When you think about organising a particular drawer in your home, or you think about the pile of toys in the corner, we immediately think, “oh, with the perfect container or storage box, that mess will simply disappear, or sort itself out”.
The hard truth when it comes to organising your home is that you need to learn to live with less. Sorry guys. Tragic but true.
Having an organised home isn’t about having beautiful pantry containers with matching labels, nor is it just about having your clothes colour coordinated in your closet. Rather it is about changing your mind set to realise that you simply don’t need all that “stuff”.
Keeping your house from feeling like every available surface is covered in something, or from feeling like toys are spread across the floors in every room, is knowing the limit of how much stuff you should really have.
We won’t go into the psychology of it all, but crux of the matter (as Marie Kondo has also infused into us), is that you should select those items that you either absolutely do need, or really (truly) cannot part with. The ones you love and cherish – or spark you joy – and then part with those that no longer serve a function.
When we work with our clients either during a home styling session, or when we start planning changes coming to a space, we always start with what really needs to stay and what can go.
Stripping back the layers and removing the excess allows you to focus on what you really love and what you really need. Once the functional needs of the space have been met, we can bring back, and focus on the pretty side of organisation.
Of course this layering process looks different for everyone, but premise remains the same.
Truth #1. Find Storage In Your Space. Don’t Add More.
Weren’t we just saying to you how often clients lament on their lack of storage in their time. When you have no more space for your belongings, we know that the logical solution to your problems is to add more storage. Consider how many times have you thought about adding more storage to your garage, or converting a bedroom space?
However if you think of your home as a box that defines the amount of stuff that you own, and ultimately as your storage limit, then you’ll know our advice is not going to be to bring more storage in. Rather we are going to advise you to find space within the limits of your home.
How is your storage currently being used? Is it being used in the most optimal way? What changes, if any, can be made to make the best use of what you have?
Then from there, we break it down further. What areas of your home are filled with items that you no longer use. Which of those items can you part with to make room for items that you do in fact use? And then, how can we effectively organise and storage those for you?
Once we know where everything goes, it’s a part of organising the space best to suit the function. For example, if we look through bedroom cupboards to find shelves that are too high apart from each, we simply need to adjust shelf heights to make them more user-friendly. Piling your clothes up too high makes for ineffective use and storage (and a big mess). The reworking of shelf heights, is often a simple solution in kitchen and pantries too.
Truth #2. Containers Are Your Limits.
I think it’s a myth that to have an organised home you need to have a lot of beautiful containers to hold every item in your home. Beautiful containers filled with a mess of items, are – let’s be honest – still a big mess in a container.
In fact, I often think of boxes and containers as dumping grounds. It’s all very well buying more and more containers to house your selected items, but at some point you need to realise that it is what is going into them that is the problem, and that containers are not the solution.
You can having a stunning vessel holding your wooden spoons on your counter, and then when you have more spoons you’ll need another vessel for those spoons, and pretty soon your countertop could be covered in vessels full of your wooden spoon collection. What you need to realise here is that you don’t need all 60 of those wooden spoons. The first vessel was there to impose that limit on the number of wooden spoons you own, as well as serving as a reminder to select only your favourite objects to keep and use.
Even the container – whether it’s a beautiful vessel on your kitchen counter, a filling box for your warranties, or a toy basket – needs to only hold a few items to appear pretty and make you feel organised.
Truth #3. Less is Always More.
Never, ever buy any containers until you have finished the decluttering process. While you may be tempted by a quick trip through Mambos to pick up a few beautiful containers that you can fill up, this is definitely a case of putting the cart before the horse.
We suggest that you tidy up and declutter your space first (and actually part with those decluttered items), and then spend some time living in that state before deciding on “which containers you need”.
Now that you’ve parted with all the extras and are revelling in feeling accomplished and less crowded, you’ll be amazed at how much more useable your space is and how much more organised you already feel. Give yourself time to see whether you move things around and how your new plan is working for you, before you commit to those smaller storage items.
While it’s not a Pinterest worthy solution, living like that before spending any money on pretty containers, is the smart, cost effective, approach to organising your home. It also helps prevent you from brining more stuff back into your house. You might also find you don’t even need all those containers, given you don’t have as much to pack or store away.
It comes down to the same premise, that less is always more.
