Top 10 Most Common Organizing Mistakes People Make
By Lara Bezich, Founder, Better Boxes
As a former professional organizer and interior designer, I have seen inside many homes of disorganized people. I have also used a lot of different organizing products and solutions myself over the years, and have figured out what works and what doesn’t work, especially for people who move a lot.
Some of these reasons for disorganization may surprise you. Some may even be controversial, but they are not meant to be black and white. There are lots of grey areas and exceptions. Plus everybody’s home and life is different. So take note of what resonates for you and ignore what doesn’t. These are the top ten organizing mistakes I’ve seen people make:
1. Buying too many organizing products.
Organizing products don’t always help you get organized. The aisles of stores are filled with attractive products in a range of styles and materials for every possible use in your home. Under-the-sink organizers for the bathroom. Spice organizers for the kitchen cupboards. Desktop organizers for the office. Shoe organizers for the closet. Containers for the pantry. Shelf separaters. Drawer inserts. The variety and array is head spinning. But adding more organizing products to your home often has the opposite effect you want by creating “organizing product clutter” and taking up more space than necessary. Often the solution is to simplify and spread things out versus cramming more in with these products.
2. Using inflexible organizing systems.
Many of the organizing products on the market are designed for a specific use, such as for organizing tools, organizing shoes, organizing office supplies, etc. You can’t use a shoe rack to store power tools, just as you can’t use a desktop sorter to store shoes. Many products are too rigid in their potential uses, and do not expand or contract to adapt to changing contents and needs. Multi-functional, modular, adaptable organizing systems are better because our lives and belongings are dynamic and always changing.
3. Not allowing easy access to stored items.
When storing things, there’s a tendency to tuck things in hard to reach places and stack containers one on top of another to save space. The problem is that when you need to get something out, you have to take off lids, unstack containers, and generally make a mess. An neater way to store things is in containers that you can access contents from without having to take apart piles, such as the Muvo Box which can be stacked sideways like shelving so the insides are accessible even in boxes at the bottom of a pile.
4. Filling spaces to the maximum capacity without leaving any breathing room around items.
It’s better to only partially fill any given drawer, shelf, cupboard, or cabinet. By leaving some of the space open, you can more easily maneuver the items and objects inside, and it feels less cluttered. When or if it starts to fill up and get full, you can move some of the items that are not as important or frequently used to long term storage areas.
5. Storing items in a separate place from where they’ll be used.
When items are stored too far away from where they are needed for use, they are more likely to be put back in the wrong place or forgotten about. It’s inconvenient and inefficient.
6. Over-partitioning.
Dividing up the space inside cupboards, cabinets, and drawers makes sense to a point. The right amount of partitioning helps you keep things sorted. But having too many rigid partitions makes tidying up more tiresome. For example, a sock drawer with partitions that separate every pair of socks takes more effort to maintain than a sock drawer where all the socks are thrown in together in bundled pairs. If it’s too much of a chore to maintain, you’re less likely to do so.
7. Over-zealously decanting.
With so many stylish and trendy containers on the market, you might be tempted to transfer all your everyday products from their original packaging into more attractive containers. For example, handsoap in a pump dispenser, or cereal in a lidded jar. While this makes sense if the containers are going to be on display in open shelving, or for daily use items such as ground coffee, often, decanting containers require more space than original packaging would, and cost a lot more time, effort, and money to move. A 5 lb bag of flour can be used up and thrown away, but a lidded “flour jar” has to be boxed up to move. Is it worth it?
8. Buying ugly products or products that don’t fit.
Instead of decanting, buy products that are packaged nicely and fit the space you have alloted for them. That extra tall bottle of olive oil might be gorgeous, but will it fit in your cupboard? If not it will be hanging out as clutter on your countertop or inconveniently stored elsewhere.
9. Not tossing packaging.
When you do find beautiful packaging, there’s a tendency to hold onto it even after the product inside has been used or removed. That iphone box or top-shelf liquor box may be luxurious, but what’s the point in keeping it just because it is nice? It’s likely not the best solution for anything other than what it was intended for.
10. Over-zealously labeling.
This might be controversial among organizing afficionados and it often goes hand-in-hand with over-zealous decanting. But seriously guys, not everything needs to be labeled! Containers or folders that are indistinguishable from each other do need to be labeled, but they don’t need to have custom printed matching labels. Handwriting is much faster when you’re only making one or two labels. Maybe if you had 100 file folders that you use regularly (rare these days) it would be worth making printed labels, or if you happen to have really bad handwriting.
In Summary
If this list could be summed up in one word, it would be: OVERKILL. The general mistake people make is trying to fit too much stuff into their space, and then when organizing, going overboard with their systems and solutions and not being able to maintain them long term because they were not realistic to begin with. When you stuff your space to the brim and use rigid organizing products, partitions, and items, with no room for flexibility, adaptability, and change, disorganization will result.
The solution is to simplify. This is especially true if you are short on space and time. There’s got to be a natural balance between the amount of stuff, the amount of space, and the amount of time to maintain the stuff in the space. When these three things are out of balance, things get messy. So if you want your life to flow smoothly and your home to be organized, find and maintain the right balance!