041. Never Lose Anything Again: The Essential Tip to Kickstart Your Home Organization

The truth: I've lost plenty of stuff in my own house. Why? Because I didn't put it back where it was supposed to go! Sound familiar?

In this episode, you'll see exactly how the Simple Single makes it possible for you to never lose anything again - whether it's stuff in your house, or digital files on your computer.

The Simple Single fits right into the CLEAR5 Framework for decluttering and organizing. Listen to Episode 40: How To Start Your Organizing Journey: The 5 Simple Steps To Organize Your Home Sustainably to know the 5 steps of the CLEAR5 Framework.

Remember to set up your 15-minute Clutter Consultation! https://fireflybridge.com/schedule

Connect with me:

My Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/fireflybridgeorganizing
My Website: https://fireflybridge.com

Transcript

Today I want to tell you how to never lose anything in your home again.
You know, I get asked all the time “What’s the Number 1 tip you would give to someone who wants to get organized?” Well, that’s what this episode is about.

It’s what I call The Simple Single.

And when I explain to you what this is, you’ll see just how this one idea can change everything. It can lead to organizing everything in your home, everything on your computer, everything on your calendar.

The Simple Single is simply this: keep things that are alike in ONE SINGLE SPOT.
Let me explain.

Think about an average day for you. You wake up, you get ready for work, you get lunches ready, you get the kids ready for school, then you go to work, handle things there, head back home, and there are the evening activities and practices, and then dinner, and prepping for the next day until you head to bed. OK, fairly average day.

During that entire day, how many times do you think you need to retrieve something? There’s not a “right number” or an average number here or anything. This is just an exercise so you can understand how much we’re trying to hold in our minds at any point in time.

At home in the mornings, you need to remember where the lunch boxes are, where the thermoses are. You need to know where to find your green top that you wanted to wear today, and it’s going to rain, so you’ll need to find an umbrella to take with you. And, oh yeah, there was that permission form you needed to sign, and it was sent by email maybe?

Then at work, again you’ll be retrieving both physical things and electronic things. You need supplies, maybe you need tools and equipment to do your job. You’ll need to find documents and emails on your computer. And maybe you’ll need to respond to messages on slack or by text.

Now, if someone were to ask you, do you know where every single physical thing you will need to retrieve during this day is right now? Like, do you absolutely know where it is, you have a mental picture in your mind of where that one item is? Where every single item is that you own?

And can you do the same for each electronic document, email and message you will need to retrieve today?

If you’re like 99.999% of people out there, and yes, that’s a totally made-up percentage, but it’s probably close, well the answer is a resounding “no”.

There’s no way for most of us to hold that amount of information in our heads, and still function, have conversations, and do our work.

And this is why the Simple Single is such a great way to store things and it makes it so you’ll never lose anything again! Not a piece of clothing, or an electronic document.

Let me give you some examples:
Let’s say your fifth-grader is working on his science project and has to cut fabric. Now you know you have a great pair of fabric scissors. But is it in the kitchen drawer? Or in the craft room? Or in your office?

Well, using the Simple Single, you would keep all your scissors together in one spot. You choose the spot: it could be your office or it could be the craft room, wherever you create the space for them.

Another example: You’re sending a permission slip to school, and you remember that there was also a sports release form you needed to send in. Now where did you put that form? Was it on your desk? Or in your child’s backpack? Or on your bedside table?

Using the simple single you would keep all incoming paperwork that needs some kind of action in a tray in let’s say a drawer of your office, or in a tray on the kitchen counter. You choose. But all the paperwork goes in that one Simple Single spot.

And another example: You know you received a document a while back that you need to forward to someone today, but where did you save it? Is it in your computer’s hard drive? Which folder? Or did you put it in Google Drive or One 
Drive or Dropbox to share with your team members?

So instead of spending so much time looking in each of those locations, you would store all documents for that team in one Simple Single location, maybe you choose Dropbox for this particular work team.

Now, you’re probably saying, well, that’s just not practical. I need scissors in multiple rooms in my house! That’s why I keep a pair in each room!

So here’s the thing that we’ve discovered after working with people to organize their homes, their digital files and their schedules over the past 8 years: in order to truly transform yourself, your household and your work into organized spaces where you always know precisely where to look for whatever you need, I will always tell you declutter and organize first, using the CLEAR5 framework that I described for you in the last episode, Episode 40. I’ve linked that episode in the show notes for you if you haven’t listened to it yet.

And then, once you’ve done that, and you’ve stored everything using the Simple Single - meaning one storage spot for everything of the same type, THEN you can start branching out and storing certain things in multiple places.

This works because when you’ve created the simple single spots for all of your things, you’re setting those as THE storage spot to go looking in when you need something of that kind. And this isn’t only for yourself, but also for your family, and maybe a work team, if you share documents with other people.

The kids, everyone in your home, will know that THIS is the spot for scissors or for paperwork that needs to be filled out, so when they use something,when they bring home a permission slip from school, they know to put it back there every time. Or when a team member needs access to a specific document, they know immediately to go to Dropbox to find it instead of spending time asking around to get it from someone’s hard drive.

You’re not constantly asking each other, have you seen the fabric scissors? Where did you put that very important form?

Because there’s only 1 simple single place it CAN go to be stored.

This might feel drastic for you, right? Especially if you feel like you’ve already placed a pair of scissors in each room, so the thought of now gathering up all the scissors doesn’t make sense.

And that’s ok. If you already have set spots for certain things, and everyone knows where these spots are, and they’re good with putting the items back there, then you’re good. Just move on to another category of things that are scattered and do bother you.

OK, so how do you put the Simple Single into practice when you’re organizing? Well, especially if you’re just starting your organizing journey, you’re going to first declutter using the CLEAR5 framework. Again, these are the 5 steps to follow and you can do this on your own schedule, or hire some help to get it done really quickly if you’d like.

So you follow the CLEAR5 steps, and you can do it bit by bit, step by step, but not arbitrarily, right? You go in order: CLEAR. There is always a roadmap, a path, so that you know that from one day to the next, you ARE moving towards a fully organized, calm, beautiful home, and you’ll get organized digital files and you’ll have a calm schedule that’s going to you time to spend on your family, your friends and your own hobbies, too.

And then, when you get to Step 2, which is the Limit step, you’ll choose your Simple Single location.

OK, so what’s your action for today, after listening to this episode? You’re going to put the Simple Single into practice. Go ahead and choose one category. Is it scissors? Or papers? Or toys? Or work files?

Start kind of small, nothing too complex, so maybe choose a physical item like scissors or papers that need action or toys - maybe not digital files quite yet.

Then decide where your Simple Single storage spot will be for that item. Will all the scissors be in the craft room? Will the papers that need action be in your office? Will all the legos be in bins on one family room bookshelf?

Now this becomes your mental map. It’s so much easier to recall where a whole category of things are kept in your home or on your computer, rather than 10 different, individual items, right? Like, all the scissors are in the craft room, so the fabric scissors must be there too. Instead of: well the fabric scissors are in the sewing drawer, but the child safety scissors are in my office drawer, and the utility scissors are in the laundry room.

OK so let’s say you’re choosing to tackle the papers that need action today. So now, go around your house where you think these items are sprinkled all over. Check the kids’ backpacks, your office, the kids’ desks, your bedside table, your handbag, and collect all those papers.

Then you’ll follow the CLEAR5 framework for those: so how do you envision working on those papers or working with those papers? Who’s going to need access to them, and how and where do you see your family placing papers that are going to need your attention? Well, that’s the Clarify step, Step 1 of the CLEAR5 framework. It’s laying out your vision for how this particular category, the papers that need some kind of action on them, how will this function in your house from now on. 

So now you can start to see potential spots to be your Simple Single for these papers, right? What could be the best place for your family to keep these papers?
So maybe you choose your Simple Single to be a drawer in your kitchen. OK I say a drawer, because I like things to be put away, right? I don’t like things on my counter. But maybe for your family, it HAS to be on the kitchen counter. You decide, all right?

Then you’ll Limit the space where you will keep those. That’s Step 2 of CLEAR5: Limit. How much space will you set aside for these papers? One kitchen drawer? Or 2? Which drawer in the craft room will be for scissors? How many toy bins will you allow in the family room for toys, for Legos?

And if you see that your that stuff is overflowing these limits you’ve set, it’s time to Edit. That’s Step 3 of CLEAR5. You declutter until they fit into the limited space you’ve set for them!

And then you can Assign their home in that spot, right? So maybe inside my kitchen drawer, my Simple Single spot, I’m going to place a letter tray, a pretty letter tray that I have, to contain those papers neatly in there. Make it look good, label that spot so that everyone easily is reminded where to put things back, and for digital files, by the way, that means having consistent naming conventions. 

And in Step 5, during your Review tasks weekly, you’ll always know where papers or scissors or whatever, need to go if they happen to be out of place, or if someone left a paper that needs your action on the kitchen table, you know where to put it.

OK, so let’s take action today. Set a timer, 10 minutes, 15 minutes, 20 minutes, however long you can dedicate to this organizing action, to create a Simple Single for one category of things to get started. You might not get through everything in this amount of time, but that’s ok, you’ll just do another 10 minute session later on another day.

Now, if you’re listening to this and you’re saying yeah, I need to do this, but I just need help doing it because I don’t have the time to get this all straight in my head, or I have kids, I have work, I have date night, I have, I want to go to dinner with my friends, I want to read a book.

Well I invite you to spend 15 minutes with me to talk it through. Bring your coffee, let’s do a Clutter Consultation, tell me what’s happening in your home, with your digital files, with your schedule and your time, what you want to accomplish, and we’ll come up with a game plan. With a roadmap. In 15 minutes. You can’t beat that!

And you might choose to hire me to do this really fast for you, because you’re just done with the frustration of not being able to find what you want when you need it, maybe you’re tired of the clutter, and the chaos of getting ready in the morning for everyone to get out the door! And if that’s you, perfect! I’d be honored to work with you. I’ll come to your house myself, or I’ll come with a team ready to tackle the clutter, or we can have laser focus on one area and we’ll get it done virtually, online, me and you.

Or you might NOT decide to hire me, and that’s ok too! Because my goal, is for you to feel in control of your home and your time again, to understand how you can live with less because it’s just better for your mental health, it’s better for the environment, and I want you to pass on these skills and this idea of living better with less to your kids, to your friends, your family members and your colleagues so that pretty soon, we’re all living better, in homes that reflect who we really are, where we’re not thinking about organizing anymore, but instead we’re focused on living beautifully in our homes and doing meaningful work!

So go ahead and set up your 15-minute Clutter Consultation. You can do that at fireflybridge.com/schedule, and we’ll figure out your specific decluttering and organizing roadmap: the areas you should do first, the things you should spend less time on, and how to follow the CLEAR5 Framework in just 10 minutes a day. We can all find 10 minutes, right? So that link again is fireflybridge.com/schedule. I’ll also put it in the show notes.

OK, it’s time to decide: Either try out the Simple Single on one category today, then set up a Clutter Consultation to get your organizing roadmap to get on our way.

Or: set up your Clutter Consultation, we’ll figure out your roadmap and then decide on how you want my help to get it done. Fast.

Either way, it’s just 15 minutes. In 15 minutes, you’ll have the peace of mind knowing how you’ll move ahead. You’ll have some resources, some ideas, or even an actual date set up for us to come in and get it done for you!
How’s that sound? Well, I look forward to talking with you, ok?
Have a truly wonderful week, and I’ll see you on the next episode.