You can't organize until you know your mission statement. So if
you skipped that part, you can go back to it by
clicking here.
Then you have to take inventory. (By the way, businesses do this
annually which is a great practice to get into in your home!)
Taking inventory is about determining exactly what you have on hand.
Businesses have categories known as slow moving and obsolete.
Successful companies develop plans to aggressively sell slow moving
inventory and discard obsolete inventory.
In a home, slow moving inventory would be equivalent to holiday dishes.
They're items you might only use once a year but you want to keep them on
hand to help create a festive environment for your family (assuming that's
part of your mission statement).
Obsolete inventory is the same at home as it is in business. It's
just stuff you rarely if ever use and it's gotta go.
It's the obsolete you're after. Help yourself identify it by
going back to your mission statement.
For example, if you don't enjoy cooking you probably don't need a food
processor or more than one set of pots and pans or countless spatulas and
knives.
If you don't enjoy baking you probably don't need more than one cake
pan, muffin pan or cookie sheet.
If you don't drink a lot of wine, pare down the wine glasses and the
wine charms and the wine holder and the wine corks--in other words, all
things wine. Do you really need glasses for red wine and glasses for
white wine? Unless you're a connoisseur, the answer is probably no.
How many place settings of dishes do you actually use? Limit what
you have on hand to the answer.
How many place settings of silverware do you need? For most
families the answer is one. Get rid of the excess.
Plastic food containers can easily get out of control. Go through
what you have and keep a fraction of what's on hand. But before you
throw the excess out or give them away, make sure you can't use them in
another area of the house. They're great for organizing bathrooms
and toys.
The goal is to minimize down to that that you actually use because you
cannot organize until you minimize.
At this point you should be left with what you're going to keep.
The next step is to put it away in a way that makes sense.
Go to the next step...
