Learn about the SPACE Formula: Sort, Purge, Assign a home, Containerize, Attack, and Equalize!
Supplies
Avoid wandering about during your SPACE project by first gathering a few basic supplies. Round up some containers for your stuff — tough trash bags for discards and empty boxes for sorting. You’ll need your notebook, Post-It notes, and markers, pencils, and pens for labeling or taking notes. You’ll also want some light cleaning supplies like cloths, spray cleaner, and perhaps a broom or vacuum cleaner. Let’s not neglect fuel to keep you going — water and a snack (hopefully nutritious!).
A Formula for Space and Time
Julie Morgenstern’s second formula is easy to remember. It’s SPACE. SPACE stands for Sort, Purge, Assign a home, Containerize, and Equalize.
S-ort
P-urge
A-ssign a home
C-ontainerize
E-qualize
Great warriors knew their attacks would be successful if they took the time to know the enemy, create a battle plan, and tell the troops what to do. In your attack, you’ll make use of the second Organizing from the Inside Out formula. You, too, will reap great rewards when you keep SPACE in mind.
How simple could it get? From now on, when you enter a room to be organized, think SPACE. Sure, you know now that you should analyze and strategize first, but SPACE represents what you actually get up and do in the place to be organized.
Remember that you want to tackle all the SPACE activities, and you want to handle them in the order that they appear in the formula. If you skip any of the activities or get them out of order, then it’s no longer SPACE. You just have a heap of capes, caps, paces, and aces, but still no clear SPACE.
Speaking of falling into heaps, you’ll feel better, and work more decisively, if your body is prepared to do organizing battle. Get a good night’s sleep and nourish yourself before beginning a day’s work. That way, you won’t just space out when the going gets a little tough. Try to keep the big picture of your goals in mind, but select one area to work on at a time — that area that screamed the loudest at you earlier!
Pace Yourself
Set a timer for 15 minutes, stay focused on your task, and don’t stop until the bell chimes, says author and professional organizer Hope Lafferty of the training firm, (S)PACE, in Austin, Texas. Use the timer for any task you dread. If you are on a roll, set the timer again and keep working. If you have had it at the end of the first 15 minutes, stop and give yourself a break. Lafferty’s last word? Repeat.
Sort It Out
“Sort,” that small word with such huge consequences, means to associate, to harmonize, or to place, separate, or arrange according to classification or kind of item.
In organizing, “sort” means to examine each (and every!) item where you are organizing. Ask yourself some questions about your possessions. Morgenstern suggests asking four basic questions:
- Do I use this?
- Do I love this?
- Does it make or cost me money?
- What category does this belong in?
A lot of people can easily answer the first three. It’s the sorting process where things get bogged down.
Begin Where You Are
You’ll get the most visual bang for your buck by sorting the things you can see first. The things that are out, in sight (and in the way?) are probably being used more than what’s squirreled away. If you’re in the bedroom, start with what’s on the bed, your dresser, or thrown over a chair and on the floor.
Establish large or rough sorting categories. You’ll go faster. Jeff Campbell, owner of The Clean Team in San Francisco and author of Clutter Control, suggests these categories: trash; garage sale or charity; belongs elsewhere; not sure; return to owner; repair, alter, or mend. All the keepers are sorted according to rough groups such as shirts, pants, and jackets or sporting goods, tools, and gardening supplies.
Heed Webster’s words. Group like items together. Fishing line goes with fishing lures goes with fishing rods goes with fishing reels. They won’t all go in the same container, but they all have to do with fishing.
Stay Put
Resist the temptation to run that glass back to the kitchen, call your brother because you found his missing book, or fix the vacuum cleaner now that you found the parts. These are all categories. Put items for another room, returning to others, or mechanical parts in their own piles near the door. When you get the urge to run, take a deep breath, stretch, and remember your goals.
Letting Go
Trouble saying good-bye to your stuff? Try some innovative ideas from Judith Kolberg of the National Study Group on Chronic Disorganization in Atlanta. Kolberg helps clients let go by identifying and donating to a charity with a very personal, meaningful connection. She suggests taking photographs or using grieving measures to release certain items. She also teaches clients to ask, “Does this item need you?” rather than “Do I need this item?”
Purge to Get Rid of Excess
You’ll recognize the stuff to get rid of because these items are broken, battered, and really don’t matter to you any more — clothing ripped beyond repair, shoes that hurt your feet, dried paint, dead batteries, photos of former lovers — you get the picture. Morgenstern puts these so-easy-to-toss items on a list she calls “Julie’s No-Brainer Toss List.”
“Purge” doesn’t necessarily mean to throw something away. It means that it should be removed from the rest of your possessions. You can toss it in the trash, recycle it, give it to someone who can use and appreciate it, or sell it. In short, purging an item from your space is an invitation (or an order!) for that item to move elsewhere.
Dorothy Lehmkuhl and Dolores Cotter Lamping, authors of Organizing for the Creative Person, ask you to think of purging in economic terms. You pay for clutter with your time, energy, and money — in rent or mortgage — for all the space you use to house your stuff, even if it’s deep in your closet or stashed in the attic. If you’re paying $15-$20 or, more likely, closer to $30 a square foot for office space, is it worth it to pay for clutter?
Out of Sight
Consider off-site storage. It’s great if you are in between homes, your civic group uses large seasonal decorations, or your business is stockpiling scarce materials. Think again if you’re storing ill-fitting clothing, grandmother’s damaged dishes, or unknown auto parts. Ask yourself if you can afford the monthly fee and mental anguish to store things you don’t love or use. At some point, you’ll spend far more energy and money than the items are worth.
Assign It a Home
Start thinking of storage as places to keep things you love and use, rather than hidden places to stash stuff when friends and family come calling.
Think Retrieval
Whether you’re trying to file papers or hang a jacket in your closet, it isn’t about where to put things away, say Closets authors Patricia Coen and Bryan Milford. Storage is about being able to take your things out again with the greatest of ease. If you can’t find something, can’t reach it, or can’t use it because it was improperly stored, what good is it anyway?
Taming the Paper Tiger at Work author Barbara Hemphill agrees. You want to file information according to how you will use it. Instead of asking, “Where should it go?” try asking yourself, “Where do I use it?” and “Where will I look for it?”
Within Arm’s Reach
Keep things and information where they will be used. Active and heavily used reference files are best kept in file drawers at your fingertips. A smaller number of files can be readily seen and accessed from a stepped file holder. Diskettes scattered about could be given one home in a bin next to your computer. Let’s look at some other stuff that might be in sight and in your way.
The TV remote and channel guide could be kept at your favorite chair in an attractive box, basket, or armchair pocket. Getting the picture? For at least a month, gently train yourself and others to return these items to their home every evening.
Instead of tripping repeatedly over toys, make a home for them in a large, centrally located basket that your kids can access — and fill themselves! Or, if finding shoes everywhere (or not at all!) is a problem in your house, designate a sturdy rack or rug near the door where everyone can leave footwear.
Get the Right Fit
Measure everything. To avoid frustration and unnecessary shopping trips, measure every dimension of the space to be filled. Do the same for the items to be stored in the container. Make sure it’s a comfortable fit for the items you are storing, and for the home where you will keep the container. As with children’s shoes, leave a little growing room in your container and storage area — but not too much.
Containerize Your Stuff
Once you have sorted, purged, and assigned homes, use containers to hold like items together and keep things within fixed limits. Your stuff won’t ooze off the shelf, slide around in your drawers, or fling itself all about if it’s stored in well-chosen containers. The finite space of a container also makes it difficult for you to collect much more than your container will allow itself to hold.
Show Your Style
You can strut your stuff with clear containers, and show off your own style by selecting from a bevy of bags, boxes, bins, bottles, bowls, and baskets. Nearly any material from industrial plastic and metals to wood and natural fibers is available. In today’s market place, you’ll see every imaginable color, size, and price to match your budget, personality, and decor.
You can find appropriate storage containers just about anywhere — your own closets or attic, garage sales, discount centers, upscale retailers, catalog merchants, and on the Internet. It’s easy to get carried away by neat, color-coordinated displays and bring home items that don’t really meet your needs. To avoid having too many containers, here are a few pointers in finding just the right one for the job.
- Uniform containers stack better than mixed, odd sizes.
- Stacked drawers are accessed more easily than boxes.
- Get the best and sturdiest containers you can afford.
- If you don’t love it, leave it alone.
- A large container may be too heavy to lift once you fill it with heavy objects.
- Clear containers can help you and others identify or locate items.
ID, Please
After your stuff is loaded into its new home, remember to mark it with simple words, attractive labels, and neat legible handwriting — or better yet, use a label maker or your computer to generate black lettering on white adhesive labels.
Aircraft Maintenance
Moaning and groaning because you don’t like the equalizing tasks? You’re not alone. Most people don’t look forward to repetitive maintenance. But, consider this — which airline you would rather fly with — the one that performs regular maintenance on its aircraft or not? Your tasks may not carry the life-or-death consequences that aircraft maintenance does, but then again, who’s to say what could happen without maintenance in your life?
Equalize: “Maintenance” Is Not a Dirty Word
A commonly heard complaint after someone gets a room, office, or whole house organized is that they cannot maintain the system. According to Morgenstern, if you’re not sabotaging your own efforts because of some deeper psychological need, and you don’t have a totally uncooperative living partner, you may not be giving maintenance a fair shot.
Maintenance isn’t a dirty word. People simply perceive the maintenance process as boring, and, therefore, don’t want to do it.
Maintenance is your chance to check in with yourself and your goals, your papers, and your stuff. It’s a chance to do a tune-up. Think of yourself as a racecar making a pit stop. The idea is not to take too long. Do what needs to be done and get back in the race.
Set aside time every day for equalizing. Train yourself — and your family — to pick up items that don’t live in the public areas of the house. Nothing fancy, no cleaning. Just make picking up the clutter part of your bedtime rituals.
Write “equalize” on your calendar to help you get in the good habit of cleaning up after yourself. Fifteen minutes spent clearing off your desk at the end of every day will pay you back in hours — and reduced stress — over the course of a week. Write down your plans for the following day. Does your plan of action support your main goals? Are you trying to do too much? Or could you do a little more to reach your own important destiny?
Use your planner to schedule weekly, monthly, and quarterly equalizing, too. Think of these equalizing sessions as necessary good habits, like changing the oil in your car, paying bills, or taking out the trash. It isn’t that you relish doing the task as much as you like avoiding the consequence of not doing your job. Consider author Hemphill’s suggestion to establish an “Annual File Clean-Out Day.” Tax preparation time — when you are accessing all those papers anyway — is excellent.
Picture Is Worth a Thousand Words
Professional organizers often take “before” and “after” pictures to show prospective clients and media representatives what we do. You, too, can use this visual technique to remind you how bad it was, how far you’ve come, and what you are capable of doing. Proudly post these snapshots or pull them out whenever you need a lift.
Motivation
Organizing is tiring work. You can literally make hundreds of decisions in an hour. At some point, you’re going to want to quit.
Take a break by all means, but provide yourself the motivation to stay on task until you reach your goals. A good many coaches, Morgenstern included, advocate posting your goals. Post your big goals (make the guestroom livable for Mom to visit). Put up your goals for the space you are working on now (sort, purge, assign, and containerize the visible items in the guest junk room). You can even tape up your immediate goal (find the bed before lunch).
The More, the Merrier
We humans are often more easily motivated when we are accountable. So, tell a supportive friend (a friend is someone who laughs with you, not at you) what you are doing. Ask them to check in with you at a specified time so that you can brag about your progress.
Better yet, ask a friend to trade a specified amount of time. You help them on a project, and ask them to help you out with your organizing. You both get more done than if you worked alone.
Carrot on a Stick
Call it bribery, call it an incentive, but decide on a reward to be doled out when you meet your goals. Found that bed in the guestroom? Then, receive a short break to call a friend and make evening plans. (Crow about your great work while you’re at it.) Try to keep the rewards healthy (a walk in the fresh air vs. a 500-calorie dessert), since our minds usually realize when we are sending mixed messages.
If you are working on a large project with co-workers or family members, decide on a reward for the group before starting. Some folks like the feel of cold, hard cash. Or maybe everyone gets a meal at a favorite restaurant, tickets to the opening day of baseball season, or a weekend trip to the beach. Just make sure that the reward is positive, meaningful to you and others involved, and commensurate with the job that’s been completed.
Resources
Although not an exhaustive list, the following companies are excellent sources for a variety of containers and other organizational products.
http://www.organizedliving.comtarget
This lesson set forth Morgenstern’s five-step plan of attack with the acronym, SPACE. It stands for Sort, Purge, Assign a home, Containerize, and Equalize. In Lesson 4, we’ll learn specifics for organizing your office — at home or at work.
Assignment: SPACE Warriors, Attack!
Step 1: Post Your Goals
Post your big-picture goals where you will see them, but not come to ignore them. Avoid inviting ridicule or inciting a riot by considering the people around you. Refrain from adding more clutter to the scene by tacking up another note. Or, if your most cherished goal is to run away to the South Seas without your family (who doesn’t think that way at least once in awhile?), post that one in your head rather than on the refrigerator.
Post your goals for specific spaces. Use the SPACE formula to break out each part of the job, assign time estimates for each section, and a date that you would like to be finished. Remember to be realistic, and be generous with the amount of time you allot. Again, be aware of the people around you. It is not a good idea to post your SPACE attack plan on a teenager’s door without calm, earnest negotiation and agreement in advance.
Step 2: Start Small
Pick a very small, manageable organizing project like a desk or kitchen drawer. Decide what items you want and need to keep in this drawer. It might be helpful to identify what task(s) you do near this drawer. What would make sense to store here?
Take everything out one by one. Sort these items and purge any trash. Assign each and every item a home. Containerize anything that should be corralled. Equalize by coming back to this small project later in the day. Did you leave anything out and undone? Did you put your things away where they belong?
Step 3: Use a Timer
Start using a timer for equalizing tasks. Make it fun. If you don’t have a timer, use a radio, television, or a human voice in song to mark time. See what you can pick up from around your desktop, favorite chair, or the kitchen sink in 15 minutes.
Step 4: Check it Out
Visit some of the Web sites listed in the Resources section of Lesson 3. Remember that this is a scouting — not a buying — lesson. Just see what’s out there.
Organizing from the Inside Out 