An Overview of Organising

When you think of home organisation, you are likely to think of the beautifully organised homes of social media. Images of perfectly positioned storage baskets with pretty labels and satisfyingly filled plastic food containers. Unfortunately, this is not realistic and does not work in the average person's home.

Prepare to be Organised

The initial step in getting ready to organise your house is to stop yourself from purchasing storage solutions! Buying the drawer dividers, boxes, lazy susans and so on before you have a plan of action will add to clutter in your home. To make your home organisation system work effectively, these things need to be purchased once you have the full picture of what you have to organise and the space available to store them.

When choosing to be organised, choose to make it easier, choose to declutter. Whether you declutter before starting organising or after is up to you, but it is not a process to skip. With excess possessions removed from your home you will have less to organise and consequently you will need less storage containers, saving you space and money. 

One Size Does Not Fit All

People commonly believe that they are not organised or that organising does not work for them. But it’s more likely that they just have not found the method that works for them. Individual personalities and habits, as well as those we share our homes with affect the organising method that works best for a household.

You may find that you like the look of a certain organising method, but it might not always be the one that is most suitable. If you are fixated on the idea of implementing a specific organising system that you find appealing, you can make it work, but you will need to be willing to put the effort into changing your habits. The easiest way to implement an effective organising system is using the one that works around your current habits.

To determine which method will work best for you and your family, you should assess your current situation and the habits already formed, e.g. where do items usually get set down, or where do you normally look for certain items first. Then think about how you can bring organisation into those areas. My personal experience of this was having a shoe rack in the hallway near the front door, however we never took our shoes off at the front door. Shoes were always taken off in the conservatory where the seats were, so I moved the shoe rack to the conservatory.

Macro vs Micro Organising

Macro-organising involves the use of broad category organising and using large boxes or drawers to store items. For example, all medical items (e.g. tablets, pain relief gels, cold and flu syrups, creams, bandages, plasters, wrist straps, heat pads, thermometers, etc) would be kept in one-two storage containers. 

Macro Organising Key Points

• Easier and quicker to put things away

• Good solution for items that cannot be broken down into smaller categories

• Generalised areas so everyone knows where to look for something

• Can be messy

  
  

Micro-organising takes the broad categories and breaks them down into smaller categories. For example, using the medical items category, you would have a storage solution (e.g. box, divider, basket, draw, shelf) for the specific categories of items, such as pain relief, flu remedies, first aid items etc.

Micro Organising Key Points

• Keeps items more ordered

• Clearly identifies multiples of one item in order to reduce buying more multiples

• Quickly find a specific item

• Takes more time/effort to put things away

Visual vs Hidden Organisation

People who are visual organisers tend to have a lot of their possessions on show, often displaying items on open shelves or in clear containers so that they can easily see what is inside. Visual organising is ideal for people who like or need to see what they own and often is a great method for people with ADHD. Although visual organising can make a space look cluttered, it allows people to easily find things and makes it easier to put things back where they belong.

Hidden organisation involves, as you’ve guessed, using opaque containers with lids or storage furniture to hide your possessions. It is suitable for people who easily feel overwhelmed by visual clutter. Having hidden storage helps with keeping a neat and minimal feel. However, closed storage furniture may allow ‘stuff stuffing’, just putting things into the closest cupboard, which may lead to losing track of what you own and where it is.

The Bottom Line

Although people generally lean towards one organising style, macro or micro, visual or hidden, the different methods have upsides and downsides, which means they can be easier or harder to use in certain areas of your home.

Organising needs to be simple, and to be successful at maintaining a system, it needs to line up with your household's current habits and lifestyle. Identifying and implementing the correct system needs careful consideration and may require adjusting or completely redoing until it works for your household.