apartment therapy changing the world, one room at a time

I love making sure everything has its place. It's easier to edit & streamline that way, on top of keeping things neat.

However! No matter where the proper place is to put something, my boyfriend will make sure it's at least 10 ft away from there. Always. If I switch the front door catch-all to where he actually drops his keys, he starts dropping them where it originally was. It blows my mind.

My husband sounds like your boyfriend jenny!

My good places include putting the snuggly blankets near the sofa vs up in the closet, and putting our "work around the house" clothes and shoes in the utility closet vs taking up space in our small bedroom with our other clothes and shoes.

Also a fan of anything made of paper belongs only in the office. Any form of clothing belongs only in the bedroom. Any dish or utensil belongs only in the kitchen. That way if I don't have time to completely put something away, it's at least in the right ballpark when I do get around to cleaning up.

When I moved in with my now-husband, he had systems in place for everything -- bills, laundry, keys, tools, etc. I'd never lived in anything but chaos, and it's amazing what a difference simple organization makes. I think I used to spend about 30-45 minutes a day simply looking for things.

Where else would sunglasses go?

Our landing strip has the requisite coats, shoes, bags, hats, keys, as well as a bin for library books, the dog's leash, extra poop bags, a lint roller, my son's watch, and a small pile of pebbles (not really sure why those are there).

I keep my jewelry (especially big colorful bangles) in a box on a table near my front door. It started as an accident--I placed a glass-top box on a nesting table in my living room just because it looked pretty, and wasn't sure what to put inside--but then I realized I'm always running out of the bedroom forgetting to put jewelry on. This way I grab a bracelet or a necklace and put it on right before I exit. Plus, all those bangles look pretty assembled in a box, too.

In my miniscule NY studio (200sf!), EVERYTHING has to have a place, and non-visible at that. My Beloved couldn't find his bottom with a map, so whatever he might need has to have it's own little logical home, which must never change or the space-time continuum would go haywire...
We don't use a cluttery thing by the door (oh, dear, "landing strip" - didn't we address thatmisnomer in a previous post?) - too messy-looking: our keys and office stuff stay in our business bags in the closet, so it's pick-up and go. Small outdoor stuff we need goes in it's own bin in the closet, and I change it out according to the season (warm weather= sunglasses etc., cold weather = umbrellas, scarves etc). The bin we don't need goes into the storage unit. Doggy stuff (lead, brush, poo-bags, hair bows (sorry, soppy Shih-Tzu owner) goes in a shoe box in the credenza behind the sofa, and trust me, she knows exactly where it is!
My company, Lifestyle Space Design, focusses on NY apartment renos, so it's my gratifying job to know how my clients live and design their storage accordingly. It also helps to be a bit of a bossy know-it-all, heehee

yes, most men have a problem putting things away to begin with and guess who follows behind. When you live in a small condo one must be organized or else.

sooo true, Haunted-Studio - The Beloved is pretty well trained, as long as I arrange the place for his things, and take him by the hand to show him where it is (usually grabbing his chin and saying over and over "look, look, this is where your whatever-it-is lives now". And then never change it until either of us dies. Sigh.

Apparently I have forgotten how to use the second parenthese-thingy. Idiot.

I've organized my fridge, cupboards & medicine cabinet according to height. While I am "regular" height my son is 6'6". Anything I use frequently goes on the bottom shelves and his stuff goes on the higher ones. Since I started this I noticed that he puts stuff away more and he can find things without constantly asking me where things are.

After reading a few of the posts over at Chez Larsson (http://chezlarsson.typepad.com/myblog/page/2/), I realized that I never sorted my mail, never knew where my keys were, never actually put things in their places. Taking a cue from that blog and this blog, I have used a few ideas to make life easier. I have an antique box near the front door (I am also loathe to use the term landing strip) where bike lights, keys, friends' wallets, etc go. When I come home, I take all of the mail and sort it in an old toolbox-market-caddy thing and take the remaining junk to the rear porch where it goes in the recycling bin. Catalogs go in a special drawer in yet another wooden box and I transfer earlier editions of Newsweek, US News, Sports Illustrated, etc to a basket while moving the Dwell to its special place on the bookshelf and the Food & Wine and Cook's Illustrated to the cookbook rack. In all, this post has taken me longer to write than organizing my mail and decluttering my home.

My grandparents gave me an old box (which might account for my present-day love of all containers wooden) with a captain's quotation on it: "A place for everything and everything in its place." When I leave in the morning and see no clutter, I am able to work much more efficiently and happily during my day at the very hectic and very cluttered world of a high school.