Here’s a pop quiz. Let’s say you are searching the top of your closet for an item that you have stored there. Which of these bins will make it easier for you to find what you are looking for? The opaque bin on the left, or the clear bin on the right?
Read more →I spent Veteran’s Day engaged in what might described as a busman’s holiday. (For those not familiar with that quaint phrase, it means spending your vacation doing something very similar to your normal work.) In my case, the activity was cleaning out closets, sorting and packaging items for donation and recycling, and discarding the rest. What made this activity different was that the items belonged to my mother, who passed away earlier this year. I had help from my sister, and moral…
Read more →I just had the most fun weekend. What did I do? I organized, of course! In the process of organizing, I made some interesting discoveries that I wanted to share with you.
Read more →In law, the “reasonable person standard” is used to judge a defendant’s behavior by asking whether “a reasonable person, under the same circumstances, would have acted in the same way as the defendant”. So what does this have to do with organizing? I sometimes use the “reasonable person standard” to help my clients determine how much is too much.
Read more →Two of my basic organizing principles are: (1) Every item must have a home, and (2) Keep like with like. By selecting a home for every item, you know where to look for it when you need it, and you know where to put it away when you are done. By keeping like with like, you avoid creating multiple homes for similar things. I’ve discovered a great way to reinforce these two principles: labeling.
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