Practice mindful organization. Get current with what you actually need and how you feel right now. Let your values drive choices about things. To put it more simply, as my kids’ great-grandmother used to say, everything needs a Where to Put.
What you currently own, plus anything else you bring into your small space, will need to live somewhere. Since you’ll spend time and energy caring for and choosing among these things, be thoughtful. Give yourself a buffer between wanting and buying. Create an intermediate spot before getting rid of things you’re not sure about. It’s worth a bit of time, because mindful organization brings you more calm, inside and out.
Intentionality: Consider What’s Important to You First
Start with mindful consumption. Ask yourself whether the shiny new thing you see in the store or online will make you as happy as you hope it will.
Now picture it used a few times, thrown on the floor, needing to be cleaned, picked up, and put away. If it’s no longer as appealing, then perhaps what you’re actually wanting is a perfect, manufactured and packaged promise. This widget may not be what you actually need right now. So take it out of your shopping cart and wait.
Instead of buying on a whim, make a list of things you want and see how you feel about them for a bit. A personal retreat day might be a good time to think about how you’d ideally like your small space to look and feel, and what you’d like to have in it.
Remember that even thrifted or free things take up your time and space. Would you be happy seeing it in your closet or cupboard? What might need to go to give it room? These pre-purchase thought exercises help you pause and stay mindful.
Awareness: Take Inventory of Your Things and How You Feel About Them
If you have the time and need, the KonMari Method, popularized by Marie Kondo’s books and shows, provides a comprehensive approach to considering every single item you own, and whether to keep it or not. Only after going through a category and deciding whether a piece “sparks joy” for you, does she suggest approaches to folding and storing.
She believes that material possessions have an energy to them, and that our relationship to each one can be assessed by holding it up to our bodies and seeing how we feel. Kondo shares that in her early years, she overapplied this question, getting rid of functional things like hammers. She later included usefulness in her definition of joy.
Mindfulness – pausing, becoming aware of the present moment and how your body feels – meshes nicely with the KonMari Method. Donating or getting rid of items that no longer fit your life today helps you surround yourself only with what supports your life force, or joy, right now. As you organize your space, thing by thing, your thoughts will also become more organized, and your confidence in making decisions will improve.
Mindful Decisions: Organizing Provides Hands-On Practice
In the KonMari Method, you go through everything you own, in a particular order by category rather than function or location. The first few easier categories prep your decision-making process:
1. Clothing
2. Books
3. Papers
4. Komono, what she calls everything else, except
5. Sentimental things
By the time you get through the first four categories, you’ll be in a good place to approach even difficult, emotional possessions. Choose which historically important items you want to continue to have in your life.
Then take them out of their hiding places and put focus on them so that you can see and enjoy them. Place your baby’s first shoes in a frame, for example, rather than the box in the corner of your closet.
Sustainability: Reconsider, Repair, Revitalize
One criticism of minimalism comes around finances. After all, if money is no object it’s easier to toss a previously loved item, knowing you can always buy another. The rest of us, however, have to think twice. Having a pause spot, where non-joy-sparking items sit for a while, helps. If after all that time you haven’t missed it, feel free to find it another home.
To make the KonMari Method more sustainable, add a focus on repairing or revitalizing – you might call it upcycling – your own tired items. Before ridding yourself of something, reconsider it.
Might it be repainted? Fixed? Swapped with a friend?
Not sure how you’d know what passes the joy test? You might do better with the Five Point Scale Method, which gives you more options. In order of importance from least to most:
1. Never use – doesn’t fit, you don’t like it, you don’t need it
2. Rarely use but you’re hesitant to toss
3. Occasionally use but haven’t for the past six months
4. Daily use and difficult to replace
5. Important and non-negotiable
Getting rid of things in category one can make it easier to reconsider the others.
Simplicity: Four Boxes or an App
An even simpler approach? The Four Box Method. Pick a room or a closet, take four boxes or trash bags, and label them:
1. Give-away
2. Throw away or recycle
3. Keep
4. Relocate or undecided
Lastly, if you can’t quite bring yourself to start, there’s an app for that. The Toss – Declutter Fast Easy app for iOS and Android provides you with a short, daily task to make decluttering easy.
You only get one task a day, so you can’t keep going with a second one if you’re on a roll. This does seem to keep many who left reviews going, though, since you also won’t burn out as easily.
Emotional Connection: Make Sure Your Belongings Have a Place
College students in a classroom tend to sit in the same seat all semester, even if it’s not assigned. It makes them feel like there’s a place for them, that they belong. Similarly, establishing a Where to Put for each thing you own makes you feel like your belongings, well, belong.
Once you’re only dealing with the items that passed through whatever method you decided on, you’ll need to revisit finding a Where to Put. Interestingly, I found that the KonMari Method left me with the right amount of things, and even organizers, for my space. As if a subconscious aspect of considering whether something sparked joy was whether it physically fit into my present life.
So before buying any organizers, set aside containers you currently have, including things that might be transformed into a Where to Put. Boxes, mugs, folders, shelves, all should be set aside while you’re organizing. When you’re done, revisit them. While your small space might have been bursting at the seams, you may now find storing things easier.
Small spaces invite you to place focus on the vertical. Floor to ceiling shelves, regardless of width, give you more room to store and display. When arranging items in a drawer, cupboard, or box, fold and place them such that every item shows at a glance. Think of how books on a bookshelf or umbrellas in a stand make it easy to grab the one you want. Hang hooks vertically on walls, even if faced with a brick wall in your industrial loft.
If it’s hard to see some of your stored items, a label maker is your friend. Consistent, typed descriptions of what to expect when you open up a drawer, or dig into a box, will keep you grounded and calm as you search.
Keep similar items together. Like looking for gas on the corner with four gas stations, knowing that all electronic cords stay in a single box with the batteries reduces anxiety down the road.
Mindful organization, making sure your things have a Where to Put, keeps you at peace with your material world.
