Is it more difficult to organize a large home? It turns out, it’s really quite a challenge. Sometimes you can have a house that is too big for your needs. When I first met these clients, a couple with three children, they lived in a modest home of probably under 2000 square feet (185 m2). Now, they live in a substantially larger home (I’m guessing well over 4000 square feet), yet chaos remains. Unfortunately, they assumed that clutter would no longer be a problem if they had more space. However, more space really gives you more places to put clutter, doesn’t it?
Assigning a Home for the Stuff
By the end of our first meeting, I had a list of seventeen different areas that could use some sort of reorganization. The problem with a large house is that there are multiple choices for where “stuff” could be stored. In smaller homes, there are fewer choices, so the obvious locations are usually pretty easy to find. In this case, we put a lot of thought into each area of the home and worked harder to decide where things should logically go.
The Garage Mudroom Area
We did some sorting in the garage mudroom area. In doing so, we discovered the new cubby units they built were not designed quite the way they should be to hold coats, boots, shoes, and backpacks for everyone. The shoe shelving had small cubbies, each one holding three shoes instead of one or two pairs of shoes. Unfortunately, that’s what happens when you don’t measure the width of a pair of shoes before you build the unit. (Just sayin’!) Additionally, there aren’t nearly enough large coat hooks to hang everything. So, we decided to do some carpentry work there.
Sports Equipment
As we organized the garage area, we realized that there was a lot of big, bulky sports gear. Some of it was in the garage and some in a storage room in the basement. Because this large home has a comparatively small garage, we had to rotate the seasonal sports gear between the garage and the storage room in the basement. Of course, it meant our next step was to organize the basement storage room. During the winter, it holds camping and golf gear. It also serves as storage for memorabilia, old family pictures, and framed artwork that “might get used someday,” so we moved in some shelves from another room to hold those items.
Paperwork
We moved on to paperwork. Typical of many families, we discovered the dreaded trail of paper that goes from the bench in the garage, to the table just inside the garage door, to the kitchen counter, into the pantry, and then finally makes its home in the office. Unfortunately, when you say to yourself, “I’ll just put it here for now,” Now becomes forever, and paper is strewn from one end of the house to the other.
The trail of paper problem has less to do with improper storage than a flaw in the paper processing system–and a lack of good habits. We tested the idea that only current school notices and things to deal with in the current week go in an organizer on the back of the pantry door. Then, they take all other paperwork directly to the office. It sounds like it should be a fairly easy routine. However, in this big house, people come in through the back door, pass by the kitchen, go through the TV room, and then go through the playroom to get to the office. That’s a long way to have to take the incoming paperwork before you can actually put it down. I told my client she’ll build more exercise into her day. Surely that will work.
Have you found a successful storage solution for a particularly challenging area of your home? Where was it, and what was the solution? Is it still working?