What are the benefits of an organized home?
Leigh: Efficiency and cost. If you need to find something, you know where it is. You don’t end up with duplicates of items. It decreases stress. In the morning when you’re trying to get out the door, you know where stuff is. So if you have a system in place that works for you then you can find what you need when you need it.
What is the best way to start organizing?
Freeman: We always tell people it’s going to look a lot worse before it gets better, but it will get there and you will be glad. So once you kind of pull everything out, you have to assess what you have and really be honest with yourself [and ask] ‘Do I still need this? Do I use this? Is this benefiting me?’ And if not, that’s when you make the choice to either discard something, donate it, recycle it [or] whatever is the proper way of getting rid of [it]. Once you have pared down to what you actually need and want and use, you basically group it into categories.
What is the importance of ‘spring cleaning?
Freeman: We’ve gotten through the holidays; we have a lot of access to stuff that we’ve added to the house. ... There’s a lot of consignment sales in the spring. You can always donate items, so to go through and be honest, to keep things kind of pared down to what you use which is important ... It affects your health [for] people who have allergies and asthma, to keep things de-cluttered and therefore easier to deep clean when you need to.
What are some tips for staying organized?
Leigh: One, labeling things. It can be any type of label, but if you know where things go, you are way more likely to put them back in place. ... [And] every night, do a quick little five-minute tidy up. You might not want to do that, but if you take the five, 10 minutes the night before and put everything back where it goes, you’ll start the next day refreshed in order versus things just mounting and piling up on top of themselves.
What materials or tools are most helpful for staying organized?
Leigh: Whatever bin or container you’re going to go with, try to pick a color coordination or a style that’s consistent because that will visually give you a much more organized look too. We also tell our clients you don’t have to go to the most high-end, expensive kinds of places to buy your organizing items. You can find them at dollar stores, you can find them at middle of the way price points, and then you can find them at more high-end prices based on what your budget can afford.
What are some common problems people might have with staying organized?
Freeman: I think everybody has the issue of coming in the door and having a dumping station right inside the door, and making sure that you have a system in place for that so that it doesn’t accumulate.
Leigh: Another universal issue for almost everyone is time. There’s never enough time for anything now, it feels like. We get home; we’re exhausted after the end of the day; the last thing we want to do is organize our house or get things put things back in order, and so a lot of times that gets pushed to the back-burner. You have to prioritize sometimes, and sometimes that just doesn’t get done.
