One thing is for sure, as my home has become more and more decluttered, taking care of it has become easier and easier. Having a place for everything and everything in its place is a cinch. Here are the basic rules I follow to keep my stuff, neat, convenient and under control.

Keep things in the most logical location for your needs.

Store items near to where they are going to be used so they are handy when you need them. Baking pans near the oven, cups and mugs near the kettle,printer paper near the printer, your keys by the door you usually enter and leave from, with your wallet or handbag close by etc.. And remember I did say your needs, you don’t have to follow convention, you do what works best for you.

Allocate the prime position in a location to those items that are used most frequently.

It is natural instinct to follow this strategy. If something is being used often you will want to get at it quickly and easily, so store it in the easiest to reach place. When I say this I of course mean ~ away neatly unless you are actually using it. For example ~ If your kitchen cupboards are deep put the most used stuff to the front of the shelf (on leave it on the bench).

Centralise the storage of items that are used in multiple locations.

To make it easy to know when you need to purchase certain supplies,that are used in more than one location in your home, store the bulk of them in one location and meter them out as needed. For example, keep the bulk of your toilet rolls in the most logical location while only have two or three rolls in each toilet area. Keep the bulk of spare toiletries in one bathroom and share them out as necessary. Keep the bulk of office supplies in the office while only having the minimum basic items in their most used areas in the house.

Don’t overbuy.

Following on from the previous suggestions, don’t over stock items. It is my experience that the more of something that there is in the home the less care and frugality is lavished upon them. For Example, if items like office supplies appear to be in reasonably low quantities (one stapler, one whole punch, a half dozen spare pens, two erasers… for example) they are more likely to be returned to their rightful place when finished being used. And they are more likely to be used less generously or cherished, for want of a better word, making them less likely to be wasted or swallowed up somewhere in the house, car, school bags, messy desk, breakfast bar etc. . I use this tactic when it comes to hair elastics. The less of them I own the more careful I am not to lose them.

Not to mention the fact that the less spares of things you have the smaller the storage space they will take up. Of course what is a reasonable supply of anything will vary from one family to another.

Declutter unnecessary items on a regular basis.

It is always easier to get at what you need, store everything neatly and keep things tidy, if you don’t have a home full of stuff that is nothing more than just in the way. This is especially so for those items that keep coming in, such as paperwork and anything child related. Weed out the out dated and out grown as the new stuff comes in, as well as doing a regular declutter in these areas.

Put things back when you are finished with them.

All the storage planning in the world is not going to help you if you don’t put things back where they belong when you are done using them. One only needs logic to plan storage but it takes effort to stay organised. Many people who think they have no organisational skills may simply be neglecting this important part of the cycle of organisation.

So if you wish to be organised start by making space to manoeuvre your stuff. Then, once there is room, rearrange your stuff to what is most convenient to you. Make a habit of returning items to their place once done with. Maintain or continue with your decluttering and tweak the arrangement as desired. Following this regime you will soon realise that you are an organiser after all, and that it doesn’t take some special talent.

Today’s Mini Mission

Declutter something that came free with something else but you have never used it. My son’s current motorbike came with a touring bag which he has never used nor expressed any desire to use. My daughters partner however has a need for one of these, so it seems logical and practical to pass it on to him since he will get good use out of it.

Eco Tip for the Day

Take care of the things you do own so that they may last and last and not have to be replaced prematurely.

For a full list of my eco tips so far click here

It matters not how fast I go, I hurry faster when I’m slow

Cindy

My youngest, Audra, made me laugh recently by saying that a friend had gotten a new wardrobe from IKEA but preferred to continue using “the floordrobe.”

Personally, I hate the floor. How does so much stuff wind up there? I have four animals, and they each seem to shed their bodies’ weight in fur every week. I don’t have any carpet to trap the fur, and that’s a good thing, but it also means that I have the tumbling tumbleweeds of hair every time we open the windows and a breeze gets going. Yuck. I hate a hairy floor.

I also hate to walk barefoot and have stuff stick to the bottom of my feet. I suppose if I had carpet, the hair and dirty things would sink into the fibers, but that’s not such a pretty picture either. I have only wood and tile flooring and a single 8×10 rug. I’ve told Dan that when the vacuum cleaner dies, I’m going to get rid of the rug rather than buy another vacuum. The rug is the only thing I use it for.

But more than hair and dirt, which are supposed to get on the floor, how do so many other things end up there as well? Looking around, I see two boxes of uniforms that I got down from the attic and have yet to return, a plastic Easter egg (the cat was playing with it), a dog booty (thrown off by the dog and left there for several days), a wash cloth (why?), a bow from a package (what gift? when?), and an insulated bag that’s supposed to be in the back of my van.

All that on the floor in the living room and kitchen, and I don’t even use my floor as a floordrobe! What if those items (which I notice primarily belong to animals….hmm, there could be a lesson here) were joined by clothes, books, magazines, old newspapers, stacks of mail, CDs, shoes, toys, and a pile of laundry to be folded? How about bags of never-opened bags from the store, craft projects, extra pillows, a life-size paper mache giraffe? Some people’s house look like this. Mine has. Yours might.

I once worked with a man named Scott. Scott’s desk was a foot high in papers from right to left, front to back. Worse, he used his floor as an extension: his floor was literally covered with stacks of papers. No one could enter without playing tip toe. I did that for a while, but then I got so irritated with his mess that I just stomped straight over anything on the floor. I figured if he didn’t care enough to keep it off the floor, I didn’t care enough to avoid stepping on it. Probably not what he would have preferred, but it worked for the two of us. But think about it: He had papers so “valuable” that he had to keep them out and available, but it was okay that I walked on them. What does that say about their true value?

The floor is only for a few things: a bit of dust, a drift of pet hair, your feet, the furniture, some lamps. You should be able to walk freely through your home without worrying that you might step or crash into something. It shouldn’t be used as a storage room, trash can, dresser or closet. It’s not your storage unit, and it’s not a library. Get it decluttered if you can’t even see it.

Do you have a floordrobe, or have you overcome one?

Today’s Mini Mission

Aside from all the picking up and wasted storage space, indulging your children with too many toys teaches them the habit of excess and can also stifle their imagination. Have your children choose three toys each to donate to charity this week.

Eco Tip For The Day

Clothes remain new looking for longer when laundered with care. Wash lights with lights, colours with colours and dark with dark. Now that my household is down to just two I wash our lights with our sheets to save on wash loads. The spare bed sheets are red so when needed I wash them with red or even black clothes.

It matters not how fast I go, I hurry faster when I’m slow