Are you overwhelmed by the amount of clutter in your home? Do you leave it there because you just don’t know where to start? You’re not alone.
To successfully declutter and organize, you need a plan of attack. There are dozens of methods of organizing out there, from Marie Kondo’s KonMari method to Swedish Death Cleaning. All of them have some merits (trust me, I have spent a lot of time researching over the years), but given that my company is called Everything In Its Space, it won’t be surprising to hear that I think the SPACE method is most effective for organizing and maintaining your home. This method was popularized in the 90’s by productivity expert Julie Morgenstern and here’s how it works:
Sort
Purge
Assign
Containerize
Equalize
To make it real, let’s use the linen closet as an example. This is an area where people struggle to organize (bulky towels and bedding take up so much space!); but it is also an area where a little decluttering can quickly make a big impact.
SORT
Take out all your towels, sheets, and blankets and bring them to a well-organized, stress-free space in your house or yard. Make piles to sort them into different categories. I often separate towels into a pile that the family uses in the bathroom, a pile of hand-towels for the powder room and a pile of towels for the beach. For bedding, I’ll often make a pile for each bed in the house and sometimes another pile for extra guest bedding if there is an air mattress/futon/pull-out couch.
PURGE
Start with the easy decisions by getting rid of anything in poor condition or that you clearly no longer need. One of my clients found three sets of king bedding when she hadn’t owned a king bed in years. Then move on to the tougher decisions. I believe that you only need two sets of sheets for each bed in the house; this allows one to be in the laundry at any given time and also leaves you with extra sheets should you have guests. My guidance for towels is two per person for the same reason. The good news is that you can pick your favorites!
ASSIGN
Now you need to decide where you are going to put everything, and everything needs its own dedicated space so you know exactly where it goes (labels can help). When assigning a space, remember to focus on making it easy for yourself to put away and store, not to take out and use (if you want it, you’ll get it). You may choose to assign things to specific shelves of one linen closet, or you may choose to assign things to a shelf or drawer in the room they will be used. In my house for example, bedding is stored in a trunk at the bottom of each bed.
CONTAINERIZE
For those of you who have simply stacked towels and sheets in the past, you know it’s all too easy to pull out something from the bottom and make the rest a jumbled mess. I highly recommend using horizontal shelf dividers and storing your folded linens upright like books between them. This works well if you put each complete set of sheets inside of one of the pillowcases for that particular set, leaving you with one small package to store. If you can’t imagine doing this as you struggle to fold fitted sheets, check out this online tutorial. It will change your life! Lastly, I store extra pillows and winter blankets in vacuum-sealed bags which shrink them down to a manageable size and keep them fresh.
EQUALIZE
People often skip this, but it’s critical if you want to maintain your space. A few weeks after you’ve organized an area, take a step back and evaluate what’s working and what isn’t. Maybe you’ve realized that the sheets you grab most often are on the bottom shelf and you want to move them up. Or that you prefer rolling your towels to folding them. Make these tweaks and straighten up anything that needs it. And then repeat this a month or two later. Two minutes of work every couple of months will stop you from having to do the whole thing from scratch again!
Just learning about the SPACE method will be all some of you need to organize like a pro. Or maybe it worked for your linen cupboard but your closet or kitchen is still overwhelming. If so, bring in a professional. We have personal trainers for help with our bodies and therapists for help with our minds, so don’t hesitate to ask a professional organizer for help with your home!