I hate clutter because it feels like death. (Can’t accuse me of burying the lead.) Don’t get me wrong. I’m not talking about your purposeful collections, piles of laundry, or ongoing project, sprawled across you table. I’m talking about that excess stuff, with no plan for movement.
There is a time and a place for three ring binders. Simply put, when you need to bind reference material, you should use one and when you don’t need to bind reference material you shouldn’t. So what would be some good examples?
Much has been written recently about a study done by Kathleen Vohs, at the University of Minnesota, that finds a messy work environment promotes creative thinking. Here’s my two cents. I’m a fan of evidence through science, but I am skeptical of these results. Furthermore, I would argue that creativity is rarely the biggest challenge.
So you’ve bought all these great organizing supplies, done some purging, created a space for everything and everything is in its place, but you still can’t stay organized. What could possibly be missing? The problem is, life doesn’t stand still and neither do your organizing needs. There must be a plan for movement.
I have written a ten part series on closet organizing, but if you’d like to see the best placement practices summarized on one sheet, here it is. This is just for a closet with shelves, from top to bottom, not one with a hanging rod. Before following these, I recommend emptying your closet entirely and purging the excess. When you reload, consider this.
I have written about the worst ways to get organized before, but today I want to focus on just one. If you are helping a friend or family member get organized, the worst piece of advice you can give them is: “when in doubt, throw it out.”
I have to admit, I was a big fan of TLC’s What Not To Wear. One of the things the hosts consistently recommended for the wardrobes of the poorly-dressed, was more structure. An important part of our organizing recommendations is also structure. Here are three good examples.
On the whole, I try to avoid negative posts, but I’ve had it these guys. The organizing solutions we provide, mostly come down to editing and approach, but sometimes they are purely structural. It could partly be that you are just using the wrong supplies. Over the last ten years of organizing, we have found these three culprits used in hundreds of homes, as indispensable organizing conventions. Indispensable they are not.
After we have purged the excess stuff from a client’s home, we have a conversation about how best to organize and store what’s left. This involves a discussion about the showroom vs. stockroom approach, which I have written about before. This time, I want to revisit the showroom vs. stockroom approach, with the aid of two useful images.
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