Category Archives: Organization

A clutter-filled home doesn’t make for the most comfortable living environment. Your household’s neatniks will be perpetually stressed out and grow tired of cleaning up after your home’s messier occupants.

They know their cleaning efforts will only pay short-term dividends before things become disorganized once again. This isn’t good for household chemistry or morale.

On top of that, finding items when you need them becomes a constant challenge. Without effective home storage solutions, the problem becomes even worse.

If these scenarios are resonating with you, it’s time to apply the one touch rule to help with your house’s clutter.

What is the one touch rule?

The one touch rule was conceived by Ann Gomez, a productivity consultant and the founding president for Toronto-based organization Clear Concept Inc.

While Gomez’s company specializes in business training and ways to improve productivity, her one touch rule can be applied to your home as well.

Her concept is deceivingly simple, right down to its self-explanatory name. The rule is: put away your things immediately and avoid handling them more than once after you’re done with them. That’s it.

Putting items aside to deal with later only creates clutter

Here’s an example you’ve undoubtedly seen before: do any of your family members arrive home and leave their coat, backpack, or purse on a chair or sofa? Those items will then likely get moved more than once when someone wants to use the furniture.

What you end up with is a scenario where items that should have a proper home keep getting shuffled around and tossed aside, creating clutter.

When the owner of these improperly stored belongings eventually needs them, who knows where they’ll have ended up? This leads to wasted time searching for items.

How the one touch rule can benefit your home

Despite the self-evident nature of the rule, don’t be fooled by its simplicity. Especially in more disorganized residences, if you apply the one touch rule to your home’s belongings, you’ll soon find clutter and mess greatly reduced, if not almost entirely eliminated.

By hanging up coats on a rack or in the closet and storing backpacks, purses, and other belongings in a designated area as soon as you walk in your home, you’ll minimize clutter and be more organized.

The one touch rule can apply to so many other areas of your home:

• sorting your mail right after bringing it into your home
• putting dirty clothes in a laundry hamper or bin instead of on the bedroom floor
• hanging up clothes in the proper place after wearing them (or putting them in drawers)
• hanging up yard tools in the garage once you’re done with them
• washing dishes (or putting them in the dishwasher) as soon as you’ve finished a meal
• fixing broken items right away instead of leaving the task for later
• even replying to emails immediately after reading them instead of replying later

Make the one touch rule easier with effective home storage solutions

After implementing this rule, you might come to the realization that as much as you’re trying to put away your belongings right away once they’re no longer immediately needed, they don’t always have a proper home.

That does make things harder. You should consider some effective home storage solutions.

By enabling your home with sensible storage solutions, the one touch rule becomes much easier to commit to and maintain.

With some practical front entryway storage solutions like a closet organizer, letter holder, key rack, or shoe rack, an area of your home that’s highly prone to clutter accumulation will be more organized.

A custom closet solution or wardrobe in other areas of your home such as the bedroom will also prove to be beneficial in keeping clutter at bay and your home organized.

Add a laundry hamper to your bedroom to keep your dirty clothes organized (add multiple hampers to keep your dirty clothes sorted by colour).

For the garage, try a slatwall hanging system to allow for easy storage of your garage’s belongings.

Give your household a week to try the one touch rule

Committing to the one touch rule on a permanent basis will take some effort, especially for your household’s, shall we say, “organization challenged” members.

Give your home a week to try the rule as much as possible and you’ll quickly be encouraged by the results you see. Your younger kids aren’t too young to adopt this new philosophy either.

It’s not realistic to expect any home to use the one touch rule 100% of the time. Sometimes fatigue and time constraints will simply make it too difficult to use it every single day.

Allow yourself and your family members a little leeway when it comes to using the rule, but strive for as much consistency with it as possible to obtain the best results.

Let Organized Interiors provide you with some practical home storage and organization solutions to help you get the most out of the one touch rule.

By scheduling a free in-home consultation, our design expert can assess the best storage solutions that are suited to your house or condo.

See also:

• An Organized Home Can Help Reduce Stress
• 5 Ways You Can Eliminate Clutter For Good

Did you know your cluttered home is having an adverse affect on your health?

In this consumerist society where we tend to accumulate far too much “stuff”, the clutter that results has taken a toll on our stress levels.

That direct link between excess home clutter and higher stress levels has been made in numerous studies in recent years.

Our home is supposed to be our private refuge, but its value as a comforting space declines if it’s not kept in an orderly fashion.

Get educated on the harmful effects of living in a cluttered home and what can be done to fix this problem.

The science behind how clutter causes you stress

A study conducted by Princeton University Neuroscience researchers found that a cluttered home environment impedes your ability to focus.

When we have a hard time focussing, our mental faculties get worn down and frustration ensues, causing stress. Struggling to focus properly also inhibits our ability to be creative and to problem solve.

The Yale School of Medicine published a study that revealed some surprising results. When the study’s participants who were less inclined to throw away things were forced to part with belongings, researchers found increased activity in the areas of their brains that are associated with conflict and pain. It literally hurts some of us to part with things we own.

Findings from UCLA researchers showed that women who had an increased level of clutter in their homes also had higher levels of a stress hormone known as high cortisol. Their study also found that the tidier a home was, the happier its occupants seemed to be.

Further evidence of clutter’s negative impact on our lives

On a less scientific level, but still worth a mention, is a recent Huffington Post survey of 1,000 U.S. adults. In it, 81% of men and 87% of women expressed some level of anxiety over how organized their home was. “Worrying my home isn’t clean or organized enough” came fifth on their list of the most common stress triggers in their lives.

When you live in a cluttered home, there’s a constant feeling of guilt (even if you’re not fully aware of it) over the disorganized state of your space.

Our brains are always telling us there’s still plenty of work to be done, which makes it harder to relax.

Four ways to transform your cluttered home and lower your stress

Taking the appropriate measures and using some home clutter solutions will help lower your stress level by making your living space more pleasant to inhabit. Consider these four suggestions:

1. Buy less. Really evaluate the necessity of your purchases and weigh the pros and cons of how much they’ll enrich your life. We often buy things with the best of intentions of using them, but ask yourself if you’ll realistically be using something you’re considering purchasing a year from now.
2. Eliminate your non-essential belongings. Even if the trendy minimalist lifestyle isn’t for you, it isn’t difficult to live with fewer things. Just about all of us own many things that get little to no use. Purge them from your life and home clutter will be more manageable. Get the rest of your family involved and don’t be overwhelmed at the prospect of cleaning out your home clutter – it doesn’t have to be accomplished overnight.
3. Use smart home storage solutions. Naturally, investing in smart ways to improve your storage and organization efficiency in the home isn’t included in the “buying less” category because of the long-term benefits they’ll provide on a daily basis. Smart home storage solutions give you the ability to tidy up your space and keep it clutter-free. And these solutions are not only functional, their stylish designs will also enhance your home’s decor.
4. Maintain your clean space. Custom home storage solutions do make it easier to keep your house or apartment clean and organized, but your family still needs to put forth their best efforts in maintaining their clean space. Put things away once you’re done with them in the dedicated homes that home storage solutions provide.

Now that you’re aware of the stressful effects of living in a cluttered home, what steps will you take to combat this problem?

Lowering your home’s stress levels by creating a more calming, clutter-free environment that will do your mind and body good is easier than you might think.

To get started, schedule your free in-home consultation with one of our designers today.

See also:

• How To Get Joy From Tidying Up
• An Organized Home Can Help Reduce Stress