Most of the stuff I own is consumer goods, and I need to store it in a way that optimizes for accessibility. You know who else needs to do that? Retail stores. So I made a list of all my available closets, shelves, under bed storage, etc. and assigned each space a corresponding retail category. There’s sporting goods, where I keep things like my tent and sleeping bags. Headlamps go in electrical along with the flashlights. Some sections are just 1⁄4 of a shelf, but having a designated area makes it way easier to find things, and cleaning up is a lot faster, when I actually get around to cleaning up, that is.
When I first implemented this idea I went a little overboard and it was really organized, but inconvenient. They say you should normalize until it hurts, then denormalize until it works, and sometimes it’s just nice to keep things handy, sometimes in more than one place. So I added back things like the kitchen junk drawer, which consists of a subset of office supplies (pens, notepads, scissors), electrical (batteries), hardware (measuring tape), and personal care (vitamins). After adjusting the balance a bit the system got more comfortable.
I also have two more categories of stuff that fall outside the retail model: reference, and archival. The reference section is for books, digital media and papers, basically the bookshelves and file cabinets. I don’t use The Universal Decimal System but it seems like the logical way to organize books. The archival section includes things like artwork and artifacts with historical/sentimental value, which I curate like a museum collection. Some go on display, others go in the least accessible parts of my storage spaces, ie. long term storage.
Most of the stuff I own is consumer goods, and I need to store it in a way that optimizes for accessibility. You know who else needs to do that? Retail stores. So I made a list of all my available closets, shelves, under bed storage, etc. and assigned each space a corresponding retail category. There’s sporting goods, where I keep things like my tent and sleeping bags. Headlamps go in electrical along with the flashlights. Some sections are just 1⁄4 of a shelf, but having a designated area makes it way easier to find things, and cleaning up is a lot faster, when I actually get around to cleaning up, that is.
When I first implemented this idea I went a little overboard and it was really organized, but inconvenient. They say you should normalize until it hurts, then denormalize until it works, and sometimes it’s just nice to keep things handy, sometimes in more than one place. So I added back things like the kitchen junk drawer, which consists of a subset of office supplies (pens, notepads, scissors), electrical (batteries), hardware (measuring tape), and personal care (vitamins). After adjusting the balance a bit the system got more comfortable.
I also have two more categories of stuff that fall outside the retail model: reference, and archival. The reference section is for books, digital media and papers, basically the bookshelves and file cabinets. I don’t use The Universal Decimal System but it seems like the logical way to organize books. The archival section includes things like artwork and artifacts with historical/sentimental value, which I curate like a museum collection. Some go on display, others go in the least accessible parts of my storage spaces, ie. long term storage.