Storage 101: Tips and tricks to keep everything in its place

Thus, I suddenly felt a great need to organize our environment once and for all. I had this impression that I hadn't found THE method that would prevent objects from moving around the house without ever returning to their place and that would therefore prevent us from wasting time looking for them. The problem was not due to a lack of initiative from my partner or a lack of autonomy from my children, but rather to the fact that we all had a different logic. If, according to my logic, a certain object should be in a certain place, it was different for Philippe, Louis, or Simone! It was also not due to the fact that we owned too many objects since our house is very far from being cluttered with a multitude of items. However, the objects continued their journey from one drawer to another, from one pantry shelf to another, and we continued to look for the phone charger, sunglasses, or the small bottle of tabasco sauce.

So I needed to settle this issue of object storage, which was taking up a crazy amount of my time, once and for all, in order to reclaim that time and use it in a more enjoyable way. One morning, with Marie Kondo in hand, I decided to make a big change in the way we store things so that I wouldn't be the only one who knew where they belonged. This phrase inspired me and, in my opinion, should guide any action taken to achieve change. "Tidying produces visible results and never lies. The true secret to success is this: if you tidy everything at once, not little by little, you can dramatically change your state of mind. The change that occurs is so profound that it touches your emotions and irresistibly influences your way of thinking and your daily habits."

I've always been a fan of big changes, those that certainly require more effort but make a real difference in our lives. So I embarked on an extreme categorization operation, trying to put everything in our house into an x category. Those who have followed me for a while know my storage method and my way of classifying and labeling kitchen storage.

It was a long process, as there are many objects in a house (kitchen, bathroom, playroom, seasonal storage, office), but the number of categories had to be limited for the job to be done well. This is certainly what took me the longest in the process. The good news is that you can now benefit from this work, as we have made them into self-adhesive and repositionable labels in the colors of Les Belles Combines.

Finally, I bought storage bins for each category and found the best place to put these bins. For example, it didn't make sense to place the baking essentials bin at the very top of the cupboard since my son Louis started baking cookies and cakes. So I placed it at the right height so he could access it without my help. The children's art supplies, on the other hand, had to be in an accessible place for the older ones, but out of reach for the younger ones. Always with the aim of fostering children's autonomy, we illustrated certain labels so that even the youngest could put things away in their place. This is the case, among others, for the playroom labels.

This notion of "A PLACE FOR EVERYTHING" rather than "EVERYTHING IN ITS PLACE", which easily integrated into our daily lives, brought the expected result... and even surpassed it! I was able to observe some effects that I had not initially considered.

The effect of organizing by categories with labels:

• Everyone now puts things in the same place since we share the same categorization logic.
• We no longer search for things but now know exactly where to find them.
• The cupboards in the house are now well organized and this order lasts over time.
• Shopping and purchases are made easier, saving time and money.
• Children become familiar with several important vocabulary words whose spelling they easily learn.
• Children naturally develop their sense of organization and logical thinking by learning to categorize objects in a house.
• Children are more independent, as the objects they need are easily accessible.
• Conflicts related to tidying have greatly decreased, and children are more inclined to tidy up since they now have a method.

Despite having already decluttered the house, when I started classifying objects, I took the opportunity to declutter even more. Choosing the size of the bins based on what I kept (the essentials) prevents us from buying and accumulating a plethora of more or less useful things. Thus, I do a monthly check of certain bins and a seasonal check of others to replace missing items or items that are about to be missing. This way, I only buy things when needed and not impulsively.

So, ready to organize too?

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