There are still some things I need to get rid of, like the pile of curtain rods, which have been sitting there for like 6 years, but that’s a simple matter of putting them [...]]]> Yay!  Within 48 hours of posting my bike and all its random accessories on Craigslist, it has been removed from my entryway.

There are still some things I need to get rid of, like the pile of curtain rods, which have been sitting there for like 6 years, but that’s a simple matter of putting them outside with a sign on them that says “free”.

The bike managed to take up way more space than it seemed it should, given that it’s just a bike and all.  Now that it’s gone, there’s room to put the catbox in the corner.  It’s no longer the first thing guests see when they arrive.  Classy, here I come!

Here was the entryway last fall, before I started organizing it:

My Entryway, In Former Times

Here is the same view, a mere six months later:

My Entryway, Today

The cat box is now in the corner, instead of front and center in that big open space right in front of the door. I’m still planning to get a folding screen or something to hide it a little better:

The floor still needs to be cleaned, but it's much better with the cat box in the corner

Well, it took awhile, but now I feel mighty. With the Equinox this weekend, and the extra hour of daylight in the evening, I’m feeling ready to do more Spring Cleaning.  I’ll write it up here.

Entryway Maintenance [...]]]> When I went to containerize my entryway last week, I noticed that things had slipped a bit. To the right of the front door, there was packing paper spilling out of the recycling bin, and my bike was still in the back corner because I hadn’t gotten around to selling it yet:

Entryway Maintenance is slipping a bit

To the left of the front door, there was a huge pile of cardboard on the floor from various mail orders. This is an ongoing problem with our entryway. We get a fair number of deliveries, and we never get around to breaking down the boxes and recycling them. Recycling gets taken out once a week, and since we usually forget to deal with it until the last minute, we inevitably forget to deal with the boxes. They can pile up for months, tucked in the corner where they soon become invisible.

Cardboard Fail

I got two containers to try as day pack solutions last week. The wider, shallower of the two was perfect for the packs. Since I still had the other one, I decided to try it as a “home” for cardboard boxes to be recycled. When we get a package, the box is broken down immediately and put in its new “home”.

So far, I’ve been pretty good about this; but M has been out of town since we implemented this system. He gets back tonight. We’ll see how it holds up with both of us here.

Yesterday I started the fifth step of organizing the entryway: Containerizing. Earlier in the week I went to The Container Store to get supplies. I got two clear acrylic sweater drawers, a set of matching clear dividers, and two plastic bins to try out [...]]]> Welcome back to the series, “How to Organize an Entryway”.

Yesterday I started the fifth step of organizing the entryway: Containerizing. Earlier in the week I went to The Container Store to get supplies. I got two clear acrylic sweater drawers, a set of matching clear dividers, and two plastic bins to try out as backpack storage.

Here’s the closet before containerizing:

The Closet, Before Containers

The cold-weather hats, gloves, and scarves, are in a leaning stack, threatening to topple out of their stop-gap container. The backpacks are in a pile on the floor of the closet. Some of the everyday hats are in boxes, but the others are stacked on top.

The cold-weather accessories have a home, but it’s not a good one; the backpacks don’t really have a home at all.
I know from personal experience that if this continues, the piles will eventually metastasize and merge. Pretty soon we’ll be back where we started — with a big pile of vests, gloves, backpacks, and hats on the floor of the closet.

Clockwise from top right: scarves and gaiters, hats, gloves and liners, ear-warmers

I put the spare vests in one of the sweater drawers. Next, I put the drawer dividers in the other sweater drawer, and used it for cold weather accessories. Gloves and gaiters have a space, hats have a space, gloves and liners have a space, and my ear warmers have a space.

My next task was to solve my backpack problem. We have three day packs in different sizes as well as a fanny pack. Depending on where we’re going and how long we’re going to be out, we might need to take a different pack — the large internal frame packs for rugged hikes or short overnight trips, or the small ultralight day pack and the fanny pack if it’s short hike and we’re just carrying water.

The back packs have never had a home assigned to them before. They wind up in whatever closet is most convenient, stuff gets piled on top of them, and then we need to use them we have to do a mad search. I decided that the ideal way to handle this was to find a way for them to stand up on end in the entryway closet, almost like vertical files. But how would I do this?

Since I was at a loss, I took up the first offer of help extended to me by a friendly Container Store employee. I described the problem to her. She thought for a minute, and then her eyes lit up. “I’ve got it!” she said. “Come with me.”

I followed her to a corner of the store I’d never noticed before. “This is all stuff that’s on clearance, either because it’s been discontinued or damaged out. A lot of what winds up here are bins that don’t have lids. If you stand your packs up on end, the container will keep them from falling over, but you don’t need a lid — so why pay for a lid?”

SCORE! I found two possible candidates, both at 70% discounts. I decided to take them home and try them both. I could either return the one I didn’t need, or use it to solve another organizing problem.

The smaller of the two containers turned out to be perfect for the back packs. They all fit, standing up on end, and they’re clearly visible, allowing us to grab a pack and go. What’s more, the day packs now have an obvious, official home assigned to them, making it easier to put them away after hiking.

Containerized closet! Everything is visible, accessible, and easy to put away.

So there you have it. A neatly containerized closet. So my entryway is done, right?

Well, no.

Remember, I still have some used clothes to mend, alter and sell. I also promised myself I’d sell the old bike I never ride. And then there are the casual hats, living unsustainably in bins in the corner of the closet … oh yeah, and there’s the cat box, still in front of the door, which I need to move to the side. In order for my entryway to be “done”, it needs to be functioning more or less the way I want it to. Here’s what I need to do to make that happen:

1) Sell or donate bike, accessories, and skis
2) Sell or donate used clothing
3) Alter clothes that need to be hemmed or taken in
4) Solve hat storage problem — wall mount hat cubbies, perhaps?
5) Move cat box to the left of the door
6) Get shoji screen to put in front of cat box
7) Consider whether the entryway needs a “mission control” area — a place for bags, keys, library books, outgoing mail?

I’m giving myself a deadline of November 20th to deal with the sale/donation items and the alteration/mending items. If I haven’t listed the items by then, I’m calling up the VVA and arranging a donation. As long as I’m setting deadlines, wouldn’t it be nice if I could have company over the Thanksgiving holiday, and not have them greeted by the cats’ litter box as they walk in the door? I think I’ll set the goal of fixing the cats’ litter area by Thanksgiving weekend. As for the hat storage, I’ll keep looking for a solution, and hopefully I’ll find one by the end of the month.

Will Addy reach her goals? Will she sell her used stuff like she’s been meaning to, and make a few extra bucks, or will she slack off donate it to the VVA? Will her cats’ litter box we greeting her guests until the end of time? TUNE IN NEXT WEEK FOR THE CONTINUING SAGA OF … THE ENTRY WAY!!!

I had set myself an e-mail reminder for yesterday morning, reminding me [...]]]> I was on my way out the door today when I happened to check my text messages.  I’m glad I did; I was alerted to the fact that the Vietnam Veteran’s Association was coming by to pick up the donation pile from my entryway.

I had set myself an e-mail reminder for yesterday morning, reminding me that this was upcoming.  I read it and told myself, oh yeah, I need to remember that.  I had set myself an SMS reminder for 11 pm last night, reminding me that this was coming.  I didn’t hear it because I was charging my phone.

So this morning, trying to make a streetcar that was due in less than ten minutes, I had to haul several boxes outside and label them for the VVA.

The thing is, I’ve achieved a general level of organization such that this was no big deal.  I grabbed some paper from the office, a sharpie and some tape from the mail center in the kitchen, got the boxes outside and labeled, and I even (if barely) made my transit connection.

Why, then, was I cursing myself out as I boarded the streetcar?  Beating myself up for my chaotic ways is just such an ingrained habit, I start in on myself without realizing it.  Besides, it’s not like I would have been the only person, EVER, in THE ENTIRE HISTORY of the VVA pick-up service, to forget to set out a donation.

I did good today.  Even though my system failed me, I was able to compensate because of the strides I’ve made over the past few years.  I don’t need to expect perfection from myself.  “Good enough” is plenty good enough.

Hats, gloves, scarves, an extra fleece vest, and [...]]]> Having sorted my stuff, it’s time to assign homes to my stuff. The dress clothes and the jackets already have homes on the coat hooks and in the closet. That leaves me three more categories to store. The first one is cold weather accessories:

Hats, gloves, scarves, an extra fleece vest, and a cat.

These are items that we need to keep, but don’t use all that often. We need to get at them when we go camping, and when we travel to climates where they have winter. Their home needs to be a place where we can get at them when we need them, but if we have to sacrifice ease of access to something we use more often, we can certainly do so.

The second category of items that need a home is our outdoor sports equipment. This consists of some hiking poles and a few backpacks. We use these much more often than the cold weather gear, so we need to be able to get at it; but backpacks, a life vest, and a canoe paddle are much more bulky than gloves and hats.

Life jackets are bulky for a reason.

Since I don’t go paddling as often as I would like, I put the canoe paddle in a corner of the closet. The life jacket I just put on a hanger in the closet. The backpacks are trickier. They’re as bulky as the life vest, but I use them more often, and they don’t stay on hangers very well. For now, they can live on the floor of the closet.

The third category is hats. My husband and I both wear hats, and not all of them are the easy-going floppy kind that can be tossed just anywhere. Some of them are nice enough that they should be stored flat and protected from sunlight and moths. If we’re actually going to wear them, we need to store them where we can see them — so they can’t stay in the closet.

In order to take any further action, I need to containerize. In my next post I’ll talk about how I choose containers and solutions for my entryway project.

Now that I can actually walk in my entryway, I’m ready for the third step of the process (and the first step of the SPACE process): sorting.

Sorting actually [...]]]> This is the third post in my Organizing an Entryway series. I’m breaking it down into steps that are as small as possible to prevent ADD overwhelm.

Now that I can actually walk in my entryway, I’m ready for the third step of the process (and the first step of the SPACE process): sorting.

Sorting actually contains two smaller steps: the first is to empty EVERYTHING in the space you’re working in. Empty every shelf, every closet, every coat hook (in this case I left the bookshelf alone, since I know I’m getting rid of it and everything on it). I spread some sheets on the living room floor so I’d have a nice big space to put everything I was working with:

Everything in the entryway. Well, except the litter box.

As I emptied the entryway, I did some preliminary sorting; for instance, I made separate piles for clothing, hats, and hiking equipment. Then I started sorting the clothes. I hung all the dressy clothing up out of the way, and was left with a pile of outerwear. I discovered that between me and my husband, we have four fleece vests, ten fleece jackets, and five raincoats. That isn’t counting the one he’s is wearing on his business trip.

That's a lot of jackets

As I sorted, I discovered that my husband (from here on I’ll call him M, for My husband) has two blue fleece vests, three black fleece jackets, two black windbreakers that I never see him wear, and a wind-blocking fleece jacket that he also doesn’t wear. I put all of these on an “ask M” pile. He has a down parka that he needs when he travels to colder climates, but doesn’t need much in San Francisco, so I hung it in the closet.

M's Jackets

As for my own outerwear, I had two fleece jackets, two fleece vests, both of which are a bit large on me, and two raincoats — an ultralight jacket and a heavier rain parka. I’ve recently lost weight, so most of this clothing is too big. I put the too-large fleece jacket in a give-away pile, and kept the one that fits. I’m holding on to the raincoats until I can replace them with something that fits, and one of the vests fits well enough to be useful. The other one I’m keeping as back-up gear, since it doesn’t take up that much space, and I sometimes go camping with newbies who don’t bring enough warm clothing.

A's jackets

I put the “ask M” pile on a chair, and put my own stuff away. The next major category was the dressy clothes that live in the closet:

Long, dressy clothing

The reason our dress clothes live in the entry way is that our home is a converted storefront. The bedroom is a loft, with closets along each side of the room, under the eves of the roof. This provides ample storage space, with only one drawback: the ceiling in the closets comes down much too low to store long pieces of clothing such as dresses, robes, or long coats. The only place to keep them is in the entryway closet, which is an odd place for long dresses, but such is life.

Sorting the dress clothes was a somewhat complicated task. The easy parts were my husband’s best suit and his trench coat, which I hung in the closet. The harder parts were my own clothes, because I had to try each of them on in order to decide whether they were worth keeping. As I finished trying them on, I separated them into three categories: things to keep, things to sell, and things that could be altered to fit me. Given the fiasco with the books, I’ve set a deadline for myself: anything I haven’t taken action on by November 15, I will give away.  In the mean time, I put them back in the closet.

This takes me to step 4: assessing the storage needs of my space.

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 [...]]]> 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!

I basically use Julie Morgenstern’s five-step SPACE system (“SPACE” stands for Sort, Purge, Assign a home, [...]]]> I stared work on my entryway today.  I’ll be posting a series of entries on how I’m going about it, step by step, so you can see how a Real Live Person with ADD starts and finishes an organizing project.

I basically use Julie Morgenstern’s five-step SPACE system (“SPACE” stands for Sort, Purge, Assign a home, Containerize, Equalize).If you’ve never organized a space before, it can be hard to know exactly where to start, so I’m spelling it everything I do to the last detail.

To begin with, here is my entryway:

My Entryway

And here it is from another angle.

Nice, isn't it?

It’s a pretty hellish mess.  There are suitcases from a trip I took in September, a grocery bag filled with gods-know-what, and stuff spilling out of the closet.

The sad thing is that I organized the entryway in May.  I found paperwork dating from 2006, but I cleaned it all out.  So why didn’t it stick?

My mistake was that I didn’t finish the job.  I neglected to sort and purge anything in the coat closet.  To make matters worse, I moved an unwanted bookcase into the entryway, and used it as a staging ground to sell some used books.  I failed to put a deadline on that task, so I never finished the job — and six months later, half the books are still in my entryway, taking up valuable real estate.  There’s also a pile of donations that I never donated, and also some just plain trash:

Hey, that's some very important cardboard!

Before I start organizing a space, I do some “pre-organizing”.  That is, I take a thorough look at the space.  I ask myself the following questions: how do I use this space?  how would I like to use this space?  what’s keeping me from using it in the way that I like?  what’s working about the space as it is?  what’s not working?

To answer my own questions, I currently use my entryway as a dumping ground.  Bags, briefcases, and backpacks tend to get dumped on the floor when my husband or I walk in the door.  Because it’s closed off from the living area, the entryway also houses the litter box; and since the mail comes through a slot in the door every day, it also has a recycling bin for junk mail.

I would like my entryway to be a place where I can store coats, hats, and shoes, and find them when I need them.  I would also like it to be more welcoming to guests.

What’s working about the space is a shoe rack where our shoes can usually be found, and a rack of coat pegs mounted to one wall.  What’s not working about the space is the bookcase, which blocks a second rack of coat pegs, significantly cutting down on storage; the closet, which is vomiting forth its contents like a hungover college freshling; the coat tree, which is also overflowing; we have no good place to store hats or cold weather accessories; and the fact that the cat box is the first thing guests see when they enter my home.

Having taken stock of my entryway, I am ready to proceed to the next step: pre-sorting, which I will cover in a new post.

Hmmm, maybe this why my friends never come over …

The charming view, upon entering my humble abode.