family elder such as my Aunt Babe, a good friend or lover, or — here’s a hot button — a child.
Entire: Do you need the entire thing? The whole magazine, document, or draft? Every coordinate of the outfit, even if you only ever wear the pants? The complete catalog, when you only intend to order from one page? If not, keep what you need and toss the excess.
Breaking things down into components can help with any save-toss decision but especially when sentimental attachment is involved. Maybe you’ve held onto a high school newsletter that features a picture of you. Can you cut out that picture and the name of the newsletter with the date and paste it into a scrapbook, where you may actually look at it from time to time? Perhaps you inherited a painting from your grandmother that you don’t like or that clashes hopelessly with your décor, but you don’t want to forget. Take a photograph of it, add it to your album, and give the painting away to someone who likes it better, within or outside your family. This trick works with all sorts of things, from collections you no longer want to display to every gift you ever received that’s not quite you but represents an important memory or moment. A picture says a thousand words!
Everything is the sum of its parts, but some parts count more than others. Use the entire question to trim the things you do keep down to size.
Everything in its P-L-A-C-E: Organizing space
In the course of my practice, I’ve developed a reliable process to clear an area of clutter, organize items for easy access and neat appearance, and fine-tune the results to your needs. P-L-A-C-E is the way to organize space and put everything in its place. What could be easier to remember?
You can clean up any area in the world with the following five steps:
Purge: First, break out the Three Ds and the five W-A-S-T-E questions and clear your space of clutter by dumping, donating, or distributing everything you no longer need. Whether you toss the dried-up glue sticks in your desk drawer, discard outgrown toys in the playroom, or clean the hall closet of unmatched gl
oves and ratty old sweatshirts, purging can empower all your organizing efforts.
Like with like: The second step in putting things into place is to organize like things together. Not only does grouping help you know where to look, whether you’re searching for a file or a first aid lotion but placing similar items together also often creates what I call centers, one-stop spots with everything you need to complete a task. You can create a mail center in your desk drawer in Chapter 15, a media center in Chapter 9, a cooking center in Chapter 5, and more, all to tap the clarifying effects of categorization — grouping like with like.
Access: Once you have things grouped, placement is the next priority — and here, think easy access. Where do you usually use these items? Put them there. Pots and pans should be near the stove and file cabinets close to your desk. How close is close? Literally at your fingertips.
Placing items for fingertip management can enhance concentration, whether you’re making coffee (hey, brewing can be hard first thing in the morning) or working on a report with multiple research sources. To fine-tune your access decisions, consider your fingertips first.
On the flip side, something that you don’t use often can be moved farther away because you access it less. If you rarely use the warming tray, keep it on a hard-to-reach shelf.
Contain: Containers do double duty from an organizing perspective: They keep like things together, and move things out of sight to clear the landscape and your mind. You can contain things on shelves, in drawers, with bookends or magazine holders, in hanging files, or in baskets, boxes, or closed containers in a variety of materials, shapes, and sizes. Contain within containers by adding dividers to drawers. The more you contain, the better you may feel, and you can find an abundance of practical ideas, complete with pictures and illustrations, in the coming chapters.