This is the second post in my Organizing an Entryway series. I’m breaking it down into steps that are as small as possible to prevent ADD overwhelm.
The second step in my organizing process is a quick pre-sort. This is a quick way to get rid of two categories of stuff: things that don’t belong in a space, and obvious DTPCA’s. What’s a DTPCA? With apologies to Dan Savage of Savage Love, DTPCA stands for “Ditch That Piece of Crap Already”, and it applies to any object that qualifies uncategorically as garbage. DTPCAs include any item that is broken, that’s missing half its component parts, or things like excess shopping bags and shoeboxes.
A quick look at my entryway told me that there were several things in it that had homes elsewhere. There were two suitcases that could be put away, and of course, the suitcases themselves contained things that one doesn’t generally store in one’s entryway. The first one had a bunch of spices in it that I’d gotten on my trip, because I wanted to avoid paying the nearly 10% sales tax at the Penzey’s in the Bay Area… after buying them in the Twin Cities, I realized that they’re food and therefore not subject to sales tax.
Suitcase full of spices, even though I don't actually cook in my entryway. Silly chaos demon!
The second suitcase had some t-shirts and socks in it that I could have been wearing this last month.
I was wondering where all my clothes went.
The first thing I did was to the clothes in the wash, and the spices in the kitchen. Then I put the luggage away. The enormous pile of bags and boxes next to the door are mostly DTPOCAs. The bags turned out to be filled with recycling or with other plastic bags, and most of the boxes were useless. I kept a few of them boxes to ship books. The rest I recycled.
Ditch That Piece Of Crap Already
It can be tempting to hold onto boxes. They look so useful, don’t they? You can use them for shipping, for storage, you never know when they’ll come in handy, right?
Wrong. Cardboard boxes are terrible for storage, because you can’t see what’s inside of them. And very few boxes are actually useful for shipping. If a box originally held shoes, or a computer, or a cell phone, the size and shape are going to be too odd to be really good for shipping anything; chances are, if you keep it, you won’t use it. Remember, whether you rent or own, you’re paying for the space you use to store those boxes. Is it really worth it to occupy that space with pieces of cardboard?
Once I pre-sorted, my space looked much more manageable:
Ah, that's better!
I’ll leave you with an image of the worst DTPCA that I found in my entryway — a piece of stale, moldy flat bread, presumably from a some time over the summer.
The fact that I found it in a bag from The Container Store is a nice bit of irony.
The next step is sorting, so stay tuned!