Your Organised Home
Module 4: Prepare for Success

Post-Haste

For example, if you find that post is the main problem, possible solutions include:

• Using a letter tray or inbox into which all paperwork goes the minute it enters your home
• Setting aside a time of day to open letters, perhaps after breakfast or lunch, or when you return home at night
• Having a bin handy right beside where you read your mail into which envelopes, junk mail and items not needing any further action can go, on their way to the recycle bin

Keep a file or folder close by as well so that important papers which need to be kept can be filed away in their correct home with minimum effort, instead of getting lost, having coffee spilled on them, or falling prey to children’s doodles or pet’s chewing.

Don’t allow any exceptions to this rule – don’t take post through to the bedroom or kitchen just because it’s the weekend, or stick it into your bag or briefcase on the way out, ready to fall out when you return home and become clutter.

Coach anyone who lives with you to at least put post into the letter tray or inbox, and if someone else deals with the paperwork in your home, set up a system that suits them and is centred round their needs.

If miscellaneous paperwork accumulates around your desk, again having an inbox, folder or drawer into which it can all go for daily or weekly sorting will contain the problem.

I personally stick all paperwork into a folder after scanning the post for anything needing urgent action, and every Tuesday go through it filing, binning and shredding until the folder is empty.

Because I know that I have a day set aside for this, I can relax the rest of the week knowing the issue is in hand.

Crockery Crazy

Plates and mugs can tend to accumulate in the main living space, and perhaps you share your home with other people who don’t understand that crocks won’t grow little legs and find their own way back to the kitchen?

Effective solutions for this include:

• Acquiring a coffee table onto which all items have to be placed after use, which will at least corral them and stop the problem from spreading all over the room. Keep the table clear of any non-essentials so there’s no reason not to use it – treat it like a departure lounge rather than a space to display books and decorative items
• Pick up a large tray, or an empty washing up bowl, and use it as needed to take everything through to the kitchen in as few trips as possible – consider keeping it under the coffee table and encouraging other people to use it as well
• Making sure that you never leave the main living area with empty hands – if each trip you make out removes two or three items you are going to find it much easier to stay on top of things.

If you find that the kitchen is the biggest clutter magnet, and culprits include empty food containers and clothing, systems you can put in place to good effect include:

• Having a clothing rail or some wall hooks outside the kitchen area to place coats and outerwear on before entering the kitchen
• Getting into the habit of crushing containers down where it’s safe to do so, so that they take up less space in your bin – this means it will fill up more slowly and is also envirnmentally sound
• Storing recycling bins under the work-surface where you do most of the food preparation, so that as soon as a container is emptied it goes straight to its correct destination. Most of the containers provided by local authorities in the UK have lids, and you’ll need something like this to prevent any odours from leaking out
• Investing in a larger rubbish bin, and making sure that you empty it regularly – simple but effective!

Newspapers tend to get everywhere so placing a bin or even a small box beside the seating areas that are used to peruse that day’s paper makes it a lot simpler for readers to do the right thing after they’ve finished.

If you find that toys are spreading all over the place, a simple but effective trick is to make the last 10 – 15 minutes before children’s bedtimes into Toy’s Bedtime.

Depending on the age of the child involved, this can be a fun game in its own right, or for older children a great way to show some grown-up common sense and perhaps earn a reward at the end of the week.

A nice toybox makes this all the more fun for smaller children, and if you’re on a budget, why not employ tiny hands to create and decorate a Toy’s House out of a large cardboard box?

Bedrooms can become cluttered with clothing and I have always found that having a chair in the bedroom is an invitation for Mount Ragpile to begin forming. Sidestep this by making sure your wardrobes and drawers are easy to access and have plenty of space free to put clothing away.

Do be vigilant and if you spot a surface or piece of furniture which always attracts clutter, employ a bit of ingenuity (or simply remove it) because using it as a depository for stuff has become a habit that will be hard to break.

Remove the temptation and again, you’re making it easier to do the right thing than the wrong one.

Small Acts, Big Consequences

The reason I have spelled out these fairly simple techniques is to illustrate that it is the smallest of acts, when adopted as everyday habits, that will make the biggest impact on your home.

If you’ve ever dieted you’ll be familiar with the way a tiny change, like cutting out a daily bar of chocolate, can have huge effects over time, and likewise if you understand the financial markets you’ll grasp how a few percentage rise in interest rates can have a knock-on effect in every area of life.

Changing from being a person who lives habitually in disorder and clutter is as simple as acquiring a few new habits and applying just a tiny bit of ingenuity in stopping clutter in its tracks.

The main reasons people don’t deploy these habits in the first place is that they seem too insignificant to make a real difference, and perhaps it feels just a tiny bit boring to have to think about the final destination of every single object you use during the day.

Never Too Late

Truly tidy, organised people tend to be have formed habits at a young age that ensure they always put things in the right place, and it’s never too late for you to start forming these habits yourself.

If you have a friend or relative who has a neat and well-ordered home, watch how he or she takes small steps constantly to maintain order and prevent items from cluttering the place up.

It’s not so much that tidy people have a big internal dialogue every time they go to put something back, it’s more likely to be the case that they do it automatically.

Sandra Felton, the US “Organizer Lady” and founder of Messies Anonymous (MA), talks in her MA e-mail programme about “robotics” – doing household chores in the manner of an unthinking robot.

She explains that relating emotionally to a chore creates the kind of resistance and resentment that all contribute to a disorganised home.

She advises, “Do the work without considering whether you like to do it, whether it is emotionally satisfying, or whether it is a good use of your valuable time.”

While this might sound worryingly like an extract from the Stepford Wives, having a big debate with yourself every time you go to pick up a used coffee mug isn’t exactly the best use of your energies.

If you’re in the habit of thinking about completing a chore, looking at it, feeling vague resentment (or not so vague resistance) and having mental arguments with yourself or falling prey to procrastination, then try this technique:

• Switch off your critical faculties
• Disengage emotionally and…
• Just do it!

As a teenager, I used to find my mum’s habit of whisking away my cup or plate as soon as it was empty infuriating – it was the outcome of that kind of devil-may-care attitude that led to me nearly losing my home ten years later, when my landlord threatened me with eviction if I didn’t tackle the clutter in my flat!

Tina’s Story

My friend Tina, 22, was the only female in a house shared with three other students.

The three boys genuinely never saw any reason to “waste” time picking up after themselves in the shared living areas, the kitchen filled up with empty tins and cartons because throwing them outside in the dustbin was too much trouble, and their own rooms were the stuff of nightmares.

The mess was driving Tina crazy, but as the only female she resented falling back into the traditional role of domestic skivvy, so she alternated between yelling about the mess and resentfully clearing it up, all the time feeling like she could hear Emily Pankhurst spinning in her grave.

She was contemplating breaking her lease and moving out without giving notice when she spoke with me.

I suggested she went to every effort to introduce bins beside each seating area and kitchen work-surface, and she placed two large trays on top of the coffee table making the evening clear-up of crocks and takeaway wrappers far simpler.

She cleared a cupboard of stale food and empty wrappers and instead of doing the week’s washing up when there was no spare work-surface left, she shoved it all into two washing up bowls and into the cupboard out of sight (and smell).

Tina was the only person doing any housework at all at this point, so she was already making it simpler for herself and laying the groundwork for the next stage.

She ran these systems for a few weeks, making adjustments where needed to increase their effectiveness, and after the benefits of a slightly tidier house had begun to be noticed, and the lack of rows had improved relations, Tina called a house meeting.

She drew up a rota for who would be responsible for emptying the bins, taking the trays through at night and also emptying the washing-up stash, and explained that she had gone out of her way trying to make it easy to keep the shared areas tidy.

She also calmly explained that as a student herself she did not have hours to devote each day to being the unpaid servant of three capable adults, and that she would move out at the first opportunity if the situation didn’t improve.

Because she had made it easier already for her fellow sharers to do the right things and improve the level of order in the house, the boys were far more willing to co-operate, and her use of fixed rotas and shortcuts like the trays appealed to the boy’s desire for an easy life.

Looking for a new sharer to replace Tina would be more trouble than simply going along with her carefully laid plans, and because she had delivered her speech calmly and with forethought, it was obvious that she was serious and not just throwing a tantrum.

Making it easier to be tidy than untidy and appreciating that the other students needed housework broken down into easy chunks meant Tina kept her sanity intact and no longer felt like she was a traitor to the cause of female liberation.

She stayed on until her lease ended, and her experience of planning ahead for domestic chores and introducing shortcuts and systems has proved very useful in her new house-share, where she was able to set fair and simple ground rules from the first day.

Too Hot To Handle

There’s a saying that if a frog hops into hot water, it will hop right back out, yet if the water is heated slowly with the frog in it, it will cook without realising what’s happening.

While that’s not a very nice image, it does describe the way that we don’t always notice small changes that can then overwhelm us.

I don’t want you to have to repeat the major declutter you’ve done in the first three weeks ever again, because life is just too short and an organised home is a pleasure we all deserve.

This week’s target therefore is to make the first few steps towards organised living and to find new ways of thinking and feeling about keeping a tidy home.

Actions of the Week

1. Identify your target!

Right now, or when you get home, identify the single biggest clutter problem you had to clear out in weeks 1 – 3, and spend a few minutes planning the systems you can put in place to prevent it from becoming a problem in future.

These “systems” can be as simple as moving a bin so it’s within reach, putting up some coat hooks, or getting a letter rack or inbox, but make sure they are based on your actual experiences during the big clearout, and having pinpointed the worst source of clutter in the worst area, move on down the list until every kind of item that becomes clutter has its own system in place

The goal is to make it easier to be tidy than untidy, and after the hard physical work of the last 3 weeks, this week it’s time to deploy your wits to outsmart the clutter monster.

2. Pay close attention

Once you’ve created a few of these systems, observe carefully how well they work for you and anyone who lives with you. Ask for feedback if other people are using them and where possible adapt your systems to please everyone, so that other people have an investment in the new regime.

Remember we are in this for the long-haul, and making a few adjustments now and maybe humouring other people’s foibles is a price worth paying for an organised life and a beautiful home.

3. Get inspired

Take some time out to leaf through the notes you made in week 1 about your ideal home. Update any descriptions if you’ve had better ideas, or spotted some potential you didn’t notice before.

Treat yourself to one or two interior design magazines, or a book about design, and when you get a moment spare, surf the web for ideas and inspiration. Share this with anyone you live with who can make a positive contribution, and make sure that all voices are heard.

The goal behind this is twofold – I want you to stay in touch with your vision, and I want you to begin to engage emotionally with the beautiful ordered home you are creating.

Next time you start having negative thoughts or feelings about completing a small chore, either switch off completely using Sandra Felton’s robotics technique, or better yet try to replace the negative thoughts with the positive, productive knowledge that you are creating the lovely home of your dreams.

4. Live in the present

Make the most of what you have. Even if your current home is temporary or far from perfect in size or location, reflect on the fact that you are putting in a solid foundation of good habits for when you do get your ideal place.

I haven’t drawn any firm conclusions on how much we can really manifest things in our lives, but I do know that time spent preparing for good things is never time wasted.

You’ll feel awfully silly if you get your dream home and within a year it resembles the municipal dump – so be prepared for greatness, and meanwhile continue to make the most of your dwelling by keeping up the ten-minute pre-bed tidies, minding the gap between use and disposal, and looking out for ways to make it easier to be tidy.

If you’re waiting to acquire some new shelving, storage or new furniture don’t let that be a reason to let things slide – there’s no reason to lapse back into perfectionist all-or-nothing thinking just when you’re ahead of the game.

And of course, if you already live in your dream home it might be a good idea to reflect on what a blessing it is and what a terrible shame it would be to ever let it get cluttered again.

Aim to find the beliefs or attitudes that promote tidiness and which motivate you to create productive new habits, and when you spot any beliefs or thoughts that support untidiness stamp them out without hesitation.

I don’t want you to have wasted the last three weeks of your time by slipping back into, and justifying or excusing, old patterns of cluttered living.

5. Make an “HQ”

Buy a folder or allocate a drawer or box to your new organised home and keep any inspiring cuttings, printouts and your notepad in there – you’ll be needing this space next week when it will become your control centre for the next stage of organising your home.

In week 1, I advised against acquiring any more possessions than you needed but with the big clearout now complete, you can safely treat yourself to a few things that will make you feel good about your new organised lifestyle and provide a kind of HQ for all your organisational materials

I look forward to seeing you next week!