Save Time

Tidy by category, not location.

Marie Kondo

Many elements of the KonMari Method® are instinctive to me, such as:

• Organize by category.

• Choose what to keep—in all categories—before determining storage.

• Do it all at once, in a short time period.

These are all core to the way I’ve organized since grade school.

When I was young, my room was disorganized much of the time. When the mess got to me, I spent hours organizing—start to finish—all in one day.

It began in chaos and grew more chaotic as I pulled out every drawer, emptied every box and removed the entire contents of my closet. Soon every flat surface was covered. All my things were sorted into piles—

• all the markers, here,

• all the stuffed animals, there,

• all the books, stacked together,

• all the marbles, in one spot, etc.

Once everything I owned was out and sorted, I could begin. Each pile was considered, and every piece examined. Anything I didn’t keep ended up in the hallway to be discarded or donated.

After all the choosing and discarding was finished, I was ready to put my room in order. Storage was simple to determine, because every single item for each category was right in front of me. There was nothing left in a drawer or hiding under the bed.

I had learned the hard way that organizing by location meant I would be doing double the work.

For example, if I found a jar just big enough to hold my marbles and then discovered another stash of them in the closet, I had to stop and find a different jar.

This happened more than once

as I moved from location to location.

If my markers filled a box and I discovered another set, I had to find a new box.

So instead I organized by categories, and sorted everything at once.

The process felt counter-intuitive to my mother, who would glance in every so often and wonder aloud if I would ever finish. Spoiler alert—I always did.

Organizing by categories rather than location doesn’t make sense to most people.

It’s for this very reason, however, that most people find getting organized so difficult. They are doing it the wrong way, the frustrating way.

Now, admittedly, I continued to allow my room to descend from order to chaos again. I was a child, busy with play and friends and school, not yet self-disciplined or self-controlled. My organizing skills were new and not yet fully realized.

And as I grew up, I continued to organize in concentrated, short periods of time, working by categories, storing at the end. My room stayed ordered for longer and longer periods of time. And my organizing skills continually improved.

Tell me:

What has most often stopped your progress as you try and order your space?

What frustrates you most in your attempts to get organized?

Do you organize by location or category?