With decades of combating clutter as a Certified Professional Organizer and Productivity Consultant under her belt, Diane Albright has seen the trend toward tidiness explode. “Years ago, clients would just want help with paper management, or with the clothes closet.
Nowadays, they want the whole house organized,” she says. It feels amazing to live life from an organized HQ—here's Albright's advice on making that a realistic goal.
One Thing at a Time
The kitchen, bedroom (mainly for the clothes factor) and bathroom are three central living spaces that can make the difference in how you live your life, but if it's papers in your home office or calamitous kids' rooms frazzling you, take aim at what's bugging you most and mark an hour on your calendar to work on it. “Don't tell yourself you'll spend all day on it,” Albright says. “You won't.” And once you've torn everything out of your closet and lost steam, you'll feel worse than when you started. Assign yourself an hour at a time, and you're more likely to feel inspired to persist.
Fridge Fix
When it comes to the kitchen, many people have a hard time keeping track of what's in the fridge, which leads to wasting food—and money! “If somebody's looking for sour cream and they don't find it,” Albright warns, “they will buy more.”
Her advice? Designate areas of the fridge for certain foods and label them clearly. Milk always goes in the same place, leftovers (a top priority before they perish) are always at eye level in clear containers. “You should be able to go into the fridge with your eyes closed and find what you're looking for.”
And for family members trying to put back the spicy mustard in a different place every time, there's a condiments label to light the way.
Keeping Up with Your Clothes
Having a mountain of clothes we don't wear seems like a perennial problem. To make whittling away easier, turn all your hangers one way at the beginning of a season and each time you wear an item, switch it, so you can easily see which haven't been touched all winter long.
Take it one type of clothing at a time—a pants perusal is a lot more manageable than tackling the closet as a whole.
Whatever your clothing storage system, strive to be able to see everything you have in a drawer when you open it or hanging up when you behold the closet space.
Bare Bathroom
Do you walk into the bathroom in the morning to a jumble of products and hair tools all over the counter? What a rude awakening! Albright advises no more than one bin or drawer (maybe an extra for the cosmetics collection) stocked with everything you need for your morning routine. Pull it out, put it away and you're done. “If you start your day with no clutter,” Albright says, “you'll feel like you want to keep putting everything away all day long.”
Tidiness Is a Team Effort
Any organizational system thrives on sustainability. Like training a dog, everyone in the house needs to be on the same page, and it shouldn't be hard to follow along. “A friend, relative or neighbor should be able to come in and find something and put it away,” Albright says.
Store things in intuitive places, label generously and get the household in on a nightly 10-minute Clutter Patrol. If five people are picking up after themselves, that's almost an hour of cleaning built right into each day!
The Magic of Household Management
While we tend to think of organization mainly in terms of merciless, cathartic purges of uninspiring items, household management is another avenue to make life less overwhelming.
Save time and money by settling on a weekly routine for meal planning and laundry day, and one spot and time for assessing monthly bills. Albright keeps her bills in a greeting card organizer with a slot for each month, with envelopes and postage stamps in the same zone.
Planning a week's worth of meals and writing up a shopping list the night before allows time to remember additional items and helps prevent buying random things you don't need.
Bring in the Pros
If you've organized everything and had it fall back into shambles time and again, it might be that you're missing how to make the system sustainable. A professional organizer knows how to set you up for success.
Call them in to tackle just the closet, the office or the fridge. “Then you'll get it,” Albright says, “and you can copy it elsewhere, even copy it at work.” Handing over your house for a total makeover just might transform your lifestyle. Clients say once their home gets organized, they can't stand clutter.
The Expert
Diane Albright
Certified Professional Organizer & Productivity Consultant
All Bright Ideas | 328 Main St., Emmaus | 610.782.0636 | allbrightideas.com | dianealbright.com
