How to Get Organised and Stay Organised

1. Class Overview: How to Get Organised and Stay Organised: Well, hello and welcome to this Skillshare class, where we're going to be talking about how to get organized at home so that you feel calmer and more control of your space. I bet you've been feeling frustrated when you're looking for things in a rush or when it takes such a long time to get the house ready for guests coming over. Now, it's one thing to get organized, but this course will also teach you how to stay organized so that you don't manage to undo all of your hard work. Who am I? My name is Susie Kel. I'm a decluttering coach from Dublin in Ireland. I help people to declutter their unwanted things and make space for living well. I give them advice, encouragement and create structure so that people can tackle their stuff and conquer their chaos once and for all. Firstly, I'll give you five handy ways to get your stuff together so that it's easy to find and even easier to put away. That way, you'll be able to tidy up quickly and get on with the more fun things you want to do in life. Then we'll get into ways to stay on top of things with some clever storage ideas and easy tidy up routines that have worked for both me and my clients over the years. So are you ready to change your daily life for the better? Let's get started. 2. Getting Organised: An Introduction: Let's start with a disclaimer, because I believe there's no one right way to be organized. There are differences of opinion. There's different levels of comfort or desire to keep things at a very, very clean level or very organized level really is about how you want to live your life. But there are some general principles that you might want to take on board when deciding what systems you're going to implement. So we want to be organized enough so that we feel calm, we feel peaceful. We come home from work and we don't feel overwhelmed. That's one of the things I hear all the time from people, is that feeling of just the sinking of, Oh, it's just so messy. We also want to find things easily, find them quickly, get out the door on time. You don't want to be rebuying things because you can't find them. That is something I hear a lot, as well, which is really frustrating for people. And also, you want to stay safe. We want things to be organized in such a way that they don't fall on you. You're not tripping over them. Nothing is spilling. Nothing is damaging anything. You know, so these are the things we're aiming for. And what we're not aiming for is to be so organized that you end up putting things down on surfaces instead of in the organizing solution instead of in the fold or in the box, because it's just too difficult to maintain or it's too annoying. We also don't want to be so organized that only you can keep that organized and to maintain the system, and no one else in your house can keep up or even wants to participate because it's too hard. And you also don't want it to be so organized that you don't even try to maintain it because it won't be perfect. You can't have the perfect color coded paper filing system. You can't have the perfect cereal in different containers in your kitchen system. So things just land where they land, all or nothing thinking. We're aiming for something that works for you, can be done on a daily basis with any energy levels that you may have and that everyone else can participate in. I'm going to give you five tips, five kind of guidelines around this to help you stay organized once you've gotten organized to begin with, because that's the main thing. We want it to be easy to maintain and to feel satisfaction based on the resources that we have available. Okay, so let's get into it. 3. The Cutlery Drawer Principle: So the first technique I have for you is to implement the cutlery drawer principle. When I first heard about this, I thought, that's actually a brilliant way to think about organizing. Like, this is the gold standard because a cutlery drawer typically works pretty well about staying organized. It's very uncommon for you not to be able to find a spoon or a fork when you need one because we need it multiple times a day. So why does it work so well? Items have a specific place to go when they're not in use. It's very clear to everybody who uses these knives and forks that that is where they go. If they don't, the consequences are pretty big, we maintain them because we need to eat. Everyone knows where the drawer is and everyone uses it the same way. It's easy to put things in, so there's no covers over anything. It's clear where the knives go, the forks go, the spoons go. And we all participate in it. Every time a dishwasher is emptied, that's what we do. Every time we need to grab a spoon to have a yogurt, we know exactly where to go. So let's take some of those principles and implement them in other parts of our home. Using this as kind of that gold standard. So here are some examples. Right. If you're the kind of person who has post fliers, things coming from kids' school bags, you come home from a trade event and you have all these papers and they just land on your coffee table, on a chair, on your kitchen counters, it feels messy, right? But what if everybody used a tray, used a folder somewhere for those incoming things to land, and there was a regular rhythm of going to that tray and moving things along, putting them in the recycling, paying bills, you know, leaving your vouchers or anything there. And this can be as simple as a tray, something that's just a dunk and go kind of solution. But while it functions really well, everybody knows that's where the papers go. It's also still visual and still just as easy as putting something down in a random place around the house. But we've the benefit of it's gathered, it's easy to see what's there, and it's easy to see when it's full up and needs attention. Try a tray, try a magazine file, something like that for papers, and it might be a great solution for papers coming into the house. Another one is toys and crafts. I'm a crafter myself. I have paints, I do miniatures, origami, I do gardening. Each of those things has a clear pouch with a label on it. If I've planted some seeds and I have a few leftover, I know where the seeds go. You know, if you've got a ego set or if you've got a load of lego, a clear box with a label on it is where it can be swept up and put away very quickly before dinner. Or you take out a load of paints to do a project at the kitchen table, it's easy for anybody to come in, sweep those things up and put them back where they go because they're clearly labeled, and it's easy to put them away and to see where they might have to land. So that's kind of a wonderful way to make sure that different categories of things are put away based on the cutlery principle. Okay. Another one comes from a real life example that I had with a client of mine. So she had a lovely work area, little office, the front of her house, and her partner would come in with his motorcycle gear, and it would just land on top of shelves and cabinets and things and make it fairly unpleasant for her to work in that small room. So what we maneuvered and suggested was that we use a place that was just off of her utility room to put up some hooks. She already had a few cabinets and things that she could use. There were places for helmets to land, for any bicycle repair gear. There were hooks for the gear you have to wear on the motorbike, the jackets and the trousers and things. Just as easily, he could get undressed from all of the motorcycle gear in that utility room as in the front of the house. I meant that she got her space back. So everyone knew that's where the bike gear goes. There were very clear hooks. It was a very easy system to implement. And if you needed to grab something to do with the bike, it had a zone, and everything went back there when we were finished with it. So there's just a few examples where we can use that cutlery door principle where everyone can participate and it's very clear where things go. And then our lives are easier and we're late less often, and we're not as frustrated because we know where we can find things. 4. Help Out Future You: Clear and Labelled Boxes: My next tip is to help out future you. This I find very, very useful as somebody who is great at doing things for someone else, not always great at doing them for me. So it's the idea of trying to do things now that make life easier for you so that you don't have to remember things, you don't have to work as hard because you can do a little bit more now to give yourself a chance in the future. So how can I make life easier for myself? Generally, I find externalizing the organizing system as much as possible, making it really clear what choices you made, how things should be maintained by making that as easy as possible to follow. And you'll see what I mean by that just now. So one example here is say you had some wool, it could be for a particular project. It could be just spare wool. If you put that in a plastic bag and it goes in the bottom of your wardrobe and you don't see it for six months, first of all, you might not remember that it's there or you find it and you're not really sure what it's for. So instead, you could have a clear box so you can see pretty much all the time. Oh, there's wool there, so you don't forget about it. You have a label on it that says it's wool. You might say what kind of wool or how much of it there is, as much information as you like. So you don't have to remember anything about that wool. And also it might be in a box that's easier to clean. So say this was food items or paint or something that might get messy, having it in a plastic box, you know, whatever's handy around the place, or something that's, you know, easy to wipe clean, compared with, say, a wicker basket or something like that that, you know, can't just be wiped clean as easy as that. Thinking about how can I make life as easy as possible for myself? By choosing the containers by putting as much information as I can into that organizing system. And then it's easy peasy to find that will, use it again, and understand what you were trying to achieve while you were organizing. 5. Help Out Future You: Checklists: Another way you could do this in a very important example is with a First Aid box. So maybe it's you're rushing in there to get plasters, to get painkillers, bandages, whatever you need. But keeping an inventory list that's ticked off, that's crossed out, or even keeping I need to buy again list can make it in an emergency very quick and easy to find what do I need? Or you can keep instructions in there, keep anything that's really important so that you don't have to hunt for things when you're already in a difficult situation and you need help quickly now. You can also see that those things are organized in a vertical position, which means you can see as much as possible with one glance, because if you need something from a first aid box, you need it quickly and clearly. So having a very organized first aid list, a box, you know, something like that can really help in an emergency situation. So we don't have to remember anything. We can see things clearly, and we're not caught out at an important moment. A real life example of thinking about future is here. This is a client that I had. She had boxes, as you see, a little bit of string with labels attached saying, Okay, these are files. These are extra stationary, whatever it is. Then within them, we had these reusable zip files and using a thing that I really love is masking tape, which can be easily written upon but also taken off. Here we have health claims. Maybe you put the date on that as well, remember, yeah, that's this year's health claims I need to do when I do my taxes. And then when that's finished, it can be taken off reused for something else. But you can see that all of those files sit in the box nicely. You can flip through them if you want to and the label means it's really easy to see what you have. If you have something to add to that, something important, it doesn't just get thrown in the box. It goes in its exact folder because it's easy to unzip them. It's easy to see where things go. Future you doing taxes, looking for stationary. You can see there's even one that says to file. It's clear what is required of the papers that go into that box and so you can maintain that system. So that's one way we can help out ourselves when we are choosing an organizing system. 6. Help Out Future You: Set Up for the Next Day: An example of where you can help out future you in an organizing system at home is with what some people have called evening closing duties, a little bit like if you had a cafe and you were wrapping up for the night. So maybe you have a list of things that you do to help yourself out in the morning when you're trying to get ready, I know myself, I'm more of an evening person. So when you do things at night, when you're feeling a bit groggy in the morning, you feel supported and cared by yourself from the past. So this might be washing the dishes, making sure you have a clear sink, clearing any crumbs off surfaces, giving them a quick wipe down, tidying up where you spent the evening, clearing away books, plates, you know, anything that you were doing so that you have a nice welcoming seating area for when you come to it the next day. Sometimes I find it really helpful to lay out my outfit and to prepare my breakfast, even if that's just putting the little bit of coffee in the cafeterier, laying out, you know, the plate and, you know, the knife and whatever you need to make breakfast. So it kind of gives you that little boost. It helps future you to stay organized, to keep on your toes, by just doing some things in the evening to help out your future self. 7. Be the Guardian Surfaces: Handy Boxes: So the next tip goes hand in hand with all the other things that I've said. You're helping out yourself. You are coordinating with other people around you. And this is being the guardian of surfaces. This is where things tend to go and give us that visual information makes us feel overwhelmed because there's a lot going on. It's very easy. It's like a magnetism. Things just want to land places. So what we can do is we can give them more clever places for them to land so that they look and feel more organized. So here's another real life example. This was covered with bits of clothing and papers and different things. So we've set up a lovely little display here, a collection of items in matching colors, and this is what you would hope it would end up like. When you've protected your surfaces, they're easier to clean, they look nice, it's inviting. If something lands on the surface, you pick it up quickly. You move that coffee cup back to the kitchen, you deal with the papers or you have somewhere that they land and that this is the final product. This is what you want it to look like when you're finished. And to celebrate that. So what we do here is, first of all, we have to identify what surfaces are the hot zones for gathering stuff, so then we know which ones to protect because it might be that there are just a few different areas where things are consistently landing. And as you're decluttering and you're doing loads of good work, you don't want stuff to keep coming in to keep building up. So we can at least start with protecting those areas. Or say you've cleared out your kitchen cabinets, become the guardian of those cabinets. Don't let spills, stay unclean, not cleaned up. Don't let things get out of order. Once you've decluttered something, become its guardian. And that's just actions little tweaks as you go along. So in this example, it's a work desk. Stationery is piling up. There could be mugs here, papers, and it just looks and feels messy. You can't find what you need. Without doing something completely drastic, storing papers in a completely different room, forcing yourself to do something that feels unnatural, how about we use the actual surface that the hot zone has appeared on and giving things place to go. I enjoy a jar or a mug where you can have anything from hair bobbins, scissors, pens, I even have matches landing somewhere, and it looks really neat and tidy, but it's just as easy as landing on the table. Similarly here, there's a magazine file for your papers to go in and it's easier to browse them. The things are in the same place with a tiny tweak that means that they look and feel more organized. And so as things land on your surfaces, pick them up and put them in these places that you've given them to go. Another real life example is there were a number of different cleaning products in this very small bathroom where there wasn't any other storage available. We found some boxes. We put the things in there. We put the cleaning products together and a few little things, and all of them were grab and go. And they weren't so overfilled we couldn't see or get what we needed. But the same things just hanging out on that ledge wouldn't look quite so purposefully organized if they weren't in the boxes. So even just a simple box can make you feel put together, feel important, and also give you, okay, if it doesn't fit in the box, maybe it doesn't deserve to have space in this little bathroom because how many products do we really need? So it does a good job. So putting a box there gives it somewhere to land. 8. Be the Guardian Surfaces: Be a Waiter: Another thing I often say about guarding surfaces is be a waiter. Every time you get up and leave a room, take your dirty dish with you. You're going upstairs, take the thing up with you, take the thing down with you, make use of every journey that you do around the house and always be holding something. So it actually eliminates you having to do a cleanup job because you're just always doing it. And it becomes a habit. Your hands kind of go, What can I grab every time you get up? And it just builds that organizing into every action that you're doing rather than having to become its own chore. 9. Be the Guardian Surfaces: Strategic Storage: Another thing you could think of is strategically placing storage, a bit like that desk. What if instead of things landing on the kitchen table and on the chair, you gave them somewhere nearby where they could land, a coat rack, a hook because then it looks purposeful, it looks organized. But you're not forcing yourself to do something really unnatural and put it far away from where you were just landing things down. Because we're not about forcing ourselves to do difficult things. We're doing little tweaks that make things look and feel organized. An example of this from real life again, is what I call a teddy bear hotel. There were toys all over the floor in this particular house that I worked on. We found a basket and I said, What if at the end of the day, the kids went, Okay, everyone has to go to bed. They have to go to the teddy bear hotel, rather than land on the floor, they can land on a basket that sits on the floor that looks nice, looks organized, and the kids know they can find their toys and their teddies in there whenever they want them after that. It's a little tweak, it's a little bit of fun. It's still on the floor, but it looks and feels organized. This is some of the ways that you can be a guardian of your surfaces. 10. How to Store Temporary Things: This one was a real aha moment for me. Keeping spaces for temporary things. Why is it landing in an awkward place on a kitchen counter, on a table, on the floor because it doesn't deserve a long term home. Why don't we give it somewhere that it's allowed to be while it's in our house, it's easy to find, easy to maintain, and so it doesn't land in places we don't want it to be. So what kind of things can these be? Well, when things don't need a permanent home, things like a craft project. You're doing paint by numbers. You're doing a lego project that's not finished. You're making something for a friend. You know, those are not long term craft supplies that deserve to go in a particular labeled box that you make all special. But maybe you keep a pouch, you keep a shoe box, you keep something to store that craft project in while you're doing it so that it's not taking over the kitchen table or your desk or something like that while you're working on it. And when you're finished, as we saw in previous examples, you can take the label off and reuse it for something else. I do this all the time with cross stitch, with paintings, all sorts of things, and I find it very helpful to keep everything you need for a project in a kit for the duration of that project. Another one that can be very helpful is library books or books that you've borrowed from someone. Keeping a little bit of empty space on a shelf or somewhere nearby specifically for library books that are being read and then will leave because otherwise, they land beside your bed on the floor in strange places, and you'll need to find them when you need to find them. But actually giving them permission to land somewhere can be very, very helpful. And I do love the library myself. Charity shop donations. You may want to keep a long term box or a bag for your charity shop things so that you don't just find something and leave it beside the front door under the stairs, ready to go out, but that it has its container and it's ready to grab and go when the opportunity arrives. And this can be helpful if you put a very clear label on it. I suggest some masking tape, a bit of marker, and then you can even reuse that box if you want to. But giving them a designated container and a space can mean that they aren't scattered around or left where you found them saying, I'll deal with that some other day. It just gives that one little step further towards getting them out of your house. And then another one is gifts. You may have a little gift bag, a little something you brought back from a trip and you want to give it to someone, and it just sits out on a counter so you don't forget about it. So what about having a little drawer, a shelf, a spot in your car? Whatever works for you, where gifts can go so that you're reminded and that they're not taking up space that they shouldn't, and that you get them out to the person so they can enjoy them. So here are just some temporary things that deserve a shelf that deserve a container for the time that they're in your house, so that we can protect our surfaces and we can keep organized without these kinds of things taking over. 11. The One Step Rule: Remove Lids: Okay, so let's talk about the one step put away rule. How can we make it so easy to put things away that even your kids can do it? Even somebody who doesn't know you can do it because we want it to be as easy as possible to get things back where they should be. Now, you may have heard the phrase, don't put it down, put it away. But that is only something that works if your way of putting things away is not complicated, if it's clear, if it's easy to do. So let's make it easy to put things away rather than put them down. Let's make us want to do it, make it satisfying. Here are some ways that we can make it less complicated to maintain our organizing systems. Okay, so what if we made it easier to tidy up? One thing I suggest is to remove lids. It's really straightforward. What if it was as easy as possible to just pop things back in their boxes? In a drawer, you don't have to take three boxes down and take the lids off. What if you had them in such a way that you could just drop and go? So remember our wool example for before. That's one way we could do that. I'd also suggest that as you are setting up those lovely places for things to drop easily, broaden your categories. The more complicated your system is where you have guest toels in one place, your upstairs tells, your downstairs tells, your fancy ts, your messy tells. Broaden those categories, allow those to go in one general area so that if someone was putting away towels, it's okay if they don't go exactly where you would need them to go because that's just where towels go. One way you can help yourself with this is if you color coordinate. I've seen it work really well where towels for messy things can be, you know, a green color. Your guest towels can be blue. Your towels for the master bathroom can be gray so that you know exactly what they are. So as they land in the place, the color itself will help you figure out what's what. This is also great for Duves. So having them very specifically color coordinated to different rooms and different bed sizes can mean that you don't get them mixed up, and it's just that bit easier to put them where they need to go and to take them out as you need them. So, consider broad categories easy for things to go away. 12. The One Step Rule: Store Upright: Another thing I'm a big fan of is storing things upright, making it literally as easy to pick something up in one sweep. So what that means is things aren't blocking. They aren't sitting and stopping you from seeing what's there and also from just picking them up. So here the examples are tools. Maybe you have pencils that sit in a drawer in some kind of pencil case. It's just as easy to pick them out of a cup and put them back in. Sometimes I use empty jars as well for this kind of thing, for bobbins, for I even have one for used matches. Just as easy to pop them in as they're cooling down. Then also with filing papers, the more you have to punch holes, you have to put things in individual plastic pockets. The more fuss, the less likely you are to sit down and do it or becomes a bigger job, whereas if you have something that is like an accordion file, a simple file like this, drop and go, keep it simple, well labeled, and a one step put away and it makes such a difference. Someone who's great at this is Mari Condo. Here clothes are folded and placed in an upright fashion. These boxes are from Ikea. I find it really helpful to be able to see everything I have and that if I wanted to pick any one of those t shirts up, it's one motion. I'm not disturbing things that are piled on top and causing more mess, like you may have seen in many different clothing shops. It works really, really well. There's lots of videos where she shows you how to do it. But this is something my hands do automatically now, and I find that one step grab what I need and see everything that's there. That visual and vertical stacking is very, very helpful for keeping things organized. 13. The One Step Rule: Limit Stacking: One thing that you should particularly pay attention to in a kitchen is to limit the stacking of things. Now, this tends to happen, as in this example here with food, with plates, pots and pans, particularly. So if you can have a rule like you don't have more than two things on top of each other, if it's possible, it means that you can access the things at the bottom that bit easier. And also, you don't have a crazy stack of things that may fall on you. And one thing I do particularly enjoy doing with cans or with anything you have multiples of is, like in this picture, setting them up like you're in a shop so that you can see all the varieties that you have, and it's easy to get the ones from the front. Sometimes I even stack cans of soft drinks in the fridge like this. So it uses a small sliver of space, but you know exactly what it is because there's only one of each kind of thing in each row. And it looks really nice and satisfying as well. 14. The One Step Rule: Store Where Used: I also would recommend storing things where you use them and that might be sometimes in an unconventional way. Here are two examples from my home. One is we have a large scissors in the kitchen that sits with our cooking utensils up on the hooks. What it means is at a very quick glance, we can see where the scissors is. Now, this is not a scissors we use for cooking. It's just for all the different things we need. You're opening a package, you're cutting sellotape, you're doing something really quickly and you need scissors. It's a color that stands out from the other things that are up there, and also it's just easy to find. You don't have to rummage in a drawer for it, and it's one that's placed where everyone in the family knows that it needs to go back there. Another one is that I keep a spare little thing of deodorant in my underwear drawer. So my official deodorant is in the bathroom where I get ready every morning, brush my teeth, do my skin care deodorant. But sometimes you forget or you just need to top it up. So often I found that when I was putting on my underwear, I would remember, Oh, I need deodorant. I keep a deodorant there, so I don't have to go looking for it. I keep smelling nice. But, you know, it's not the most conventional place to keep a deodorant, but I find that keeping it there where I use it means that I always know where I can find some deodorant in that particular instance. So that just takes a little bit of observing the way that you use your space and putting things where you use them. 15. Make it Look Pretty: Alright, here are some bonus tips to make your organization look pretty. So consider this the cherry on top. Not necessary. But can make it just extra satisfying when you've done the hard work of putting things in their place. So one thing when you're dealing with surfaces is grouping things in threes or fives is a particular design principle and varying the shapes and the sizes, I can look a little bit more organized and purposeful. Also putting them over to the side. It follows what's called the rule of thirds and makes things just look kind of a little bit more artistic, a little bit more pleasing to the eye. So remember, threes and fives are what you're aiming for there rather than even numbers. Here's an example, a couple of little books together. Those are actually coasters made into a cactus, which is cool. But it just works really well. If you consider the books as one item and then the other two things on top. Can be cute, neat. As I said before, there is something magical in a tray. Use a basket, use a tray, and suddenly cooking utensils, as you can see, their bathroom accessories look really purposeful and they are meant to go together because there is something containing them in a visual way. They could just as easily sit on the counter, but for some reason, when things are gathered together on a tray, on a basket, something like that, they look like they have very, very craftily been displayed there. The other thing is, I usually stick with neutral tones because then you can use those trays around the house in different places. They're not specific to one color scheme. Another thing is if you have the means to get all new containers, try and get matching ones, whether that's matching in materials. You can see there you've got white plastic or maybe they're from the same place. Or you have those wicker containers. Having the same materials or even getting them all from the same place means that they match each other both in size, which is great for stacking or for keeping extra ones together, and they just look more cohesive. So if you want to consider this, maybe just pick one place that you get them from that you know you can get them again and again, and choosing a matching color or even the same containers can make things look very cohesive and nice. And then, lastly, if you want to keep things looking spiffy, keep your cleaning supplies handy. If you're always wiping a sink, if you're always tidying up a particular surface or your car gets a bit dusty, keeping a cloth handy in that place can make things look really nice and keep them organized. When you're already just sitting there, you've just sat in the car, grab the cloth, do 3 seconds. You don't have to go looking for your cleaning supplies, and it just means that a bit like being a waiter, you're always doing a little bit of organizing, a little bit of cleaning and to keep things looking good because it's as convenient as possible for you to keep them looking good. 16. Why Was it Landing There? View Like a Guest: Module, we're going to look at why was the Clutter landing there to begin with. Sometimes it's hard to see things from, you know, a different perspective or to imagine what might have been if you had just moved into this place and you would do things a different way or change your habits just slightly to stop things building up again. Because if Clutter built up before, you know, things don't stop coming into our lives, and we have to think about you know, why is it landing there? And is there something I can do to help it not build up, whether that's changing your shopping habits, changing your routines, the things you do every day to keep things tidy, and assessing how good the homes are for things where they live. Are they holding you back from keeping your house clutter free? So basically, it's time to look under the hood. Let's get to the root of the issue to stop it building up again because it's not just about making it look pretty, it's about making real life changes. Sorry, we have to get into the deep stuff. We have to face our demons together. So, one thing I often suggest to people is to try viewing your space like a guest. Like, what if you know, it's a bit like when you invite someone over and suddenly see you see the marks on the wall and the dirt and things that are out of place that just your eyes glaze over, you know, in your regular life. So viewing it like a guest, if you walked into, say, for example, here, your work from home space, would you suddenly see the coffee cups and the piles of things on the floor, the things that shouldn't be in this space? What if you were to choose just three of those things and find a solution for them? You know, what if you kind of went, Okay, maybe if I just put the toys back in the playroom, in the kids room? What if I gather up those coffee cups? Hmm. I wonder if I could put a tray there. I wonder if I could have a flask that I refill instead of bringing cups after cups into this room, and maybe I need to think longer term about where I store my files. Maybe I need to overhaul my home organization system there. And we start to view it like a guest. Don't panic, and we can start to dig into those problems one at a time. We can make a list we did before, put it in order of priority, and tackle it one thing at a time. 17. Why Was it Landing There? More Examples: So here are some examples of where you may have glazed over. Here's some just examples from clients that I've had. This was in a bedroom. You kind of don't realize that you've got stuff there that's been there for, like, there's videotapes there for 20 years. And there's picture frames. You know, maybe and there's vases. So maybe we just want to dedicate that space to books. And something simple like that suddenly you've got space. Suddenly, things are looking a little bit more manageable and you can find what you need, and you bring things to other homes. Here's a simple living room from a family that I worked with. And like, this isn't too bad. We moved the sofa and there was a fair few cheerios under the sofa as you do when you have small kids. But by the end of the session, I set up different parts of the room with you can see in the corner there, I've got a little teddy bear hotel in the basket. I've got a nursing station. We've got clear floors. We've got cozy little cushions, and we just picked up a few things, and that could just be grabbing a basket, tray, and just going around and picking up anything that's not meant to be there, putting a laundry basket in that room to grab any loose clothing that you find. But it's kind of viewing things with fresh eyes and thinking, Alright. Did I notice that before? Or is it something that's just blended into the background and become an underlying stress that I don't even know is stressing me out? 18. Why Was it Landing There? Kitchen Problems: Okay, so now an example of where you might have a room like this particular kitchen where you can see, there's a fair bit of clutter. There's stuff getting in the way of cooking, of living life comfortably of just making it easy to clean. And also, it's a bit stressful to look at. So why? Not just what is landing here, but why are these things landing there? And can we follow that train of thought back to figure out what we might need to do? So identifying different problems, identify them here and give you some ideas. And I do trust you to think of creative ways to address these problems. Sometimes it's simple, sometimes it takes a little bit of ingenuity. So let's have a look at what's going on in this room. Okay. One of the first things here is we have unfinished tasks. This one I'm referring to the middle piece there where it looks like they are baking, okay? Maybe pulled out a load of stuff, started measuring things, got distracted, something came up, didn't finish it. A little bit like a knitting project, and it sits in the corner fridges or a book that you leave out somewhere and you never come back to it. So things are unfinished, so it feels like putting them away is not what you want to do. You do want to come back to it. So you just leave the stuff out. Another very common reason is we need to remember it. So this is the fliers. This could be a doctor's appointment. This could be a bill that needs paying or brochure for something and you want to remember it and go, Oh, yes, I need to do that. It gets dirty. It falls down. It's in the way. It gets overwhelming. And also, this might be scattered all over the kitchen, not the most helpful. So sometimes people who are very visual need things to stay out out of sight is out of mind. Another reason might be that your storage areas are full. We do the laundry, and we have towels, but we can't put them away because, you know, the laundry cupboard, the airing closet, whatever it is, the hot press, we call it here. There's it's jam packed. There's no space for the towels, so the towels, just go on the floor. They just hang out. You know, this makes a lot of sense. I've seen people hanging up clothes on chairs and just on hooks in their room because their wardrobes are so full of clothes. So, interesting. Why is it there? Because there's nowhere to put it away. There's no home for it. It could be that something is new or there are areas in your home that are being used for something else. So you've got a nice tall brush that you've just bought. There's nowhere to clip it on. There's no appropriate closet for it because it's brand new. So right now there's no home, so you can't put it away. Sounds simple, find a home for it, but we need to maybe do a bit of rearranging first before we can figure that out. And lastly, with the pot, maybe this is something you've cooked and you're just too busy. You've got to go take care of the kids or your schedule is really full, too busy to deal with something to completion now. So it sits out. It hangs out there. And so all of these things are very valid reasons for things to be sitting out and in front of you. So we come to it with compassion with understanding, but let's see how we could maybe address some of these by looking at why so that these problems don't keep happening again and again. We make some changes, we make some tweaks, and then hopefully it'll be a little bit easier to tidy this up again the next time. 19. Why Was it Landing There? Kitchen Solutions: Okay, so we can solve all of these problems, and I'm going to give you a few suggestions now. So, if we are too busy to do it right now, why don't we just punch out a little bit of time? Just a blitz 15 minutes. Stick on some music. Sometimes I put on a TV show on my laptop right next, the ironing or something that's not that exciting. Also, if you have a project like we talked about, you know, the lovely jumper that you're knitting or the book you didn't read or the baking that didn't get finished, it's okay to abandon projects and just say that is finished and return those supplies to the box where they came from, give them to someone else. Sometimes it's just drawing a line in the sand and going, I'm going to abandon that project. That's absolutely fine. Okay, so we've done the dishes, grand. Need to remember it. What if we found a dedicated space? I love a wall. I love a tray, a folder, somewhere where there's actually a dedicated space for those things to go. And then it can still be in view. There still can be that visual reminder, but it is not taking up counter space. It's not getting lost because it is literally pinned into place. So think about giving visual reminders, things you have to remember, whether it's a shelf to keep things you need to give back to someone, a box, something like that. Give it a spot, and then it'll be just one place for it. There's no home for the bucket, the storage areas are full. This is where we go back our inventory method. We write down things that need to do. We follow our train of thought, Well, I can't declutter that because I can't put it away anywhere. So we're going to prioritize high traffic spaces, like for example, here, under the sink, under the stairs, the linen cupboard, where those problems seem to be coming up again and again. I know you might think, but everywhere needs to be done. Some areas will have a bigger impact. And if we prioritize clearing floors and countertops first, we'll start to have that ripple effect of things going away out of sight and we can find them again. And then we're left with this. We've identified, you know, this isn't an impossible task. There are certain things. There are certain reasons why things are falling here. And so now that we have better storage, we have places for visual reminders to go. We have given ourselves, you know, a small period of time to get things done, and we've abandoned projects, and we've just done some simple things, given ourselves some solutions. We can repeat this again and again, and the next time, it'll be even quicker and it'll be even quicker, and we can protect those surfaces and keep them clean, and then we can do anything we want in this kitchen. 20. Room Rules: Part 1: So we've identified the reasons why things are getting, you know, building up and getting in the way. And now we want to do our best to keep things tidy. So there are some ways we can introduce some rules, some things to aim for on a regular basis, which is very much customized to you so that we can keep things in tiptop shape so we don't have to do a big decluttering or organizing blitz in the future. We can just keep things ticking over. So first of all, do you remember the cutlery drawer? Do you remember why it worked so well to have these organized a certain way? So everyone knows where the drawer the drawer is. Everyone uses it the same way. We do the dishes, we use the dishwasher. We put the forks spoons and knives in their respective places so everyone can find them. And there's a ritual involved that, you know, if we put these in another place, things fall apart. So if we follow these principles, if we keep our room, like we'd keep a cutlery drawer where things go back where they should go, what if we introduce that to other parts of different rooms that we frequently use on daily or weekly basis? So introducing room rules, which I think is more helpful to call room guidelines. So giving yourself something to aim for if you were to tidy a room, what would we be aiming for so that it feels livable, it's manageable? This is especially true in smaller spaces where a few things out of place really will get on top of you. So say this is your living room, and this is typically what it looks like just before you go to bed. What if you had some guidelines for when you finish using a space, you're about to go out, you're about to go to bed, whatever it is, so you want to reset this room. You could have coats and bags are hung up. You come home from work, people come home from school. There are hooks where things get hung up, whether that's here on a coat rack, under the stairs in their rooms, so they have a home for things to go. They aren't falling on the floor, they aren't going draped over things. It could be okay that they initially land in different places. But if the room was to get finished up, these things will go away. And the key here is to have a few simple rules, the most important because we can't spend an hour cleaning every room every time we leave it. You're using blankets or you've got cushions that get tossed around. Maybe they go back on their respective couches, and we simply fold up or even ball up the blankets and throw them in a basket. So we put something next to where we use it so that it can easily be put away. And in particular, I do enjoy a cozy basket of blankets. It looks really nice, but it also just means that it's a bit easier to make things, you know, get back to a reset point. And notice that there's no lid on it, and it's big enough for all of those blankets. 21. Room Rules: Part 2: Leave a room as you found it. So if you've had some toast and tea in there, make it that you bring those dishes out of there when you leave. One for cleanliness. That's, you know, grand. But also, it just means that things will all gather together in one place. And when you're doing the dishes, you don't have that mad scramble for things. So this could look like having, say, a tray, where everybody puts their dirty things on, and then you can take it with you and you in a similar vein, I use often what's called an upstairs, downstairs box that can gather things that need to go back to another place and making it a priority to clear floors and surfaces. If you've got books or papers or anything on any tables, just that they're neatly put away and that we prioritize those areas. You're not going to deep clean the sofas and the lamps and the shelves, but we can focus on a few surfaces and aim for that to be clear. Then at the end, we have a place that we can easily sit down and do any nice task that we might want to do without having to clean up first. I protip could even be having a little mini hand hoover nearby. So if you need to do a quick little clean, you could do that within seconds as well. So having some guidelines for when you leave a room, for example, here, here's a client's place. This was their bedroom. What I said to her was this particular dresser, there were lots of things gathering on it, I said that we're going to aim for as much as possible to clear the top, that we don't have permanent homes for things on top because it feels messy, it feels, you know, a bit stressful to see. So this was an area we were going to try and keep clear. As a rule, when we were resetting the room, make the bed clear this surface top. So I wonder what room guidelines could keep your particular problematic rooms tidy if we were to just implement them. 22. Storage Tips: Hooks, Drawers and Boxes: Homes for things. It's something you might hear a lot, and it's always nice to be reminded of that there's lots of different options, and you might have a preference for one kind of way of storing versus another. But my basic principle is to keep it simple, to remove as many steps as possible to getting things to home. And make it obvious for people. So whether that's labeling things or just, yeah, reducing the steps. So I'm a big fan of hooks anytime you've got, so like a bag can easily, you know, go on a floor, go shoved in a closet. But when it's on a hook, it's just so easy to grab to see it looks really purposeful. And if you're dealing with a smaller space, using any wall space is always a winner because we're trying to use, you know, get things up off the floor. It makes it easier to clean, as you can see from the first picture there. Those don't even have to be drilled into the wall. You can have them hook over the top of a door. I've also used very successfully those temporary command hooks, and I have two in my wardrobe that are just for my backpacks. So hooks, fantastic. It's a one step action and gets things up off the floor. Drawers. We love a drawer. I particularly love a drawer for clothing, done the Mi Condo method. It can be very, very useful in terms of seeing everything that you have. And the key with drawers is to not let things get muddled. So like here, we have drawer dividers, whether that's like the ones you'd find in a cutlery drawer or just boxes to divide things. And it gives things a very clear home where they can land. We also don't want to stack things on top of each other because we can't see them, and then the drawer cannot close. An effective drawer is where it's easy to give something at home and things don't get muddled. Boxes, easy peasy. This can be anything from takeaway containers that you clean and you upcycle them. A key thing for boxes is it makes a lot of sense if you choose similar ones, one, because then they slot together. I'm a big fan of IKA boxes because they're just designed to slot into Ikea shelves. And think about your materials. So, are they easy clean? Do they match each other? Can they be recycled? And then neutral colors? Because if you have a white box or just um wicker basket, it can go in many different places. Whereas, if you've got a red box and then you're trying to put it in a room that's very calm and green, just be jarring and unpleasant. Think about the versatility of your boxes and their ease of use. Matching boxes that stack in a neutral color, they're a winner for me. 23. Storage Tips: Folders, Bags, Baskets and Limits: I'm just going to end up stacking those papers next to the folder. So we've got an accordion file in the middle there, popping things in, nice and easy, you know, pretty much open pop in. I'm happy. You've got a magazine file on the left there, nice for stacking things. And that's a very pretty looking one. So, you know, it's easy just to pop things in and they're not getting in the way. Then a solution I had with a client I really, really liked is kind of zip files in different baskets. The baskets are labeled, the zip files are labeled, and they have lovely little labels made of masking tape that can easily be pulled on and off because if you put a permanent sticker on, it's not as nice having to, you know, color over that or cover it. But if you have a sticker that can come on and off, you can reuse things. So any kind of folder, try and have as few actions as possible to get things into that and then happy days. Bags and baskets. You're pretty much going to have shoe boxes, bags anywhere around. So when you're making temporary solutions, you're going, Oh, I need to gather all these things together. Brilliant. Grab them. I love a basket. You've seen before things are gathering. So if you wanted to make a reading basket that has your book and glasses, lip bum, X, something like that. It looks so much tidier than it all just being scattered all over a little table beside where you're reading. Often, if I am working downstairs, I will put all of my workstuff in a bag and carry it down and it becomes a little work bag. So when you're creating kit things like that, it can be very, very useful to just use whatever bags and baskets you have. And similarly, do you see how pretty these materials are? If you go for something neutral and chic, it'll look like it's meant to be there, and it doesn't have to be something gaudy or just a plastic shopping bag. But if that's all you have to start with, that's absolutely fine. Lastly, I just want to talk about when you're creating homes to think about how much goes in that home and this is where you might think about visual limits. So when we're decluttering but also organizing, going, Okay, once this bookshelf is full, the rules are it doesn't go on the floor, it doesn't go beside it doesn't go on top of it. This is how many books I can have. And obviously, this is very much from person to person. Another one might be, I have the tools that can fit in this toolbox because we want to be able to close our toolbox, or I have enough towels, you know, that there's enough for every person and maybe if there's an accident or something, there's an actual limit to the amount of towels that I can fit in this space, and that's how many towels that I need. So to consider giving yourself limits, even not filling things to the brim so that there's easy access in and out. If you've ever tried to take clothing out of a wardrobe where everything is very tight, you can't browse. So consider giving yourself the tipping point at which you need to get different storage or reduce the amount of stuff that you have. 24. Tidy Up Routines: Evening Tidy: So we've talked about rules for a room when you're moving around your space, things landing in good homes, quick little tidy up things. But now I want to tell you about some rituals you can do when maybe bigger events happen, like coming home from a trip, like finishing a project or school year or some big change that comes with a lot of stuff, and it's good to have a bit of a routine around that so that you can quickly get past that before it becomes a lingering clutter and mess. So what makes an effective routine? Well, it's a logical sequence. So things like maybe if you were to write out some of the things you wanted to do in your routine, if you were looking at your kitchen, you're getting ready for the next day, as we'll talk about just now, if you were to do the dishes in the sink and clear the sink before you fill the kettle, for the coffee the next morning before you fill your water bottles, it's a lot easier to do. You know, it's a bit like trying to take your socks off before your shoes. Like, make life easier for yourself. Do things in a logical sequence. And maybe that'll just take a bit of brainpower more. Maybe it'll be really obvious. Sometimes having a checklist can be very, very satisfying, whether that's you have it on a busted or I've seen people get a plastic pocket and use a whiteboard marker and tick it off every day or a checklist on your phone. Be very satisfying to make sure you feel like you're not forgetting anything a little bit like when you're getting ready to go on a trip. An effective routine is repeatable. So it's not so intricate and perfect and wonderful that you can't do it. So maybe it just has the most essential steps to it, but it has to be something that's not horrible to do, so it's repeatable. And it adapts over time. What works and doesn't work. It's like going on a trip. I used to always sometimes I'd pack, like, a candle and tea and things like that. And then I found that I just wasn't using them. So then I just stopped bringing them. Or you bring an extra T shirt just in case, and you go, Oh, this was a lifesaver. Maybe then that's something you definitely bring on your next trip. So let's look at some routines that might be helpful to keep on top of things at home. So one might be an evening house reset. This is a little bit like room rules, but it's more dedicated to gold the next morning. So, this might have things like every night, I set up my coffee machine so I just press the button, and coffee is ready to go because, you know, if you're early, that's just something you don't want to be fiddling with. Let the morning greet you kindly. Maybe you don't have any dirty dishes so that they don't get crusty and they're not there to greet you in the morning and making you feel like you're not on top of things, and maybe you clear surfaces and you wipe them down. Maybe you just have those three steps or you pick up anything that's on the floor or something like that. It can make a huge difference to starting off the next really, really well. 25. Tidy Up Routines: Coming Home and Trips: How about a coming home routine? So this is something that helps the kind of person that throws their keys down somewhere, and they can never, ever find them. So it's giving things a dedicated spot. Currently, I have a drawer that has boxes, somewhere where, you know, what are the things you're always going out of the house with keys, phone, wallet? That all lives in this coming home zone. Near to that, there should be somewhere where your shoes, the bags you're going to use, your scarves, your hats, all that kind of stuff. So whether that's just a little spot in your bedroom closet, having somewhere dedicated to putting things down and basically unpacking yourself, and then when you need to get out of the house and easy packing everything is just there, I do recommend a coming home zone. So you have that little routine to sort of unpack. One thing that could be helpful is unpacking those essentials from your bag and hanging up an empty bag makes it a lot easier than figuring out where everything is in different bags, especially if it's something important like your wallet. So coming back from a trip, this is where you may have been away for a few weeks, and we have that thing where we have a looming bag full of things to unpack. One thing I find really helpful is just actually emptying the bag onto a table, onto a surface. And then I can just pick a way. As I'm moving about the house, I might bring things down. That can be very helpful. So giving yourself a time frame and a place that's easy to put your suitcase away and to empty your stuff out, putting things in the laundry, so maybe doing a load of laundry as soon as you can, and buying groceries. So giving yourself kind of that ritual. So, you come home, you have a shower. You literally just dump out the bag, put it away. You put on some laundry. The next day you buy groceries, dah dah dah dah. So having that kind of list of things can help get back on your feet after a trip and stop things building up and feeling overwhelming and just boiling it down to those simple things. It's usually laundry, unpacking, and then getting the house ready to live in again. Also bonus tip. If you clean before you go on a holiday, come home to something beautiful, it's a gift to yourself. 26. Class Project: Set Up an Organised Kit: Now it's time for your class project. So we've learned different ways to get organized, and a lot of those involve containing things that make sense together in a particular box, a basket, or even a tray. So what I want you to do is to pick an area of your life. Maybe that's your morning routine, maybe that's coming home from a trip, something that's frustrating for you, and I want you to create a kit to make that easier. So this could be a baking kit where you get all the different baking ingredients together. In a lovely box, you put a label on it, and then whenever you feel like baking, you just pull that one box down and everything you need is there. Or this could be a tray where you put all the contents of your pockets or your handbag so that when you come in the door, you can put your keys, your wallet, anything else you might need there, and so you're not hunting for it the next time you go out the door. I look forward to seeing what you do and what kind of kids you come up with. Please post your pictures and I'll be sure to leave a comment and encourage you for all your hard work.