Making Your Home Move-In Ready—Even If You’re Not Moving (Part 2)
- nvilu7
- May 12
- 7 min read
Updated: 16 hours ago
Organize smarter, live calmer, and keep the clutter from creeping back in.
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Organizing the Stuff in Your “Keep” Box
You’ve made it through de-cluttering your home.
You’ve donated the items in your “Donate” box.
You’ve tossed the items in your “Toss” box.
Now it’s time to find a place for each of the items in your “Keep” box before they become clutter—again.
Here’s the good news.
You probably already have a home for your “Keep” items.
Simply put, store like items together close to the place where you use those items:
Kitchenware in a drawer in your kitchen where you prepare food
Home repair tools in a toolbox that you can carry to where they are needed
Books in a bookcase near your comfy reading chair
I often find that when a de-clutterer puts their “Keep” items away, they’ll find a similar item already exists in that drawer, toolbox, craft room, bookcase, closet, etc.
That’s because removing clutter allows you to clearly see what you have.
If this happens to you, do not kick yourself!
Instead, get out your “Donate” box. Compare the items. Which one is newer, in better repair, or is more useful to you? Keep that one, put it away, and put the other in the “Donate” box—and don’t forget to take the new donation to the charity of your choice ASAP.
I’ve also found that putting “Keep” items away can reveal another issue—that the places where you keep your stuff aren’t large enough to accommodate what they already hold plus your “Keep” items.
If this happens, ask yourself this question:
Do I have too much stuff, or is the place where I keep my stuff not the right size for the stuff I have?
To answer this question, pull everything out of that too-small storage space, and repeat the de-cluttering exercise described in Part 1 of this series. Ask your clutter-hating friend or a professional organizer to help you—you’ll benefit from an objective opinion (because most of us are terrible judges of our own stuff).
If you don’t find a place for all that Keep stuff, it’s going to very, very quickly revert to being clutter. Do you want to go back to the place you worked so hard to leave behind?
I didn’t think so.
Maintaining a Clutter-Free Home
Once you have a place for everything, give yourself another hug for a difficult job well-done.
Next, note how much better you feel living in a space without clutter. Seriously, the benefits are pretty much immediate. Without clutter, your cortisol drops to a normal level, reducing anxiety and jitters and allowing you to relax. And clutter-free spaces reduce processing demands on your brain, allowing you to think more clearly.
In fact, without clutter, your brain is better able to help you maintain a clutter-free home using this short list of rules.
4 Rules for a No-Clutter Home
The Right-Now Rule—when something comes into your home, deal with it immediately. For example, don’t let mail pile up. Open every envelope or package as soon as it comes in the door, and deal with it instantly. When you get groceries, put them away as soon as you get home. When your laundry is dry, pull it out of the dryer, fold it, and put it away.
The One-Touch Rule—when you pick something up, don’t put it down somewhere else. Put it away.
The Clean-up-as-You-Go Rule—put things away immediately after using them.
The Do-I-Really-Need-This Rule—Retailers have made huge investments in buyer research and technology to get you to buy lots of stuff. To make things even more unfair, your brain betrays you by releasing neurotransmitters like serotonin and dopamine when you buy stuff.
You can even the playing field before buying something by asking these questions:
Will the thing I want to buy fill an actual need that I have?
Will this thing reduce friction in my life?
Do I have a place to put this thing if I buy it?
If your answer to any of these questions is no, walk away.
These rules sound hard to follow, but you will get better with practice.
And your brain will thank you every moment of every day.
Organizing Your Home Around Your Life
Putting things away is half the battle.
To keep clutter from returning, make sure you have a place for everything that’s close to where you are most likely to use that thing.
That’s the key to making your home easier to live in.
Often that simply means storing like items together. But, in some rooms—like kitchens, craft rooms, offices, and workshops—where you use many different tools, that can be challenging to get right.
This is where organizing your stuff to optimize your workflow becomes important.
I’ve found that the most foolproof way to do that is to role-play common tasks and organize your stuff accordingly.
First, select the room that you’re finding challenging to organize. Role play the common tasks that you perform in that room or area. For example, in your kitchen/dining room, set the table for dinner, make a sandwich, or prepare a meal; in your office, open and deal with your snail mail; in your bathroom, get ready to go to work or out for the evening.
As you role play, take notes. For example, if you’re miming a kitchen task, are the utensils and supplies you need for that task close at hand and easily to get to? If not, how should you rearrange your stuff to make it easier?
Once you’ve role played enough tasks to cover most contingencies, relocate items where they are easier to find and use.
Live with your new arrangement for two weeks, then rework any placements that aren’t working.
I used this process in my renovated kitchen before I moved in and unpacked. A month after move-in I hosted a Christmas dinner for my siblings. When my sister did the last-minute prep on her dish, I was pleased to see that everything she needed was within easy reach and I didn’t have to tell her where anything was.
In fact, at one point, she opened a drawer and yelled, “OMG everything is where it’s supposed to be! THAT IS SO ANNOYING OF YOU!”
That was fun.
When to Use Labels
I’m often asked about my position on labeling storage containers.
Labels can be helpful—or they can be overkill.
Use labels when:
You’re storing items in large bins
You’re storing a mix of items
You can’t see the inside of the container
For items you need but use only seasonally, like Christmas decorations and camping equipment, store like with like and clearly label the boxes you store the items in.
If You Live With a Clutter-Lover
Unless you live by yourself, you can’t eliminate the clutter in your home by yourself.
Cleaning up other people’s clutter is a complete exercise in futility. By cleaning up after the people you live with, you eliminate bad consequences for them and create more work and stress for you.
Save yourself the work and stress by calmly setting clear, specific clean-up rules, definitive consequences for breaking those rules, and (most importantly) consistent follow through.
Here are a few real-life examples.
Dealing with Clutter-Kids
I am from a family of five kids. When we were small, my mom expected us to be diminutive clutter-bombs. Once we got to grade school, Mom made sure we had places to put our stuff, and she expected us to put our stuff away.
The older we got, the more significant the consequences became for creating clutter. The most significant was that if we didn’t put something away, it would simply disappear, and we would have to beg and plead to get it back. Sometimes the pleading worked, sometimes not.
It sounds harsh, but Mom raised clutter-haters.
Dealing with Clutter-Spouses and Partners
My (former) spouse was pretty good at keeping his clutter under control with one exception: he would not put his clothes in the laundry hamper.
Since I did the laundry, I decided to establish a simple laundry policy.
Items in the hamper got washed. Items not in the hamper did not get washed.
I informed him of the policy change twice a day for a week. The following week, he was completely flummoxed when he opened his dresser drawer and found no clean underwear.
That night—and the next five nights—he dropped his dirty laundry on top of the hamper lid. He was apoplectic when, the next time I did laundry, he still had no clean underwear. Or clean socks.
I calmly explained the difference between “on” the hamper and “in” the hamper.
After that, dirty laundry went in the hamper.
Dealing with Clutter-Roommates
I had a roommate who “trained” his dog to poop on the back porch and never cleaned it up despite polite requests, followed by pleading, followed by threats. After a month of this, as the lease-holder, I started fining him $50 for every pile of poo, citing city health department codes (which I gave him to read).
And surprise, surprise—the dog poo was cleaned up and it never happened again. Soon after, though, he broke his lease and moved out.
I was ecstatic.
Cleaning Up
Once you’ve decluttered and organized your home, before thinking about updates and décor, it’s time for a deep clean.
Because it’s easier to clean without clutter.
Cleaning is actually good exercise for your brain (surprise!).
It gives you a sense of control
Its simple, repetitive actions create a sense of calm
It triggers the release of endorphins that naturally lift your mood
It provides a sense of accomplishment.
When cleaning, though, a few caveats:
Use cleaners in well-ventilated areas
Never mix cleaners together as the result can emit a harmful gas.
Check your cleaning product's safety via EPA Safer Choice or Environmental Working Group.
Safer Cleaning Staples
When the clutter is gone, these will help you store the stuff you actually use:
Next Up
Now that you’ve decluttered, organized, and cleaned your home, you’re ready to make the changes that will make your home a better place for you to live.
That’s what we’ll cover in Part 3.
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