42: Step by Step Plan to Organize Any Space in Your Home – Introduction

Before You Organize Any Space, Ask These Four Questions

This kicks off a series walking through a step-by-step plan to organize any space in your home, following Julie Morgenstern’s SPACE method: sort, purge, assign, containerize, equalize. Before jumping into the actual steps, though, there are four questions worth sitting with first, the same ones I walk through with every client at an initial consultation, before anything gets touched.

Question one: what’s the smallest version of this space?

Resist the urge to tackle something as broad as “my kitchen.” A kitchen is really several distinct spaces bundled together, the pantry, the fridge, the freezer, individual drawers, upper cabinets, lower cabinets. Trying to organize all of it at once creates a domino effect, moving glasses means moving pots, which means moving Tupperware, and suddenly nothing has a stable home and everything is out at once. Break your target down into the smallest standalone chunk possible, just the pantry, just the fridge, and commit your energy there without letting yourself wander into adjacent spaces.

Question two: what’s your actual why?

“I want to be organized” isn’t specific enough to guide real decisions later. Dig into what’s actually bothering you. Is it finding expired food? Buying duplicates because you couldn’t find what you already had? Wanting kids to grab snacks independently? Wanting cleanup to go faster? A clear, specific why becomes the filter you’ll use later when purging and assigning homes to things, it turns a vague wish into an actual decision-making tool. And be honest about the difference between wanting something to look pretty, which is staging, and wanting something to genuinely function well, which is organizing. Pretty can be a nice side effect, but it shouldn’t be the goal driving your decisions.

Question three: what’s your actual organizing style?

Cas the Clutterbug divides organizing styles into four types based on two questions: do you prefer visual abundance or visual simplicity, and do you prefer broad, simple categories or detailed, specific ones? Some people feel calm surrounded by visible, easily accessible items and get anxious when things are tucked out of sight. Others feel overwhelmed by visual clutter and crave a clean, minimal look. Similarly, some people are perfectly happy with one broad “writing utensils” category, while others need pens, pencils, highlighters, and markers each in their own separate space to feel at ease. Neither preference is right or wrong, but organizing a space to fight against your natural style sets you up to abandon it later. I’m someone who craves visual simplicity but only needs broad categories, which is why my kitchen looks put-together at a glance but a specific drawer might reveal a much less detailed system underneath. That’s not a failure, it’s just knowing myself.

Question four: what’s your actual, realistic lifestyle?

Be honest about how you actually live, not how you wish you lived. If groceries regularly get shoved into the fridge and freezer between one activity and the next with zero time to spare, an elaborate system of decanted, pre-portioned containers isn’t going to survive contact with your actual days, no matter how good it looks on Pinterest. That’s not a judgment, it’s just reality, particularly for anyone juggling multiple kids’ schedules or a demanding pace of life. If you do have more built-in time and want to turn organizing into a shared family project, that’s a wonderful option too, just make sure whichever system you choose is honestly built around your real life, not an aspirational one.

Your practical, actionable step

Before organizing anything, answer all four questions for the specific space you’re about to tackle: name the smallest possible version of that space, name your specific why, identify your natural organizing style, and be honest about your real day-to-day lifestyle. Only once you’ve answered these should you move on to actually sorting.

Until next time, continue to choose joy.