I’m exhausted and uninspired during my final stage of decluttering (organization)

Advice Request

I'm overwhelmed and uninspired by my decluttering progress. I've made significant progress decluttering over the past few months, but I'm stuck on how to organize the items I've decided to keep. Im a cricket on the clutterbug quiz, so I prefer micro-organization and hidden storage to avoid visual clutter and to find things quickly and easily.

I want a pretty and visually simplistic system but can't find the right one. I've searched Pinterest and other posts but nothing has sparked my inspiration. I've resorted to stashing some items in my walk-in closet because i don’t know what to do with them. I'm stuck and considering getting rid of items I use just to simplify. Please help me overcome this hurdle!

in declutterby AccidentalFolklore

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1mo

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songbird121

1mo

One bit of advice that has helped me with organization is use Dana White's suggestion of "If I needed this, where would I look for it first." She uses it as a decluttering strategy, but it has helped me a lot as an organizational strategy too. I also have micro organization tendencies, so I tried to take to heart Cass's advice of not getting too bogged down in making the perfect organizing system right away, and so I decided to use the "where would I look for it first" as a way to start with the general organizing.

For example, I have a lot of papers for work, and I kept having trouble figuring out how to organize them. So I started with, where would I look for them first, which helped me kind of figure out which file drawers made sense for each kind of papers.

Then once I had home for each broad type, I started figuring out what micro-categories I needed for the types by asking myself if I needed this document, what kind of document do I think to look for. So for my stuff for classes, I have the papers for each class, and at first they just each had a drawer.

Then over time, once most of it was in the drawer I realized that I needed smaller categories for "in-class activity stuff" "big assignment stuff" "photocopies of readings" and "my copies of readings." But those categories were not as easy to figure out until I knew I had basically all the papers that I needed in the drawer were I would look for them. I didn't have to worry if I had all the micro-categories until I had gotten to the point that all of the things of a certain type were there consistently, so then I could put them into more logical micro-categories. But until I started with the broader "where would I look for this first" I was paralyzed by how to get started.

It seems like you mention having trouble deciding where to put stuff, so maybe this kind of instinctive "where would l look for it first" will help you get over that hurdle, rather than trying to come up with the most "logical, rational" way to organize it.

https://www.aslobcomesclean.com/2015/04/where-i-would-put-it-vs-where-i-would-look-for-it/

AccidentalFolklore

1mo

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songbird121

1mo

I think one of the most important things about the where would I look for it first method is that there is no "wrong." If where you would look for computer stuff is in that box in the closet, then that's where you look for it. It doesn't have to "make sense." It just has to work with where you would look for it. It may be a situation that you are overthinking things a bit, trying to come up with somewhere that makes "sense."

If you keep the jewelry in the back of a drawer, or in a cookie jar in the kitchen, or under the bed in a storage tub or any other random place it is never wrong if you are able to find it. So if the place you would look for "things I don't use very often" is in a box in the walk in closet, then maybe a little tub or box or something in a corner is the place where you would look for it. If the issue is that you worry that you would lose things that are all just in a box, maybe your solution is to really lean into storage containers within storage containers and lots of labeling. I store all of my travel kinds of things in a backpack hung on the back of my closet door. I have a little pouch for hair stuff, a little pouch for medicines and first aid, for shower stuff, for makeup stuff, etc. There is a whole lot of odds and ends dumped in that bag, but because each type is in a pouch, its not all just rolling around and each pouch is different, so I know which is which. So maybe try some pouches from the dollar store or thrift store, some labeled small cardboard boxes, or even ziploc storage bags each with a colored piece of paper inside that has a label and a list of what is in it.

Then the "place you would look" is in that particular storage tub, and maybe later you can figure out where that storage tub needs to live. That has how my downstairs storage space has been even remotely functional. I know stuff is in there. But I had to label the tubs and the tubs within tubs, because otherwise it just became a black hole. The storage containers get shuffled around in the space, so they aren't always in the same places, but I know what's in each one to a point. I even avoided using matching ones, because having them all be different means that I can keep better track of which one I'm looking for. Like, I know that the clothes are in clear ones but the Christmas stuff is in the green and silver ones, and the sports stuff is in the blue laundry basket. Once I narrow it down, the labels help with whether the Christmas ornaments are in the green tub or the silver one (offhand I have no idea). :)

And for the headlamp, I totally know what you mean. The times I have had stuff like that, I wrote down the spot I looked for it first in a note on my phone, so that when I eventually found it I would remember what the actual first place I looked was since I looked in so many places. LOL.