Do you want to clean your house once and for all, so that your weekly weekends don't turn into a chase for garbage and dust? We invite you to get acquainted with the cleaning methods of the Japanese guru of organization and putting things in order, Marie Kondo.
What is her secret? Get rid of all the extra stuff that doesn't make you happy, organize everything that's left, and then just keep it organized. It seems quite simple, but often parting with things that have been accumulating for years is not so easy.
Magic cleaning from Marie Kondo
The book “The Magic of Cleaning” became a global bestseller and took the top sales list in 2017. Marie has been interested since childhood different methods cleaning, enjoyed organizing my family’s closets. She managed to turn this thirst for order into her work; today she provides advice and assistance in putting things in order for her clients. “Organization begins with decluttering” is Marie’s motto.
House cleaning: step by step
Step 1: Get rid of everything you don't need
The KonMari method is based on getting rid of things that have been collecting dust in the closet for years. Most people complain that they don't have enough storage closets, but the real problem is that they have too much stuff accumulated. Marie suggests decluttering not by room, but by category. For example, clothes, shoes, books, etc. Thus, cleaning is more efficient. If you decide to start with clothes, you will need to remove all the clothes from your closets and hangers. This will help you really evaluate the entire volume of things, see if you have “forgotten” sweaters, jeans, etc.
If it's a pity
Clothes are the easiest to discard, so it's best to sort them out first. This way, you will become stronger in decision making, and moving on to the next category will be much easier. After clothes, move on to papers and books, then to other miscellaneous items that don't fit into one of the categories, and then to things that have sentimental value.
If it is very difficult to get rid of something, put everything in a box, writing only the date of packaging on it, then leave the box alone, having previously set a period of a month or half a year. If during this time you have never taken out the contents, then, without looking inside, send the box to the trash.
Another way to get rid of unnecessary things is to change the vector of thoughts. Think about the fact that you are keeping things that someone else could use. For some they may be necessary.
Where can I take things?
Clothes that you have outgrown can be given to relatives / to a shelter / secondhand. There is plenty of information about various organizations in need on the Internet.
Books can be returned to the library. Take the papers to waste paper collection points.
When?
It is better to start revising in the morning, when you are full of energy and enthusiasm.
With whom?
It is necessary to approach cleaning consciously, so it is best to do it alone. Plus, your decisions will not be subject to criticism. You can play your favorite music, but it is important that it is not distracting or tiring.
Step 2: Smart Organization
After the first point is completed, start organizing. It consists of finding a storage place for each item that you will return to its place after use. In her experience, Marie says it's important to organize your entire home at once so that changing your mentality is more effective.
Step 3: Find a suitable location
This is a key tip from Marie - keep certain types of items in only one place. For example, T-shirts are in one particular drawer, underwear is in another. As you reduce the number of things you own, you will feel a click that will tell you required quantity things for you. You yourself determine the moment when order is achieved. And then a feeling of happiness will fill the house. Many followers of the KonMari methods (and we gladly include the GD-Home team among them) claim that they have put things in order not only in the house, but also in their heads, changed jobs and relationships with family. The “art” of decluttering, discarding unnecessary things, improves decision-making skills and puts your life in order.
It is better to put seasonal things out of sight so that over time you will get bored with them.
Clothes will take less space if stored in an upright position. How to fold things correctly can be clearly seen in the photo.
Keeping socks in one ball is also a pleasure. By folding them in pairs, you will make your life much easier. Do the same with tights.
You can store bags one in one, the main thing is not to overdo it, and store no more than 2 - 3 bags at the same time.
Review your documents, warranties, and instruction manuals. Often after an audit, a third of everything stored for years remains.
How quickly your home becomes cluttered has little to do with how much time and effort you put into cleaning. It really depends on two things:
- on how well organized your home is;
- depends on whether you have formed habits that help you maintain order.
Accordingly, in order to restore order once and for all, you need to organize your home and move from regular cleaning to systematic cleaning.
Test “My type of cleaning”
As a psychologist, I usually recommend to my clients that the solution to any problem begins with a diagnosis.
Therefore, if you really want to restore order once and for all, first of all, determine the starting point - the situation in which you find yourself now.
To do this, try on statements from each group of questions.
- If this does not apply to your situation, give yourself 0 points.
- 1 point – partially similar to what is happening in your home.
- 2 points – if you can say with confidence that this is about you.
Group A
- The order lasts from an hour to several days. As soon as I put things in order, things begin to spread throughout the house again.
- You need to allocate money for cleaning special time(for example, on weekends)
- Things in the house get lost. Sometimes I have to buy a second copy because I can't find what I'm looking for. About some things I don’t even remember that I have them.
- In every room in the house there are several rubble-warehouses where things accumulate.
- When cleaning, I move things from place to place because I don’t know where to put them.
Group B
- Order in the house is maintained at all times. Sometimes during particularly busy periods of life or on some unusual days there can be a little chaos, but this is the exception rather than the rule.
- There is no special time allocated for cleaning; usually cleaning is done in the “background”, between times. It takes no more than half an hour a day to maintain order.
- I know exactly what things I have and where to get them when needed.
- There are 3-4 places in the house where things tend to “settle”, but these accumulations of things are regularly sorted out. It takes literally a few minutes to analyze such places.
- Each item has its own place where it is convenient to return it after use.
For each group of statements, you can score from 0 to 10 points, which reflect how pronounced each type is for you and which option you are currently using.
How many points do you have for each group of questions?
- If you get a result from 1 to 3, this is not your cleaning option.
- And if it’s 9-10, then this type of cleaning is maximally expressed.
Group A- this is what is typical in a situation when you do regular cleaning.
Group B- something that is typical if you have organized the space and moved on to systematic cleaning.
Why do you need order? The true meaning of real cleaning
The first and most main question, without an answer to which there will never be order in the house: why do you need order?
And to answer this question, you need to think about more global things. About what kind of life you would like to live.
Someone wants to have a lot of friends in life, to have some kind of parties, meetings, gatherings for tea. And for such a person perfect home– this is a house that is always ready for the arrival of guests.
And someone, on the contrary, wants their own secluded place where they can hide from the world, relax and unwind.
And when we imagine our life, what we would really like to do, what kind of life we strive for, then the house that we need emerges.
Our home is our reflection
Home reflects how we live, think, feel. How we perceive this world. And that's why there is interesting point: When you tidy up your home, you change internally.
You say goodbye to the past, define your life values, you begin to understand and feel what you need and don’t need in your life, what is truly important.
So it's best to start with what kind of lifestyle you want and what kind of home that lifestyle requires. And if you put your house in order after answering these questions, then through putting it in order you will learn even better what you want to do. And life becomes simpler and more interesting.
Before you put things in order once and for all and organize a truly comfortable space, answer these important questions:
Why do I need cleaning? What kind of life do I want to live?
And only after that do you move on to the first stage of creating true order - decluttering.
Don't break this sequence if you don't want to get bogged down in cleaning
There is one mistake that wastes a huge amount of effort and time, and about which I want to immediately warn you.
Never, ever try to come up with storage systems and organize space BEFORE you get rid of unnecessary things!
Often in life we do things completely differently. Remember how many people unpack boxes with things.
- We look into the box and find it a mess.
- We are trying to somehow systematize things.
- In the process, we get distracted by washing and wiping something somewhere.
- Then we realize that there is a lot of unnecessary stuff here, and we throw away some of the unnecessary things.
- Again we are trying to identify some categories and organize what is left.
- And in the end, a huge amount of time is wasted because we go in circles.
The scheme should be like this: first decluttering, then laundering and only then organizing storage systems. Don't break this sequence if you don't want to get stuck in cleaning forever.
How to free your home from unnecessary things?
All the things we have tell our story. Every thing is a reflection of some decisions that we made in the past. This is a reflection of the events that happened in our lives.
Therefore, sorting things out and putting things in real order is a way to take inventory of your life and see who you really are.
Alas. Few people can do without global decluttering and getting rid of unnecessary things. It seems that the tendency to save and collect is hardwired into our subconscious.
However, only some people deal with unnecessary things easily and with pleasure: they give it away, sell it, throw it away... Others hold things in their hands for a long time, think, remember, and if they part with the thing, they literally tear it away from their hearts.
If you're someone who has a hard time getting rid of things, here are a few key points.
First- find your own way of decluttering.
- Marla Cilley (author of the Fly Lady system) recommends decluttering a little every day.
- Japanese Marie Kondo (author of the KonMari method) suggests conducting a global decluttering operation and getting rid of all unnecessary things in one fell swoop.
Both approaches have their pros and cons, so just see what works best for you.
Second— in the process of sorting out the rubble, you will have to pick up each of the things. And each time decide what to do with this thing. Good news the fact is that the further you go, the easier it will be.
Start by sorting out simple and understandable categories of things for you: clothes, cosmetics, dishes. If you start with old letters and photos, you'll likely be stuck forever.
The main bonus we get when decluttering is free space, which is so often lacking in our homes.
Remember that free space appears even in a small apartment when only those things that make you happy remain there. And that free space disappears even in the most big house, if we start dragging everything there.
For details on what difficulties you may encounter when decluttering and how to solve them, look at the article (opens in a new window).
6 storage principles without which order is impossible
1. Strive for maximum simplicity
Because our storage methods are so complicated, we often don't realize how much stuff we have.
When there is an endless number of boxes, containers, and cabinets in the house, we often no longer know what lies in the far corner. Things seem to “fall asleep” on the shelves, we forget about them and don’t use them.
Don't go crazy with storage systems. The simpler the better.
2. Store by category
If cosmetics are stored in four different places, the child’s toys will settle a little in different rooms, and papers accumulate on all horizontal surfaces, there will never be order.
To avoid complex systems storage and questions about where there is a place for this or that thing, combine things by category. You can sort things by owner: here are mom’s things, here are dad’s things, here are children’s things, here are grandmother’s things, etc.
Another option is by purpose: clothes, books, dishes, office supplies, household supplies, cosmetics, first aid kit.
Decorative items (figurines, candlesticks, photographs, paintings) can also be combined into groups according to purpose, by a common theme or by color and texture.
It happens that, placed throughout the house, they look untidy, but if you combine such items into a composition, they become an interesting accent in the interior.
Pay special attention to all kinds of collections. If you collect cat figurines and this is really important to you, cats should have a place of honor in the house. They should not stand in dirt and dust mixed with expired cosmetics and unnecessary papers.
3. Store in such a way that it is convenient to return things to their place.
Many people naturally place things closer to where they are used. But it’s even better if you come up with a place so that it’s convenient not to get things out, but to put them away.
One of my clients really likes to read in bed before bed. When she walks into the bedroom past the bookcase in the living room, it’s convenient for her to grab one of the books. And of course, a large pile of books and magazines very soon accumulates by the bed, because taking them to another room is extremely inconvenient.
Ideally, storage should reduce the amount of effort required to return an item to its place. And then even other family members begin to maintain order, because it is simple and natural.
4. Vertical storage
Most people put things in piles for storage.
There is another storage option, which in many cases turns out to be more convenient - vertical storage. In this case, you stack things vertically, like books on a shelf.
This storage option is convenient for several reasons:
- This saves a lot of space.
- Everything is in sight, you don’t need to search for a long time, and there are no things undeservedly forgotten in the far corner.
- It’s easier to get things out without disturbing the arrangement of other things.
- Storing in a stack often has a negative impact on the items underneath, under the weight of the entire stack.
Therefore, if it is possible to place things vertically, try to place them this way. This usually provides a lot of benefits.
5. Dividing large spaces into sections
A large, unstructured space will always be a mess, so divide such spaces into small sections.
It's very simple, you can even use ordinary shoe boxes: they convenient size, come to our house quite regularly, they can easily be made into a nice look by covering them with paper or wrapping them in fabric, or decorating them with jewelry that you no longer wear.
Sometimes you really need a creative approach here, but often even from some scrap materials you can make quite interesting and convenient things.
For example, one of the participants in our training on organizing household sewed a hanging storage section from fabric and plastic panels remaining after repair.
In addition, when we start to declutter, we have a lot of things that can no longer be used for their intended purpose, but we don’t want to throw them away because they have pleasant memories associated with them. Find new uses for these items so that they continue to make your home cozy and comfortable.
6. Fullness – 90%
There is such a subtle psychological moment here. When we start getting rid of unnecessary things, it often happens that after decluttering we find free space.
For example, you are sorting out the shelves in your closet that are full of things, and as a result, some of them are half empty. And in the middle of the shelf there stands alone a small box or a small stack of things. And this gives rise to some strange feeling that it has become uncomfortable.
This is a completely natural feeling. Our psychology simply has this need to fill empty space. If you want your home to be tidy, don't leave empty spaces.
90% fullness is the most comfortable and stable state. If there is too much space left, then an internal itch appears: “I need to fill it with something.” And we begin to either throw things of other categories there indiscriminately, or drag new things from the same category into the house in order to fill this space.
This is very important rule: Any drawer, any shelf, any section, any storage space must either be completely empty or 90% full.
After decluttering, many people find that some cabinets and shelves become completely unnecessary and they can get rid of them to gain additional free space in the house.
Get things organized once and for all
As a result of decluttering and organizing your space, you will get a home that is very easy to maintain. Most things will automatically go back into place, and daily cleaning will start to take quite a bit of time.
But in order to make it really easy and quick to maintain order, move on to systematic cleaning. For example, for cleaning using the Fly-Lady system.
Classmates
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It is important to understand that no area in the house is intended for storing junk and unnecessary things. It’s hard to believe: it seems that you can arrange a warehouse in a closet, on a balcony, in a bedside table or in a separate closet. But in reality this is not the case. Each room or space, be it a garage, utility room, mezzanine or shed, has a direct purpose, which is not to store junk there. Our tips will help you put things in order not only at home, but also in other rooms, as well as in the corners where you are used to putting everything unnecessary.
Can you make sure that only the things you use remain in your apartment? The main problem associated with putting things in order in our homes is that we keep things that we don’t need: it’s a pity, it’s expensive, it’s new, there’s nowhere to put it, in case it comes in handy. All these “safe words” encourage you to live in a home that is littered with unnecessary items. Did you buy an expensive leather jacket but don't wear it because it doesn't suit you? Sell, donate, give away or throw away. According to space optimizers, people sell unnecessary things at flea markets or Avito so successfully that they earn decent amounts. Your task is to take every thing that is in the house and decide whether you will use it in the near future or not. If not, throw it away.
Imagine what the house needs general cleaning. So you armed yourself with a damp cloth or cloth in order to get rid of dust and dirt that appears on bedside tables, tables, surfaces of refrigerators, microwaves and coffee tables. What will your gaze fall on? All these surfaces are littered with figurines, vases, magazines, small household items, magnets and other things. As a result, instead of promptly wiping everything around, you either start sorting out the trash or putting the cloth in the far corner. Your task is to optimize the space so that dust can be removed from all surfaces in a matter of minutes. This does not mean that you need to remove absolutely everything from open surfaces. It is important to exclude everything unnecessary.
The trouble is that a tablet, charger, laptop, lipstick, watch or book can end up in unexpected places every time. How so? It’s very simple: they don’t have just one place. It is precisely this cycle of things in apartments that requires putting things in order again and again. What do you end up doing? You just move things from place to place. And then back. This can be stopped once and for all. For each thing that is in the house, find the only thing possible place. Then there will be home perfect order, and the necessary things will no longer be lost.
Tip 4: organize storage according to the “arm's length” rule
Thinking about how to arrange things in the bedroom, personal account, in the kitchen or living room, use the “arm's length” rule. All the things you use when washing at the sink should be so close that you can reach them. The same goes for working at a desk, preparing food, putting on makeup. This way you can not only save time, but also quickly return the item to its rightful place: immediately and effortlessly.
Tip 5: Keep items of the same category in a specific place
Avoid situations where cosmetics or apartment cleaning products are stored in different places. Why is this so important? Firstly, by placing items with the same functionality in specific place, you will be able to assess what you are missing. Imagine that some girl has makeup products in her bedroom, in the bathroom, in her purse and in the hallway at the same time. She lives in the illusion that foundations or shadows have run out and, in general, “there is not enough of everything.” Buy a convenient box for storing cosmetics, put all the products there and immediately understand whether you need to buy something additional or whether you have a supply for the year ahead.
The same applies to all other items: wires and chargers/books/combs and other categories should have a single place. Special storage boxes will help solve the problem. You will find these in online stores for every taste and color. Moreover, they are designed specifically for storing things of specific categories.
Yes, this rule is difficult to follow when the supermarket has promotions for a year’s supply of shampoo and blocks toilet paper. It's hard to avoid the temptation to save money, but it's why you don't have room to store everything. Instead of buying large blocks of something, buy one package and use the rest of the space for other items. The same goes for products: bags of potatoes, large stocks sunflower oil, meat, fish. You don't need large amounts of food unless there is a designated area for it. Try to live by this rule, then your rooms will be perfectly clean.
Beautiful gift boxes, Zara bags, wrapping paper - unnecessary things. You should also immediately remove tights, cups, and household appliances from the boxes. If you need the information on the packaging, take a photo of it and say goodbye to cardboard, which makes your apartment look unkempt and takes up unnecessary space. And as for household appliances, remember: no packaging is needed. You can return the device or request warranty repair if available. sales receipt, and that's all. You don't even have to show the cash receipt.
Imagine that you decide to disassemble one of the rooms, for example the kitchen. So you find one after another objects that belong in other locations. Here you come across a screwdriver, and you take it to the toolbox, then you find a package of pills and immediately go to the first aid kit. Such trips from room to room will not allow you to restore order quickly. You will instantly get tired and give up on decluttering. To save time, get a “relocation box” in which you put everything that doesn't belong in the kitchen. This way you can quickly clear the room of displaced items by putting them in a box. And now all you have to do is take them to their places in one go.
Remember how many instructions, labels, and tools you have that you plan to use in “rainy days.” It's about to break washing machine, what to do without instructions? I'll need a drill, where can I get one? It's simple: you can find instructions on the Internet, and ask your neighbor for a drill. Things you don't need on a daily basis have no place in your home. If you collect everything “in case of war,” you will not see order.
Many people, in response to advice regarding putting things in order, will say that the children are to blame for everything. They don't put things back, bring dirt into rooms, throw toys around, or don't wash dishes after themselves. In fact, children only copy your behavior. If your home isn’t sparkling clean right now, it means you’ve neglected it a little: you don’t put things in their place, you don’t always make the bed, or maybe you don’t love it at all. Children absorb everything and will not litter in an apartment where no one else does.
Although strict Soviet housewives assured their daughters that disorder in the house was solely a consequence of laziness and personal disorganization, psychologists have long debunked this myth: people are divided into several types, and different types Individuals organize the space around them differently.
CLEANITY AS A HABIT
There are those for whom structure and maintaining order come easily; they are uncomfortable in a mess, and cleaning is an important part of their character.
There are those who are more comfortable in order, but among their personality traits there is no ability to adhere to routine operations - it is more difficult for such people to maintain order, so in their house the disorder most often gains a critical mass (everyone has their own mass), after which cleaning is carried out, but the result takes a long time does not hold, and the circle repeats.
There are also those who, in principle, are not able to maintain cleanliness in the space around them and do not worry about this at all.
However, if you still don’t like clutter, but you’re not a clean person by nature, you can try to deceive your character and instill habits in yourself, say activists of the Fly Lady movement. Just 10 habits will allow you to painlessly maintain order in your home.
Habit #1: Always make your bed
It was not for nothing that my mother always demanded that the bed be put in order before school - nothing adds to the feeling of a mess like crumpled linen on an unmade bed. Making your bed is a matter of 10 seconds, it is the simplest and easiest habit of all!
Habit #2: Clean soap smudges from the walls of the shower or bathtub after every shower.
If you take a shower, rinse the walls with water to remove soap smudges and wipe them with a special roller for shower cabins. It takes 5 seconds and keeps the bathroom fresh - very good habit, which would be a good idea to instill in all family members.
Habit #3: Clean your bathroom sink every night
If you brushed your teeth, tidy up the sink so that soap smudges and traces of toothpaste do not harden on it. The easiest way is to keep the tile cleaner and sponge right in the bathroom so you can quickly apply it, rinse it off, and leave your bathroom looking great. The whole procedure takes 30 seconds at most.
Habit #4: Leave the kitchen clean in the evening
Activists of the Fly Lady community claim that cleanliness in an apartment begins with a clean kitchen. Like, the kitchen becomes dirty first, and this is where you need to start the war against clutter. The procedure for Fly Lady is as follows:
- wash the dishes or load them into dishwasher(never leave dirty dishes overnight - cleanliness rule)
- Apply the cleaner onto the sink in a thick layer and leave it to work.
- wipe all surfaces with a damp sponge
- rinse the cleaning agent from the surface of the sink, wipe it dry
- get something fresh kitchen towel, used send to wash
With proper skill and consistency, the entire procedure takes from 5 to 15 minutes, depending on the volume of dirty dishes.
Habit #5: Wash dishes while preparing food
All people are divided into two groups - someone cooks and multiplies dirty utensils around them, someone washes everything during the cooking process. Clean ones are of the latter kind. The “used - washed” rule allows you to stifle the mess at the inception stage.
Habit #6: “evening rounds”
All the same Fly Lady activists advise making a habit of nightly “five minutes of cleanliness” - before going to bed, you need to walk around the apartment and sort out fresh rubble. Send scattered things back to their place, put away magazines and CDs, park children's toys. Just 5 minutes every evening will help keep your home clean until the next spring cleaning.
Habit #7: Don’t keep clothes outside of closets
Dirty clothes go in the wash, wearable clothes go back in the closet. This rule allows you to wean yourself and your loved ones from creating mountains of clothes on chairs and armchairs, which fit so harmoniously into the general atmosphere of a mess. This routine takes about 5 seconds of time - just control yourself during the process of unmasking and send the things you are removing not to the chair, but where they should be.
Habit #8: Ventilate the room
One of the unpleasant properties of barrack apartments is the musty smell. The apartment may be relatively tidy, but this smell will give away a slob faster than scattered things. Make it a rule to ventilate your apartment every day for 10-15 minutes, this is good for your health and for maintaining a general feeling of cleanliness.
Habit #9: Dust off particularly dusty surfaces every day.
Every home has surfaces that attract dust faster than others - plasma panels, monitors, glass (including mirrors), etc. A special antistatic rag + 2-3 minutes a day to get around all the “dusty” places and brushing away what has accumulated during the day will allow you to maintain a general feeling of cleanliness for a long time.
Habit #10: Involve everyone in your household to maintain order and invest money in buying equipment that makes life easier
There is no need to suddenly become a cleaner, it is harmful to the psyche, Fly Lady claims. Sometimes you really just don’t have the strength to sort out a fresh rubble or brush off the dust - no big deal, it’ll wait until tomorrow. The main thing is to make the steps described above a habit, for which it is enough to force yourself to follow the routine for three weeks.
After 21 days, evening rounds and wiping down the bathroom sink will become second nature, activists say.
And one more thing: you shouldn’t try to repeat the feat of Hercules and clean the Augean stables on your own; you should try to instill habits of cleanliness in everyone at home (although what exactly is the feat of Hercules - cleaning or instilling such habits in your husband and children is, of course, a question).
Buying good household appliances that reduce the time and effort required to maintain cleanliness is not a waste of money. For example, investing in a good steam cleaner (an appliance that cleans different surfaces hot steam) will help you cut down the hours of time you would otherwise spend scrubbing tiles, fixtures, etc.
We don't live in the 19th century, and it would be stupid not to take advantage of everything that is designed to make our lives easier.
And so that you don’t stop working on your habits and laziness doesn’t take over, FLY LADY advises making something like a cleaning schedule, where you list the main routine and the frequency of various manipulations. It is enough to stick to this schedule for a month to get used to the new routine.
A couple of dozen tips on how to keep your home in order: where to store eyebrow tweezers and keys, how to organize laundry and what to do with papers on your desk.
In the dressing room
1. Designate one shelf or bag in your closet for clothes that you don’t wear and are almost ready to give away or throw away - this will make it easier to decide that the item is no longer needed.
2. When you remove an item from its hangers, do not hang them back. Move them to the wall or put them in a special place reserved for hangers. This way, clothes will hang tighter, and hangers won’t get lost between dresses and jackets.
3. Store your shoes toe to heel, similar to how they are placed in a box at the store.
4. Store jewelry that you wear frequently on a small tray or bowl on your dressing table or dresser.
In the bathroom and laundry room
5. Attach a magnetic panel to the back of the shelf door and store small things there that constantly get lost: tweezers, bobby pins, tweezers and nail scissors.
6. Store lip glosses, makeup brushes and all cosmetics that are sold in narrow long tubes and jars (mascara, concealers) in water glasses.
7. Hang a wire shelf under the shower to store what you use most often: shampoo, hair conditioner, shower gel.
8. Immediately place dirty laundry in three different baskets: separately white, black and colored.
9. Tie up bedding sets with colored ribbons to keep everything together.
10. As soon as the laundry is washed and dried, fold it immediately and put it away: do not let it hang on the dryer or pile up in the bedroom.
In the office
11. Empty one of your desk drawers and put the papers you're currently working on there instead of stacking them on your desk. Review the content once a week.
12. Recycle old magazines.
13. Digitize everything you can, including papers you plan to work with later. Files take up less space than papers in desk drawers.
In the kitchen
14. Hang some of the utensils on hooks: this will free up space in the drawers.
15. Store what you need most often - salt, pepper, oil - on the edge of the most convenient shelf.
16. Store foods of the same type nearby: cereals on one shelf, canned vegetables on another, canned meat on a third.
Everywhere
17. Hang it near front door a key holder or a separate hook and hang your keys there every time you come home.
18. Every time you leave home, pick up trash and (if there is a container along the way) things that you are going to recycle. Don't let clutter pile up in corners.
19. Buy convenient organizers for wires so that they don’t snake around in disarray.
20. Organize a “charging station” and store chargers for all devices there.
21. Inspect children's toys and games, get rid of all broken and unusable ones.
