204: Try This Organizing Hack from a 3 Year old

What a Three-Year-Old Taught a Room Full of Engineers About Organizing

I was scrolling, as good procrastinators do, and came across a short clip about an engineering professor named Lydie Klotz, who was building with Legos alongside his three-year-old. Their bridge wasn’t working right because one side was taller than the other. The professor turned around to select the exact right bricks to fix it, and by the time he turned back, his three-year-old had already solved it.

How the three-year-old actually fixed it

Instead of adding bricks to the short side, the toddler had simply removed bricks from the tall side. The professor hadn’t even considered that as an option. Curious, he built the same model and tested it on his engineering students and fellow professors. Every single adult chose to add bricks to the short side. Not one thought to subtract. A three-year-old, with no engineering training at all, instinctively reached for the simpler fix, while every trained adult defaulted to adding something new.

It’s worth wondering whether our consumer-driven, marketing-soaked world has quietly trained us to believe the answer to almost any problem is buying or adding something, rather than removing what’s already there.

Applying this to the drawer that won’t shut

Think of a specific space in your home right now that’s driving you crazy: a drawer that won’t close, a bin overflowing its container. How many times have you told yourself you can’t fix it because you need to buy some organizing product first, and you don’t have the time or money to go get it?

Try looking at it with three-year-old eyes instead, through four simple steps.

Step one: define what the space is actually for

Take my own utensil drawer, the one to the right of my stove. I’ve defined it as holding only the tools I want within arm’s reach while I’m actively cooking with the gas on, things I need fast: a spatula, a whisk, and so on.

Step two: pull out anything that doesn’t match that definition

Once the drawer’s purpose is clear, anything in there that doesn’t serve that specific function comes out, even if it’s a perfectly good item. An avocado tool, a strawberry huller, a melon baller, none of those need to live at arm’s reach from the stove even if they’re useful somewhere else in the kitchen.

Step three: pull out anything you genuinely never use

This is the harder step, because these are often items in perfectly good condition, which makes them feel wrong to remove. But ask honestly: have I sliced a hundred strawberries this year and never once reached for the huller, always grabbing a paring knife instead? Have I cut open dozens of avocados and never touched the specialty avocado tool? If a tool never gets reached for in practice, its physical condition doesn’t matter. The same logic applies to clothing: if you’d only ever wear a particular shirt when literally everything else was dirty, you don’t need it taking up space, and having less clothing overall often means it all stays cleaner anyway, because there’s simply less to manage.

Step four: tidy what’s left and test it

Once you’ve pulled out what doesn’t belong and what you never use, neaten up what remains and test the space. Does the drawer now open and close easily? Does it stop snagging on some rarely used gadget? If subtracting solved it, you don’t need to buy a single organizing product, no bins, no springy dividers. And here’s a detail worth knowing: those drawer dividers, especially the ones with a solid bottom, actually shrink the usable depth of a drawer. Adding organizing tools to a space that just needs less stuff in it can make the problem worse, not better.

It actually worked

I tested this exact process on four spaces in my own kitchen before recording this, starting with that utensil drawer. Every single space improved: I could reach what I actually use without frustration, and putting things back afterward became effortless, no more wrestling the drawer open, shifting things around, and forcing it shut. Less stuff simply made the space function better. No products purchased, nothing changed structurally, just removal.

Your practical, actionable step

Pick one space that’s genuinely frustrating you right now. Define what it’s actually for, pull out anything that doesn’t match that purpose, then pull out anything you never actually reach for, even if it’s in perfect condition. Test the space before buying anything to fix it.

Until next time, continue to choose joy.