Perhaps because I tend to steer conversation to the topic of organization (“Yes, Michael Phelps is some athelete; say, how do you think he organizes his Christmas ornaments?”) people assume I Must Be Very Organized, and ask me for advice, most often on Where to Start or if I endorse a particular organizing system or strategy.
What tends to work for me is what I call the “ground zero” approach. Because so many cleaning and organizing tasks are predicated on others, I’ve found that if I can identify the premier prerequisite for order in any given room, everything else quickly falls in place.
The day I decided to start this blog, I cleaned the kitchen. I emptied the dishdrain and the dishwasher, did the dishes, cleared the counters, scrubbed them down and cleaned everything that went back on them. I cleaned the stove top; I cleaned the sink. I got all the grody stuff behind the faucet, wiped the walls, mopped the floor. We have a small kitchen—8’ x 5’—but it still took more than an hour. When I was done, I decided that I was going to try to be better about maintaining it.
A couple days later, with the counters cleared and the dishdrain and dishwasher empty, it wasn’t such a big deal to empty out the refrigerator, including all the shelves and bins, then scrub everything down and wipe the bottles and containers going back. I was also surprised to see how little food we actually had; the fridge had been stuffed before I started.
The newly organized fridge made quick work of writing the grocery list. It was easy to put away the groceries, too, and I felt inspired to arrange the produce in colorful bowls. With attractive, accessible food, both Alpay and I enjoyed cooking more. The quality of our meals went up while the cost dipped to less than half of what we’d recently been spending going out. And the more time I spent in the kitchen, the more motivated I was to find places for things that didn’t have homes or to tackle items I’d been putting off, like cleaning and organizing the glass display shelves.
Cleaning the kitchen turned out to be my “ground zero”—I knew it as soon as I was done that first day. We’ve kept it up since then, and along with it, the refrigerator and cooking too. With maintaining the kitchen now routine, I could turn my attention to my next “ground zero”—the Supreme Paper Mess in my study. But that’s a post for another day.