Reverse Organizing

Today we’re breaking down reverse organizing – and no, reverse organizing isn’t the process of your kids dumping all your bins on the floor and messing up everything you worked so hard to organize…unfortunately, I haven’t found a magic solution for that one yet!

Click the video below to learn about Reverse Organizing: 

Reverse organizing is a method of organizing that I invented that is going to really help you maintain your space once you’ve finished organizing. Here’s how it goes: 

What most people do when they go to organize a space, is they look at all the items they have that need a home, they figure out what containers their items fit well in and which containers fit well in their space, and they go from there. That’s a perfectly valid way to organize, I’ve done it myself, and often, it works just fine. 

But there is an even better way to organize that is especially useful in spaces you use a lot, like your kitchen or your office. 

Start by taking everything out of the space. Now, keep it down to a space rather than a room. I’m talking a desk, a pantry, or a closet. Ideally, physically remove everything. But if you can’t do that, then in your mind envision that there’s a blank slate in the space, with nothing there. 

Then ask yourself “what items do I use most often when I’m in this space?” Whichever items are the answer to that question, find a convenient place for those things. 

This is going to make life so much easier – it’ll be easy to access your most used items, but it will also be easy to put them away because their home will be located close to where they’re being used. 

So, for example, maybe you have the perfect bin for organizing cords and cables that you store in your closet, but you use your computer charger every day. It’s quickly going to become tedious to lug that bin out of your closet every time you have to charge your laptop, not to mention to go back to your closet to put it away when your laptop is done charging. 

With an item you use daily like your computer charger, I’m giving you permission to break the cardinal rule of organizing and to NOT put like items together. I know, I know…it’s kind of a shock. 

But here’s the thing, while keeping like items together may make them look nice on the shelf, it could also be the single thing that’s hindering you from maintaining your beautifully organized space. Having a logical location for the items you need to access the most often is actually going to serve you far, far more than keeping everything “technically” organized. 

So go ahead and stick that charger in your desk drawer, even if it’s the only charger in there. The goal is to be able to find what you need when you need it, and to put it away again when you’re done so you can find it the next time. If the desk drawer is the most logical place, then by all means, put it there! 

If you go into your organizing project with this mindset shift, I know it’s going to make a big difference in how your spaces are organized and function. 

Be sure to check out my post on Reverse Decluttering as well – it goes hand in hand with Reverse Organizing, and I know it’ll help you make your home a place of less stress and more peace!