A Place for Everything and Everything in Its Place

Within your home everything should have a place. If this is not the case, then this should be the ultimate goal for your home. This will take time and it is a learning process so be mindful that change will not happen overnight. When everything has a designated place, you will not struggle to find something or think twice about where to put an item when you have finished using it. This blog is action packed! The first section discusses the importance of having a place for everything in your home. The following section focuses on how to translate this concept into action. Lastly, learn about how an organizer can help you declutter and organize using ‘A place for everything and everything in its place’ as the guiding principle for your journey.

Let’s start by unpacking this phrase ‘a place for everything and everything in its place’. Everything should have a place to 'live' in your home. Whenever you finish using an item, it should be put back in its designated place to prevent clutter. 

To implement this within your home, there are several questions you can ask yourself when making decisions about whether to keep or discard an item. Consider the following:

• Does this item make me happy?
• Does this item improve my life?
• How often do I use this item?
• Is this item in good enough condition to use?
• Do I already own something that fulfills the same purpose?

For more questions I highly recommend you read Unclutter Your Life in One Week by Erin Rooney Doland. She also has a list of questions you can ask yourself when purchasing new items. By using the above questions to guide the process of decluttering, you will start to understand what items are of true value to you and those which are not. Eventually you will have purged enough to begin finding a place for each item. The perfect place for an item is a combination of where it will be most easily accessible and where it makes the most sense for it to live within your space. For example, your keys are easily accessible if they are on the key rack which is close to the front door and where all the other keys are located.

The process of decluttering and organizing a home can be very daunting especially if you feel like you need to do it all by yourself. Professional organizers are very equipped to help you through the process. They will help you understand how to get started with the process and how to complete it both of which tend to be quite challenging when working on your own. Organizers are also going to speed up the process; they know what questions to ask to help you make decisions about what to keep or discard, they know where your stuff can be donated, sold or purged, and they have a wealth of knowledge on ‘stuff’ that you can draw upon at any time. They will also be there to encourage you when you are struggling to find motivation to carry on throughout the process of decluttering, simplifying and organizing your home.