A place for everything

Its an old saying: “A place for everything and everything in its place”

As a single, naturally unorganized, forgetful and a bit lazy person who also likes things clean, tidy and ‘findable’ I have accumulated some habits that help me.

When I was a young family man with wife and three kids we lived in a modest, 900 square foot house built in 1908. Storage was almost nonexistent probably because people didn’t have many possessions in 1908 compared to now.

The house was never really free of clutter and I had to wade around piles of stuff to navigate from room to room. I noticed that even when we tried to clean there just weren’t enough places to put all the items so they drifted from one pile to another on the floor. My solution was to build an incredible number of floor to ceiling shelves and cabinets. This made a huge difference.

Later, when single, I took thing a few steps further with a simple rule: Everything has a place and I put it there, not later but now.

This is not a new concept but is a hard habit to build up if you’r naturally messy and forgetful like me.

Dishes: I am grossed out by dirty dishes. I mean like a slight urge to barf when I see them. Years ago I started putting dishes, pans ect. out of sight in the dishwasher right after every meal and I run it when full.

Wallet, keys, phone ect. : I spent much of my 20’s looking for my wallet and keys. Now I have a place for everything, especially my wallet and keys and I take the extra steps to put them there when not in use. I also never put my keys in my pocket without my wallet avoiding embarrassing check out situations.

Dirty Cloths: Go in the laundry basket as soon as taken off.

Shit I don’t use: I used to keep lots of stuff that, well, might have a use at some point. I still do that sometimes but if I do it must have a place to live in my house. I also review items I haven’t used in a long time and decide whether to keep or discard. Its better to have to rebuy something from time to time than to keep a house full of junk, in my experience.

You get the idea. It may sound odious to take these steps and it may not be for everyone but I find my house is always tidy and I would rather do the work in small chunks than spend entire days cleaning accumulated mess. I also almost always know where my shit is. 🙂

I also have some clean as I go tips that I may share in another post.