4 Steps for Organising Any Space Like a Pro


You are reading Part 5 of the 7-part series on How to Skilfully Declutter Your Home Once and for All. If you are new to this series, then you may find it helpful to start from Part 1.

“Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication” – Leonardo da Vinci.

Not only have I been fortunate to have a mother who’s a proponent of simplicity, but I’ve also encountered several mentors throughout my life who have reinforced this philosophy in me.

One way to achieve such simplicity, as you know, is by decluttering our homes—the space most of us exist in for the most significant part of our lives. To create such simplicity, we need to remove clutter—the aspect we considered in the previous article.

We looked at how to sort things based on your list of needs so that your house always remains in a clutter-free state. That’s to say you won’t need to invest your time into Spring-Cleaning sessions.

But isn’t organising our habitat pretty simple? Isn’t it something that we all know how to do?

No. If your environment is organised optimally, then it should serve your goals and needs. It should also help you become more efficient and should help keep the clutter away.

How do we create such an arrangement? Well, that’s what we’ll consider in this third and final stage of the Need-Centric Organisation strategy.

Stage 3: Establish

If you have followed the strategy thus far then you’ll have these three things:

  1. Your list of needs,
  2. Pile A: Essentials,
  3. Pile B: Inessentials.

We’ll begin this stage, first, with considering the inessentials.

I’ll then give you some tools that will enable you to make smarter buying decisions. Haven’t the majority of us been in situations where we buy an item and pretty soon stop using it? Well, we have tips that’ll help you around this.

Lastly, I’ll show you ways to prioritise various areas of a given space which will help you become more efficient.

1. Stow Away The Inessentials

This one’s easy. Pack all the stuff contained in Pile B and put it away.

This heap contains all the things that you either (a) struggle to remove due to their monetary or emotional value, or (b) think you may need later, for instance seasonal clothes.

The idea is to put the majority of those items through a test of time. To see if you can live without them for the next three to six months. If you didn’t need those items during that time, classify those items as clutter and get rid of them altogether.

Ah, and this is also a test to see how well you’ve derived needs. If done correctly, you won’t need the majority of these items.

Here’s how to put them away

Depending on the quantity and type of items, you may want to consider putting these items into labelled boxes.

You can even take pictures of those items as you organise them into boxes. In the future, this can help you find an article quickly, saving you the hassle of having to open multiple boxes.


Once you sort out the inessentials, you’re left with

  1. Pile A: Essentials,
  2. The list of needs.

So, now it’s time to begin organising them, isn’t it? Well, not quite yet. We have a couple of steps to consider before we do that.

2. Identify Gaps

Scan through the list of needs and see if there’re any items that you don’t possess.

In the most likely scenario, you’re going to source those items at a later stage once you organise everything.

But let’s say—for the sake of explaining this process—that you decide to buy those items first.

How do you do that? Could you leverage Need-Centric Organisation to help you with this? Yes!

3. Fill In The Gaps

A few years ago, I used to shop without fully considering my needs. I’d go out to shop randomly, end up in a random shop, and buy a random item that pleased my eyes. Pretty standard for most of us, isn’t it?

But I found a problem with this approach. I didn’t use most of those items. Pretty soon, they ended up gathering dust and— to make it even worse—started to turn into space-stealing clutter, making my house look increasingly messy.

What I’m about to share with you are the need-centric principles that have helped me with buying the right items. After all, aren’t shops the primary gateway for clutter anyway?

Buy stuff considering all your needs

Just ensure the stuff you are buying precisely meets all your needs. No compromise.

Say you need a rucksack. Considering your needs, you’ve come up with a bunch of essential attributes such as timeless and clean design, a dedicated compartment for laptop and tablet, and less than 18 inches tall.

It’s easy to find a bag that has one or two of those attributes but not all. But if you rush to buy it this way, then you risk not using it after a while. Instead of timeless design, say you go for a design that’s in the current trend. Like the sun in my city (London), the trend quickly disappears, and you stop using that bag. You get the idea.

Reflect on all your needs. Don’t cut corners. Just try it, okay?

Yes, but what about exploring other options?

One way to be sure that you don’t end up with the wrong item is to explore lots and lots of options. This may seem pretty obvious. But I’m gobsmacked to see so many people avoid this exercise, and end up creating clutter for themselves.

These days, pretty much all of my shopping starts—if not takes places entirely—online. The search and filtering features of websites enable me to explore a vast variety of options and help me quickly identify the most suitable item, all without me having to browse through several shops.

Then if I want to be reassured about my choice, or if it’s absolutely necessary, I’d see that item in a store before making a purchase.

Use the power of the web. Explore lots of options.

Wait, more options mean more confusion, doesn’t it?

Yes, it’s certainly going to cause confusion if you don’t have clearly defined needs.

But say you’ve done an excellent job at articulating your needs; you’ve also leveraged online tools and found two items. But now you’re torn between which one to pick.

What do you do then? Well, you use this simple question to help you with that dilemma:

Do I love this? If there’s not a quick “Hell yeah!”, then it’s a no.

Try it. It’s pretty powerful.

4. Organise The Essentials

Say for example you’ve put away all inessentials; you’ve identified anything that was missing; you’ve bought the most suitable items.

What’s next? Well, you start organising those items, don’t you?

Yes, but if you want to increase your efficiency, you can go a step further and deliberately apply goal-centric principles to the space at hand.

This goal-centric thing: how’s it done?

The notion is simple: Considering your goals, prioritise segments of a given space so that you can find what you want quickly.

Say you’re considering one of your kitchen drawers. Your goal is to quickly prepare dinner for the family four times a week after work. How might you organise that drawer in such a way so that you can find, for example, a bowl that you use frequently?

Here’s the approach that has worked for me:

Classify segments: Assess areas of the drawer and establish the spectrum of accessibility—from most to least accessible. The front of the drawer, for example, is an easy reach; therefore that becomes your priority space.

Assess your usage: Considering your daily usage, establish most to least used items.

Place items: Most used items go in the most accessible space and least used items go in the least used space. For instance, place a pan that you use daily towards the front of the drawer.

This might seem obvious, but I see so many people who don’t take advantage of this kind of organisation, and consequently miss out on the benefits such arrangements have to offer—which is to save your time.


So, To Recap…

In this last stage of the strategy, we primarily considered effective ways of buying items without making any compromises with our needs, and how when we don’t do this we find ourselves creating unending clutter. We also established that when we organise our homes based on our goals, they begin to help us become more efficient.

That’s all I have to say about this strategy.

Okay, but isn’t it a lot of effort? No, not really; if you apply the strategy, you will see that the small investment of your time will outweigh the vast amount of benefits you will continue to experience. Similar to an Apple share, you buy it once and at the right time, and it keeps giving you dividends for the rest of your life.

Say you’ve organised your home based on the strategy. What’s left to talk about then? Well, we need to consider ways to protect your space from clutter.

In the next article, we’ll look at various ways that clutter creeps into your well-organised space. I’ll explain how to say no to unwanted gifts, and why you’ll need some tricks up your sleeve to combat shopping urges.

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