Hasta La Ideas

I keep a ridiculous number of lists: movies I want to see, books I want to read, groceries I need to buy, recipes I want to try, things I have to do, letters I should write, gifts I wish to give, music I want to have my son hear, my lofty someday goals. These lists are handwritten — I tried to keep them digitally but kept writing things down on sticky notes and then sticking the notes to my iPhone. A key component of being organized is knowing yourself, and I’m a handwritten list maker.

At the start of every year, I get a new notebook and copy the lists from the old notebook into the new. I grab a big cup of coffee, light a fire in the fireplace, and curl up under a warm blanket with the notebook and a good pen. I recopy the lists for a few reasons:

1. My notebook gets beaten up during the year and I’m ready for a new notebook every 12 months.
2. The copying process is a tradition I really enjoy.
3. When going through the lists, I can change my preferences, reorder my lists, and eliminate things I did/saw/tried that I forgot to cross off over the course of the year.
4. The old lists become recordings of my life over the past year. Since I don’t keep a diary, this is the closest thing I have.

Obviously, the lists also help to keep me organized.

What traditions do you complete at the end of the year or start of the new year that help to keep you organized? How do you enjoy these traditions? Do you keep lists? Share your new year organizing traditions in the comments.

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If you’ve hit a stumbling block in your organizing process, you may have come up against one of the three common organizing mistakes:

1. Choosing form over function. It’s easy to fall in love with aesthetically appealing organizing products. However, unless the storage product is one that you’ll use consistently and exactly fits your needs, the storage product can end up being clutter and/or creating disorder. Avoid this pitfall by identifying your needs first, then seek out a storage product you’ll enjoy using (if you even need one).
2. Organizing for the sake of organizing. Clutter is defined as any distraction that gets in the way of the life you desire. Therefore, if you get caught up in organizing and lose sight of its purpose, you can start cluttering up your time organizing. Make things as organized as they need to be to pursue the life you want, and stop your organizing efforts there.
3. Believing you can’t be organized. Organizing is a skill, similar to swimming and riding a bike. Anyone of sound mind and body who wants to be organized can be organized, but you have to practice, try different methods, and be willing to learn from your mistakes. No one is “naturally” organized — some people might be more adept at learning these skills, but those people were not born with day planners in their hands. People like me (who seem naturally disorganized) can become organized, it just takes more work and focus.

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When uncluttering a space, you typically find a handful of objects that belong someplace else in your home, or don’t even belong to you. In your kitchen you might find a tape dispenser that should be stored in your office, or you’ll find a tool in your garage that actually belongs in your neighbor’s garage.

There is a temptation when you find these out-of-place items to stop what you’re doing and return the object to its far-flung location. Unfortunately, abandoning your work can often result in you sitting on your neighbor’s back porch enjoying a beer and procrastinating instead of keeping on task with your uncluttering activity.

Instead of leaving the room, simply put the out-of-place item into a clean clothes hamper. Then, after you’re finished clearing the clutter and organizing the space, you can attend to the significantly out-of-place objects.

Take care of the items that belong in your home first. Group the items in the hamper by area of your home. Next, starting on the top floor of your home, work your way down to the basement, or, if your home is all on one level, work clockwise from the main entrance. Maintaining this pattern will help you to do as little back-tracking as possible.

After the items in your home are returned to their storage places, you’ll need to create a plan of action for items that belong to other people. If there is just one item, take care of it right then (if it’s a decent hour — but if it’s the middle of the night, you may want to wait). If there are multiple items, pull out your calendar and schedule the times when you’ll return the objects to their owners. Resolve to have all items returned within five days so the objects stop cluttering up your home.

The same thing can be done in an office environment, but instead of a clothes hamper you can just use an empty cardboard box. After you’re finished with your office uncluttering project, walk through your workplace and deliver items to your co-workers.

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Reader Debbie submitted the following to Ask Unclutterer:

We have a large storage cabinet and some shelves at my work office that have now become mine to organize. The cabinet is full of small cardboard boxes full of all types of supplies – tape, staples, computer pieces, pens, markers, hanging folders, envelopes, you name it. Lots of small items. I’m looking for some type of storage dividers/ container that will make this stuff more visible and reachable.

Is it weird that I am incredibly excited for you? I’m even a little envious. I love organizing supply closets. You’ve been given a really great project, in my opinion.

Are you familiar with the company ShelvingDirect.com? (Beware: There is a talking guy who appears when you follow that link. He only talks for 30 seconds, though, and you can easily pause him.) Despite the talking ad, this company has a lot of reasonably priced office storage products you might want to consider. There are numerous office supply companies out there that carry similar items, so you can check with your purchasing agent at work to see if the company you use most often has the same items.

Since you already have a cabinet and shelving, I recommend checking out the bin kits or their individual bins if none of the kits exactly meet your needs. The bins come in all different sizes and are formed in a way so you can easily see and access the product stored inside:

The plastic bins are nice because you can insert dividers and bin cups into them (neither the dividers or cups appear on their website, but they’re available through their catalog). The bins are also stackable, so you don’t waste any vertical space. You can easily label them, too.

Stores like The Container Store are really terrific, and carry similar bins, but they price even their smallest ones at a few dollars a piece. Ordering multiple bins from an office supplier is the less expensive way to go, where the smallest ones come out to being less than a dollar a piece. Which, at least in my opinion, makes the office supply companies the better option in this situation.

As you’re organizing the items in the closet, try to put the supplies accessed most often on the shelves that fall between you knees and your chin. Otherwise, you’ll constantly be bending over or reaching above your head to straighten and replenish these materials.

Thank you, Debbie, for submitting your question for our Ask Unclutterer column. I hope these bins and tips can work for you.

Do you have a question relating to organizing, cleaning, home and office projects, productivity, or any problems you think the Unclutterer team could help you solve? To submit your questions to Ask Unclutterer, go to our contact page and type your question in the content field. Please list the subject of your e-mail as “Ask Unclutterer.” If you feel comfortable sharing images of the spaces that trouble you, let us know about them. The more information we have about your specific issue, the better.

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When organizing items in your home, it’s best to use systems that make the most sense to you and are simple to use. You should look at your cupboards, files, closets, or shelving and instantly know how objects can be returned, retrieved, or added to their storage space. The easier it is to store something, the more likely you are to put it in its place.

It’s almost always a good idea to store like things with like things. Your board games should all be in one closet on one shelf. Your pots and pans should all be in the same cupboard, and your wrenches in a single toolbox. Once grouped with similar items, your objects should be stored in the most convenient place for where you use the objects. Dog food should be stored near the dog food bowls, office supplies should be in your office, and spices should be in your kitchen in a dark and dry cupboard or drawer near your food prep area.

When you have like things with like things, you may need to organize the objects even more. This is especially good for things where there are more than three objects of a kind — such as papers in a filing cabinet or books on your bookshelves. The following systems are extremely obvious, which means you’re more likely to remember the system because it is so simple:

• Chronologically. You can put things in order of oldest to newest (a good idea if you want to use something up, like breakfast cereal) or newest to oldest (great for filing bills). Chronologically also works well in some people’s closets when they want to make sure they are regularly rotating through two or three week’s worth of clothes.
• Alphabetically. Great for organizing files, your address book, and other items with words on their labels (like spices in your kitchen). Alphabetical order is what people assume you will use as an ordering method whenever letters are involved.
• By size. When stacking, it’s usually a great idea to put the largest items on the bottom and the smallest items on top. You can order from largest to smallest or smallest to largest when working with objects where size is relevant to its use, like drill bits and hex keys.
• Seasonally. Objects like holiday decorations and outdoor apparel can easily be stored based on what season you use or wear them. Ordering by season means that you’re less likely to find your Fourth of July decorations in with your Thanksgiving items.
• By occasion. Similar to seasonally, when you organize by occasion you group things based upon when you use the item. This is a great idea for organizing all of your soccer supplies in a single duffel bag so that everything is together in a kit when you’re ready to head to soccer practice.

If you store textiles (like yarn for knitting or paper for scrapbooking), you might also consider ordering items by color or materials. However, color and materials don’t work well for filing things like memos — all memos printed on yellow paper were probably just printed on yellow paper because the person making the copies couldn’t find a ream of white paper. When color or materials add meaning to the object, it’s okay to consider using them as an ordering system. When the color or materials don’t add meaning to the object, it’s best to use another organizing method.

What systems do you use when organizing your things? Could using a more simple organizing method increase the likelihood that you will put things away after you use them? Not only does simple organizing make your life easier, it also makes it easier for others to return, retrieve, or add objects to a system when you’re not there to supervise.

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