95: Work With Me Wednesday – Experience the 5 Step Organizing Process as I Organize My Mudroom

Organizing the Mudroom with the SPACE Method

With school starting back up soon, I decided to tackle my own mudroom before the chaos of a new year lands on top of whatever’s already been sitting there since the last day of school. I used the SPACE method, an acronym popularized by organizing expert Julie Morgenstern, to walk through it step by step, and I think it’s worth sharing exactly how each piece played out in a real, lived-in space with four kids.

Sort

The first step is sorting, which doubles as clearing the space entirely. I emptied out our mudroom lockers completely and let categories emerge naturally from whatever was actually there, rather than deciding categories in advance. What showed up was pretty predictable: a pile per kid, a pile for the dogs, a pile of things meant for errands or returns that had stalled out partway to the car, a pile of things that belonged elsewhere in the house, and some utilitarian odds and ends like batteries and bug spray. Letting the piles form themselves, rather than forcing items into a predetermined system, made the sort faster and more honest about how the space was actually being used.

Purge

Once everything was out and sorted, it was time to get brutal about what actually needed to stay. My goal for each kid’s space became refreshingly simple: a backpack, a lunchbox, and the shoes they’re currently wearing to school, nothing more. Anything sports-related moved out to hooks in the garage instead. I also gave up entirely on a system that had never once worked in six years, a basket meant to hold items destined for return trips to the store. If it doesn’t make it all the way to the car, it’s not happening, so now anything needing to leave the house goes straight there instead of stalling in a basket. Recognizing and abandoning a system that quietly fails, instead of blaming yourself for not maintaining it, is often the real breakthrough.

Assign homes

With the returns basket officially retired, that prime real estate freed up for something that actually gets used, a fully dedicated space for dog supplies: leashes, waste bags, medicines, treats, and a brush, no longer crammed in next to anything else. When deciding where things should live, ask yourself where you’ve kept something before and whether that spot has actually worked. If it has, don’t move it just for the sake of change, muscle memory is powerful, and moving something that already works just creates friction and frustration while your brain relearns the new spot. Only change what’s genuinely not working.

Containerize

Containers should only get added if they make a space measurably better, not because a system looks incomplete without one. In our mudroom, a basket larger than eight and a half by eleven inches sits above each kid’s hooks specifically to catch school papers, since kids so often come home with items too big for a standard folder. Emptying backpacks tends to happen in rushed moments before practice or dinner, so there’s rarely time to make a real decision about whether to keep a spelling test or toss a flyer. The solution is to lower the bar completely: if you can toss something without thinking, do it immediately, and if you truly can’t, let it land in the basket and revisit it at the end of a quarter, or even just once before the next school year starts. A shallow tray on a shelf for everyone’s car keys works the same way, one simple, unambiguous spot removes the constant low-grade nagging over where the keys went.

Evaluate

The final step isn’t really about declaring a space finished, it’s about revisiting it honestly over time. A mudroom, like most transitional spaces, has things constantly flowing in and out, so there’s no such version of “done” that stays done. Some days you’ll notice a system is working beautifully, other days you’ll notice it’s sliding back into chaos and needs another purge or a different approach. Give yourself grace here, this space was still not entirely finished by the end of my own session, some piles were still waiting to be put away, and my teenagers weren’t exactly thrilled to be recruited into emptying their own backpacks on command. That’s okay. Progress, not perfection, is the actual goal.

Your practical, actionable step

Pick one small, contained space, a single shelf, a locker, an entryway drop zone, and walk through these five steps in order: sort by letting categories emerge naturally, purge with real honesty about what you actually need, assign homes based on what’s already worked (or clearly hasn’t), add containers only where they genuinely help, and then plan to revisit and evaluate rather than expecting it to stay perfect.

Until next time, continue to choose joy.