Now that National Organising Week is over, what will you take away from it?

First of all, I hope that some of my ramblings here made you consider some of the choices you have made in the past. Maybe you were able to look at the status quo in a new light, and perhaps you have adjusted something just a little to make your home more of a happy place that it was before.

You are not done yet, though: the most impactful things you can do going forward is identifying at which crucial point things tend to fall apart and get/remain untidy or disorganised. Determine what you need to do in an ideal world to keep this from happening and try to develop a habit that keeps the momentum going.

And then keep doing this regularly!

My advice going forward is simple: never settle for the status quo, look at things from different angles to get new insight, and don’t be afraid of change.

Some homes – especially rental homes – have been neutralised to a point where everything is a serviceable beige or grey. Owning a home, however, does not mean things are necessarily better: a lot of people keep their homes relatively neutral in colour because “that will avoid clashing colours” or “it’s going to be easier to sell”.

The latter is a bit of a silly one for me as I feel that a home should be a place set up for the person who lives in it, not a potential future owner. I know: controversial!

As for avoiding clashing colours… well, there’s always the option to paint over a wall that looks a bit too garish. It’s a small job to do but it could yield big results, provided the colour you choose is better suited than the old one.

If you feel strongly about the neutral look, you can always accessorise with colourful curtains, pillows, throws, rugs, artwork,… the options are endless. While I don’t want to advertise changing to the en vogue colours each season, it can be fun to mix it up every couple of years, or even change colours with the seasons and reuse them every year.

Another option to spruce up your home could be the use of plants. Personally, I own a selection of orchids, some of which are always in bloom, and a couple of leafy plants that make me smile whenever I look at them. Of course, not everyone has green fingers, but you may just consider a cactus.

Artificial plants are also an option. Forget about the plastic plants from the past: these days, artificial plants come pretty close to the real thing and cannot really be detected all that easily.

Some things can be done easier on your own, especially the ones that need continued focus on one particular task. Organising and learning to more organised are tasks that may benefit from having someone else around to support you and keep you motivated. That other person does not necessarily have to be actively involved in the job that you are doing – just being there is often enough. They may be doing something entirely different while you put things back where they belong. The fact alone that they are there is sometimes enough to keep you from being distracted.

This is partly because it feels like emotional support during your work, but it could also bring out a competitive streak in yourself along the lines of “I can do this and I’ll prove it to you right now”.

It’s part of the professional’s job to enable the client to focus on making decisions and keep distractions at a minimum. If another person is involved in the process of organising, they can take over some of the manual tasks while you keep making the hard decisions, e.g. taking things out of your hands and placing them in the correct container (keep, sell, recycle, donate, etc.).

That other person could be anyone, but family members and friends are often too close emotionally, and also may not have the right tools to actually be helpful. Your ability to stay focused on making decisions is of utmost importance for any organising (or decluttering) task to be finished as painlessly as possible.

Professional organisers may seem like a luxury, but save time and money in the long run. We have the experience that you or your friends may not have. We know when you need a break, and react accordingly.

Support can come in different forms as well. Friends and family can reinforce any changes you manage to make by reaffirming them and highlighting what a difference it makes. It may be a good idea to tell them what you are trying to do, and encourage them to look for changes and talk about them with you.

A big part of being happy in your space is the ability to find things easily and without having to shift other stuff out of the way to get to what you need. Many households are equipped with storage options that are not suitable for whatever needs storing.

Often it is helpful to create smaller units to avoid the classic situation where everything in a drawer just gets tangled or stuff on a shelf just ends up in a pile.

This is especially true for your junk drawer – the one where you keep random batteries, pieces of string, loyalty cards, pencils, mysterious objects and non-sticky post-its – and clothing on shelves.

Kitchen cupboards often are too deep and/or tall to easily get to the stuff that is stored in the back. The best option here is to make sure that rarely used items are either discarded or stored in the hard to access places. Besides that, it is useful to group smaller items (e.g. condiments or spices) in containers that can be pulled out as one and then placed back where they belong after use.

Sock drawers are a menace for most people. First of all: always put pairs of socks together after a wash, but also you may consider smaller boxes to stand the socks up for easy access and without having to shift all the other pairs.

Bookshelves with two layers of books are a common occurrence if you are bookworm, but that also makes it hard to find a particular book. Keep in mind that there are books you will keep forever, and other books you read once and then could discard, thereby keeping the shelves a little less crowded.

It’s important that you are able to identify the contents of any containers without opening it. You could either use clear containers (which allow you to see the contents but also the randomness inside) or you could label opaque containers.

Why change things that ‘work’? Well, things that work are not necessarily working for you in the best possible way, are they now? Making changes can seriously enhance your happiness, and here is why:

We all have ways of doing things – systems – that we have created many moons ago and have not revisited or questioned ever since. It always feels like less of a hassle to continue doing things the way you are used to, than making changes that may or may not be an improvement.

Here’s the thing: taking a step back, considering a change and applying it is a one stop shop. Continuing to do things in an overly complicated way will affect you every single time you do it. From a purely practical point of view it makes sense to make a change and be done with the complication in the future, doesn’t it?

We all shy away from making changes, because we feel it’s extra work, because we are comfortable with the way we do a certain thing, because we were taught that way,… but sometimes it’s a good thing to be rational about such considerations and review and modify.

I’m not advocating for lots of big changes all at once, but whenever you wonder if something tedious can be done easier or faster, it may be time to think about other ways to do this. Sometimes doing things in a different order can make all the difference, or you may want to wait a little longer and do more of the same in one fell swoop instead of repeating the same step over and over every single day.

Change can also take the shape of placing furniture in different ways to account for different use of your space in winter, changing the photographs in the frames on your walls, or painting your entrance hall a different colour.

Let’s be honest here: tidying up is a chore we’d rather avoid. Unfortunately, it keeps coming back to haunt us, though. The trouble is: the less you do it, the more work it there tends to be when you finally attack the task. Doing things in small increments is usually better and feels less annoying.

It’s not easy to change habits, even if your mind is set on making a change, but there are ways to made success more likely. Here are some ways to help you get started:

It’s generally easier to develop habits if they help you deal with something that annoys you.

• For example, if you are prone to leave your dishes where you have finished your meal, and you are then annoyed that they are sitting in the way or fall over when you sit down, it could be a simple matter of reminding yourself of that annoyance to make you get up and take the dishes into the kitchen.
• Another common annoyance is an empty cupboard when you are looking for a mug to make a cup of tea, only to find that all the mugs are dirty and need to be washed. If only you could get yourself to wash out mugs after use and let them dry out next to the sink. That way, next time you won’t even have to open the cupboard…

It all sounds easy, but it is anything but. There is a trick for tidying up to become more likely: use an existing habit to add something that you otherwise would neglect.

• For example: if you tend to make a cup of tea after lunch, why not rinse your dishes while the kettle is boiling and get that chore out of the way. Alternatively, you may load any dishes you find into the dishwasher at that moment.
• One step further: each time you wait for the kettle to boil, tidy up your kitchen surfaces. Those are small things, but they make all the difference.
  

Speaking for myself, complicated stuff causes me stress, and I’m pretty sure the same is true for most people. This is why I have made it my life’s work to reduce complexity and make things as simple as possible. For myself and for others.

The trouble is that ‘simple’ means different things to different people. Nevertheless, there are a couple of considerations that might help with keeping things as simple as possible:

“Don’t overthink it, just do it”. If you are the kind of person who considers every angle of an issue before getting started, I would suggest to let go of this for a moment. It’s sometimes better to just do something and be done with it, irrespective of the level of perfection you manage to do the job.

“Perfection is the enemy of simplicity”. Following from the previous item, it makes sense to consider perfection in this way. Ultimately, you want to make things simple, not perfect. First of all: get it done. Finetuning can come later.

“Items in storage complicate your life”. This is particularly true if you are having trouble visualising the stuff you own if you cannot see it in front of you. It seems simple to shove something to the back of the closet, but it will most certainly come back to bite you when you least need that. Make decisions straight away to either use or discard completely. Storage only applies to seasonal items, nothing warrants long-term storage.

“Out of sight, still in mind”. Speaking of storage, I often hear people say that the stuff in their loft weighs on their mind. They know full well all their things are up there, and will have to be dealt with properly at some point in the future.

Simplicity has different shapes, and one of them is to make sure nothing is pushed ahead of you to be dealt with later. Every single one of those unmade decisions will become harder as time goes by.

Your home is your cocoon, a place of calm and joy, where you can relax and recharge for another day at the grind.

That’s as far as the fairy tales go. The reality often looks different, and it doesn’t matter if you work from home or commute each day, if you live on your own or with a whole family, in the city or out in the countryside.

Most homes are not quite the easy to manage space to retreat back to, but they pose a set of issues, demands and requirements of their own. We all need to tidy up and wash the dishes, make our beds and clean the bathroom, of course.

But that doesn’t mean there aren’t areas in your home that make you feel welcome and cosy. Dare I say: they make you feel happy? It’s important to feel happy in your home as this is the place where you recharge to be able to face life outside your cocoon for another day.

Do you have a happy space in your home? Maybe it’s that comfy seat where you can read next to a nice cup of coffee while listening to the rain outside. Perhaps it’s a spacious desk where you can craft and leave things out without remorse. Having such a place is even more important if you are working remotely and part of your home has become an office space!

Either way, we all need at least one of those places at home that is free of obligations, where no potential household project is anywhere in sight, and where you can simply turn fully to the thing you love to do, be it a spot of yoga, some reading, crafting, or just watching the world go by.

National Organising Week (NOW) is an annual activity of the Association of Professional Declutterers and Organisers (APDO) with a different theme each year. This year, the focus is on “Making Your Place Your Happy Space”, highlighting the idea that your home will feel a lot more comfortable if it is organised, and therefore easier to manage and less time-consuming.

Sounds simple, but there are many different reasons why being organised does not come easy to many people. This coming week, I’ll be writing short blogs on these subjects:

• What brings you joy?
• Keep it simple to avoid stress
• Developing a tidying-up habit
• Change is good
• Consider the proper storage
• Feeling supported
• Final touches

Stay tuned and take a peak at the blog for the next week. And, of course, you might enjoy going back to older blogs on this site…