by Eileen Roth
Evaluate: After you complete the first four steps of P-L-A-C-E, Evaluate: Does it work? Organization is an ongoing process, and organizing can often be improved upon as your needs change or you sharpen your skills. I provide evaluation questions throughout these chapters to help you size up the success of each project as you finish it and in the future. Is a system coming up short? Adapt, change, and fix the function until you’re happy that your system is doing the best possible job.
When you evaluate and adjust over time, your organization systems become self-maintaining. Some good occasions to assess your systems include job changes, starting college, getting your first apartment, getting married, getting divorced, and any time you move. But you don’t have to wait for these major events to evaluate. A yearly checkup can help you keep everything working at peak level and up-to-date with your current needs.
Clearing your desktop with R-E-M-O-V-E
One very common reason people call me is that they can’t see the surface of their desk and have no idea how to fix the situation short of a snowplow. That’s why I developed R-E-M-O-V-E, six steps to clear off even the most snowed-under desktop and set a desk up for success. I go through this in detail in Chapter 15, but here’s a quick preview to get you thinking:
Reduce distractions: Is your desk covered with pictures, knickknacks, or this morning’s mail? These may be distracting you and reducing productivity. The reduce principle helps you to identify distractions and get them off your desk.
Everyday use: Only things that you use every day may stay on top of your desk. Don’t worry; you’ll find homes for everything else you need.
Move to the preferred side: You use one hand for most daily operations, and your desk can be arranged accordingly. Placing pens, pencils, and pads where you reach for them most gives you fingertip management and makes everything from writing notes to taking phone calls faster and easier. See Chapter 15 for the big exception to the preferred side rule. Can you guess?
Organize together: Just as with P-L-A-C-E, organizing like things together on the desktop forms centers so you can find and use items easily.
View your time: Everybody hates to be late, so give yourself a leg up by making time visual on your desk. An organizer and a clock are important desktop elements for keeping time in view.
Empty the center: Finally, chanting my mantra that “The desk is a place to do work,” clear off a space in the center of the station so that you can work on the project at hand. Behold, a long-lost surface — your desk.
Responding to your mail with R-A-P-I-D
Even before e-mail came on the scene, mail overload had slowed many people down to snail’s pace, so this system is designed to help you pick up speed with a R-A-P-I-D sort that doesn’t even require opening an envelope. Five sort categories help you bring order to incoming mail and get it opened and filed in a flash. Here they are:
Read: Anything that you need to read — later, please — goes in this stack. You may often find to read items at the bottom of the mail pile because they’re big ol’ magazines and newsletters.
Attend: Notices and invitations for seminars, workshops, meetings, performances, parties, and so forth go in the to attend stack.
Pay: If somebody wants your money, to pay is the pile to put the item in. Window envelopes are an easy cue. If it looks like one more credit card offer you don’t want, just rip right through the envelope to protect your identity and toss, all without taking the time to open it. Time is money, and all these folks are already after yours.
Important: Presume important until proven innocent, and put all unknown incoming mail into this stack.
Dump: If you know at a glance that you won’t read or need it, do not break the seal on the envelope. Do dump that piece of mail in the nearest available trash can.
Chapter 16 will walk you through R-A-P-I-D in detail and tell you what to do with mail after you open the envelope.
Maximizing your time with P-L-A-N
The most important thing you can plan is your time, that precious and irreplaceable commodity. Yes, there’s more to it than simply marking dates in your calendar but planning time doesn’t have to be hard. All you need are four steps formulated to take you to your goals, large or small, soon or later on. Put time on your side and achieve your peak potential with the power of P-L-A-N.
Prepare: The step you all too often skip in dividing up your time on Earth is defining missions and setting goals. The result can be that instead of pursuing what you want and need, you simply do whatever presents itself to you. Prepare repairs this problem by taking you through the “Five W’s Plus How,” forming the foundation for plans from next week’s party to long-range career development or finding the love of your life.
Lists you can live by: Out of your goals flow things to do, and the Master and To Do Lists keep track of all these tasks over the short and long term so you can do more and stress less. Once you find out how to use these lists along with your daily planner, you need never let a small detail or top priority slip again.
Act with rhythms and routines: Time has rhythms, like the ticking of the clock, the beating of your heart, and the biochemical changes your body and brain go through every day. When you learn to act with your personal rhythms and establish time-saving routines, you may find more minutes in the day and reap better results from all your efforts. From sleeping to peaking to pacing, acting with rhythms and routines helps you go with the flow.
Notice and reward your accomplishments: Here comes the fun part: Whenever you accomplish a goal, you earn yourself a reward, and the P-L-A-N system makes sure you get one by building a prize right into the time management process. When you notice and reward your accomplishments, you create an even stronger incentive to reach your goal the next time around. Pretty soon you have a positive feedback loop that can spiral you right to the moon.
P-L-A-N is such a pivotal part of getting organized so you can enjoy life that I devoted an entire chapter to it. You can read Chapter 18 and start putting its principles to work at any point in the organizing process, and the sooner the better.
By now, you know why you want to get organized. You have a plan for tackling organization in your mind. You’ve met the systems and supplies, so you can expect no confusing surprises as you work with this guidebook in the priority order of your choice. You know what you need to know. So what are you waiting for? Go!
Part II
Getting Organized at Home
In this part . . .
I f home is where the heart is, how can you possibly find the old ticker amid all that stuff? Each of these chapters covers a room and its contents, helping you enlighten your living space to create a haven of peace and a home you can show off with pride. With a clean kitchen, beautiful bathrooms, uncluttered living and dining rooms, systems to simplify your entertainment center, even a closet setup that enables you to get dressed in the dark, your heart will leap with joy every time you walk through the front door. Home, sweet organized home.
Chapter 4
Where It All Begins: The Front Hall
In This Chapter
Creating a flight deck to get you out at jet speed
Bringing order to your outerwear
Transforming your hall table from organizational hell to paradise
Making sense of mail, keys, purses, and other entryway enigmas
F irst impressions count, and when it comes to your home, the front entryway creates the immediate and lasting frame of reference for everyone who walks through the door. Clean up the front hall and you can go forth with a clear mind and come home happy. Your guests will be delighted to arrive and take glad memories when they leave. The front hall is your house’s face, and getting the entryway organized can give your home a facelift in form as well as function. Welcome home.
The front entry doubles as a showpiece and a dressing room, which presents a special organizational test: How can you keep everything you need close at hand to g
et everyone out the door, yet also create a clean and uncluttered space? The answer: Put everything in its P-L-A-C-E so that whatever the weather, you can get in and out in a snap and still leave the entryway spotless and tidy. Here’s how the P-L-A-C-E system (see Chapter 3 for more) summarizes the steps to simplifying your front hall:
Purge: Toss or donate coats, hats, boots, and scarves that don’t fit or you no longer use, unmatched or torn gloves or mittens, and any old clothes that no one claims anymore.
Like with like: Arrange coats by owner, and sort hats, gloves, and scarves into separate groups for children and adults.
Access: Keep this season’s accessories on the lower closet shelf and out-of-season items on the upper shelf. Move off-season coats to another closet or basement storage. Sports equipment can be relocated to the garage or storage area. Reserve the hall table strictly for mail and notes. Put everything you need for leaving in the morning by the door the night before. Anything unrelated to leaving or entering the house can find another home.
Contain: Put hats, gloves, and scarves into clear boxes or open baskets, separating adults’ from children’s for quick retrieval. Hang keys on a rack near the door you use most frequently. Use baskets or a sorter on the hall table to hold incoming mail for a family.
Evaluate: Can you easily get dressed and find everything you need to leave the house? Can you find a place for your outerwear, the mail, your keys, and what you’re carrying after a long, hard day? Does the front hall stay clean with quick and easy pickups? Do you, your family, and your guests feel warmly welcomed upon walking through the front door?
Getting In and Out of the Door: The Flight Deck
The first function of the front hall is as an exit and entry, the point of takeoff and landing for every member of the house. Just as airports employ tight air traffic control to keep this process running smoothly, you need a system for easy exits and entries. If you find yourself running around like the proverbial chicken with its head cut off when it’s time to leave the house, you can put your head back on straight with a fast-start plan for using the front hall as a flight deck.
To create a front hall flight deck, place everything you need by the exit door the night before. This may include the following:
Briefcase
Purse
Backpack
Keys
Laptop computer
Cellular phone
Gym bag
Tapes/CDs for the car
If you have an armload-plus to carry, consider taking a load to the car trunk in the evening but beware of leaving sensitive items (electronics, the pet goldfish for show and tell) outside overnight.
If you leave the house by the back or garage door, put your flight deck there for easiest access.
What goes out generally comes back in, raising the question of where all those things can go. The front hall can’t be an undifferentiated dumping ground for whatever you have in your hands when you walk through the door, so think about fingertip management before you decide where to drop.
If you plan to tackle work in your briefcase or laptop computer, take the case to your work site — office, kitchen, or bedroom. Kids’ backpacks can go wherever homework is done, generally the bedroom or a special spot in the kitchen (conveniently positioned to receive lunches the next morning).
Leave by the door — neatly, please — items that will go out with you tomorrow and you don’t need in the meantime. Exception: Purses and wallets. Even if you live alone, your front hall can be a very public place, and keeping your cash out of temptation’s way is best.
Men’s wallets can go on a valet tray in the bedroom.
Women can designate a spot in the bedroom, perhaps next to the dresser or on a certain shelf, to drop your purse every time you walk in the front door. Keeping your handbags in the same spot enables easy switching from one purse to another and eliminates the guesswork of where you left your purse last.
See Chapter 21 for a full discussion of organizing for trips from your daily commute to farther journeys.
Mirror, mirror
The front hall is a great place to hang a mirror to take a last-minute look before leaving the house. In fact, feng shui practitioners hang mirrors here to aid the flow of positive energy into the house and reflect the space to make the room seem larger. Because of its prominent position, any mirror you hang in the front hall should be beautiful and in accord with your décor. If you’re using a humbler model (including many full-length mirrors), consider hanging the mirror inside the closet door instead.
Coats, Boots, and Outerwear: The Closet
The front hall closet tends to become a catchall, which can wreak havoc on your sanity and schedule when you’re missing a glove. P-L-A-C-E principles can restore order to this space. Soon you may even open the door to hang a guest’s coat without shame.
If you have a standard-issue front hall closet — one rod and one shelf — the first thing to do is add another shelf. Front closets usually have plenty of extra space above, and if need be you can usually lower the rod a little to make space for the second shelf.
Next, think one-stop centers in setting up the closet, dividing items by like type and owner, and arranging them for easy access.
Family coat center
Human nature encourages people to hang their coats in the hall closet any which way, which doesn’t work very well. Wouldn’t you rather see all your outerwear options in a row than sort through the kids’ down parkas, your partner’s running jackets, and who knows whose faded, stretched-out sweatshirts? Group coats by the identity of their owner so that whoever opens the closet door can easily match their choice to the occasion, the outfit, and the conditions outside. Start with the adults’ coats on the side that’s opened first and work your way down to the youngest child.
You may be tempted to economize on space by installing an extra closet rod closer to the floor for shorter children’s jackets. Bright idea, but the additional rod doesn’t work so well in this closet. Children grow up quickly and get longer coats. In the meantime, grown-ups and guests need a place to stow their full-length wraps without short rods in the way. Have your front closet’s insides overflowed onto pegs on the hall wall? Pull them out. Pegs are not nice to look at and create an instant clutter zone. If you want pegs for children to hang their own coats on, install them by the back door to keep the front entrance clear.
The neat and tidy boot and shoe center
A fact of life when it rains or snows, boots are also a big logistical problem. Boots are wet, messy, and tend to pile up in chaotic mounds bound to trip you up on your way in and out of the house. The solution is to create a boot-drying space right next to the front door as an immediate landing spot, and institute a storage system in the closet to keep boots out of sight when they’re not in use.
To dry boots, set a rectangular indoor/outdoor carpet in front of the door and stretching out to the side. You can give your boots or shoes a second swipe on the carpet as you walk in. Then take them off and set them on the out-of-the-way end for easy access in and out of the door. An alternative is a ridged plastic tray with a ledge to catch water. Move dry boots to the floor inside the hall closet.
As for all those unsightly sport shoes, move them to a tiered shoe rack by the back door or in a first-floor laundry room. If you don’t have a back door or close-by laundry room or would rather not look at a bunch of sweaty sneakers, purchase a closed cabinet with shelves.
Organize shoes by person, ideally on different tiers of your shoe rack, so all household members can easily find their own.
Getting your mitts on this: Accessory center
Many households accumulate acres of accessories and few have devised an optimal system for storing and accessing mittens, gloves, earmuffs, scarves, sun hats, ski caps, or the dog’s leash. In fact, my client Fran was putting unnecessary extra miles on her car due to accessory chaos. Every morning her kids raced around the house from bedroom to kitc
hen to den looking for hats and gloves at the last minute, often missing the school bus in the process. By putting the children’s gloves in a green basket, their hats in a red basket, and their scarves in a black basket when they came home from school, Fran was able to stop the morning hide-and-seek game and get the kids on the bus instead of driving them to school herself.
Here’s how to solve your own accessory overload:
1.Purge unmatched gloves and mittens, worn or torn items, and anything no one’s worn in a year.
2.Sort your gear into winter and summer groups. Put rain-related stuff with the current season because rain can fall in either half of the year.
3.Organize each seasonal group by putting like items together: gloves, hats, scarves, and so forth. Separate kids’ stuff from the adults’. If your family’s really big and you have space, make a separate stack for each child.
4.Contain each group in its own colored basket — for instance, adult gloves in blue, kids’ gloves in green, and so on. If you’d rather see contents than basket color, opt for clear containers instead. Label the baskets or containers.