Laws of Order

Getting control of toys

Before my daughter was born I imagined that it would be fairly easy to keep on top of toys, provided I kept them well organized and easy to put away. My plan would have worked perfectly, too, except that I didn't account for an influx of toys that did not come from me! Toys are so cheap these days that it seems like every time you step into a shop or go to a restaurant you are handed some little plastic doodad, and if you kept every single toy you would never be able to walk across your living room again. Here's what has worked for me:

1) REPEL whenever possible: If you get a toy at a restaurant or some other place (and your child isn't absolutely enamored with it), leave it there for the next child. Remind yourself that the last thing you need is yet another cheesy toy that your child will probably never play with again.

2) EDIT when no one is looking: I like to take a minute or two during naptime or after bedtime and remove a few items that won't be missed. I usually put them in a bag in a closet just in case they are missed, and then I donate or toss the lot after I've collected a bag full. And for the record, my daughter has never once noticed the mysterious migration of toys into the closet.

3) GET KIDS INVOLVED if they are old enough: when s/he gets a great new toy from the grandparents, enlist your child to choose a toy to pass on to another child. For some kids this is easy, but others are more reluctant to let anything go. What has worked for me so far is explaining that there is no room for the new toy until she chooses an older one to "put away" in storage, but she is starting to get the idea that giving is not so much a loss for her as a gain for someone else. (How do you get your kids give up old toys?)

4) CONTAIN the chaos: set up an area that for toys that is as large as you think the toy collection should be, and once toys start to overflow you know it's time to get rid of some of them. I personally like the "color boxes" they sell in Japan because they are so cheap, durable, and fully customizable. Plus, you can get curtains, doors, or boxes to fit them perfectly so that when play time is over your eyes are not assaulted by shelves full of brightly colored toys. If you can't get something like this in your area, try a couple of bookshelves and install your own curtain rod on the top. It's cheap, and it's so easy for kids to put stuff away when they can see where everything goes. In any case, vertical storage beats the traditional toy box hands down!

Also, if you can get sturdy mesh bags, buy a hundred. As your kids get older and the toys come with more and more tiny pieces (Legos, doll clothes, etc.), keeping them under control becomes a real challenge. I use these sturdy nylon mesh bags (in gray so it's easy to see the contents), and my daughter happily puts all the pieces in the appropriate bag. OK, I admit she is a little bit compulsive that way, but I have heard other parents say it works for their kids too once they get used to the system. These bags are especially good because they retain their shape whether full or empty, so they're easy even for tiny fingers to deal with, and they are easy to organize in our bookshelf storage system.

5) ROTATE: Take a selection of excess toys and put them in an easily accessible (to you) storage area, such as a closet or garage. Then, once in a while, bring out the box and switch out the toys in the box for others in your normal toy area. Children are usually so excited by the "new" toys that they never notice that the others have gone on sabbatical. It's a pain to do this, but it may be worth it just to maintain your sanity.

6) WORK WITH THE GIFT GIVERS: People love to give presents to kids, and no matter what you say, it is pretty unlikely that anyone will easily give up that pleasure. However, you may want to casually mention several other things that bring joy to your child(ren) so that tangible gifts are not the only the only thing your child receives. Experiences like trips to the zoo, amusement park, aquarium, etc. make children just as excited, and they create memories that will probably last a lot longer than your average plastic trinket. Just giving a child your undivided attention for a few hours can be much more rewarding and make him/her feel more loved than even the most expensive toy. (It is especially nice if the gift giver has a personal talent or passion to share with the child, like cooking or fishing.)

What has worked for you?

Oh, how I long for an anti-gravity device

After my daughter started to crawl I learned the beauty of storing things as far off the ground as possible. At first a coffee table did the job, then the dining table, then the computer cabinet, and now that she has learned how to climb I am fantasizing about hanging everything from the ceiling, kind of like a backpacker's bear bagging system. Granted, that wouldn't look so cool, but I have seen one storage idea that does look good, and it keeps all your stuff off the ground: very high shelving.

The best example I have seen is a single shelf that runs around the entire room about 18 inches from the ceiling. This is a fantastic idea for people who have a lot of books and can't bear to part with them. With this shelf you can keep (many of) your books, have them in view, and you get to free up some space on your regular bookshelves, or get rid of the bookshelf altogether. It is also a nice decorating touch for a bedroom or study. Of course, you would have to get a step stool to get anything down, and you would have to remember to dust up there on a semi-regular basis, but for a lot of people that is a small price to pay to keep their beloved books. (I saw this same shelving idea in one of the houses on Desperate Housewives. I think it was Susan's house that had shelves close to the ceiling, but she had picture frames and vases and stuff like that up there. It looked nice, but I think you'd have to be really good about dusting or it would just look filthy in a month or two.)

One of the best things about this storage system is that it keeps everything out of your direct line of sight, so the rest of your place always looks clean and tidy, even if you still have lots of stuff (which you should really consider ditching). I think it works best for books because you wouldn't have to do a lot of active dusting; just get some cheap fabric, cut it in strips and lay it across the top of the books, then throw the fabric in the washer a couple of times a year. I have seen people try this high shelf idea with stuffed animals and it looked good, but again it's all about the dusting, and I doubt the fabric would look so hot on those.

I wish I could do this in my house for all my books, but we live in an earthquake-prone area. Enough said.

What to do with spices

I mentioned in a previous post that lazy susans are evil, so here are some ideas for what to do with your spices instead.

Solution 1:
If you have a drawer available, put all your spices in there upright. Take a permanent marker and label the lids if they aren't already labeled. You could use reusable stickers so that when you have to replace a spice you can just move the sticker to the new bottle. With this system you can open your drawer and see all of your spices all at once, with no hunting and no knocking things over to find what you need. If you don't have enough spices to fill the entire drawer, put them in a shoebox, a drawer organizer, or some other container with straight sides to keep them corralled, and use the leftover space for other kitchen essentials.

Solution 2:
If you don't have a drawer available, use the lowest shelf on your cabinets. Get a sturdy plastic basket and put all your spices in there, labelling the tops as I suggested in the first solution. If you have a lot of spices, it's probably better to use 2 or 3 smaller baskets rather than one big one so you are less likely to drop them. (No need to spend a lot on these; I get mine from the dollar store and they work great.) Since this basket will create some dead space in your cabinet, get a shelf like this or this to put the basket on, and then you can use the space underneath or on top for something else.

Solution 3:
If you don't have a lot of spices, you can try attaching a rack to the inside of your cabinet door like this or this, but make sure you have enough clearance so your cabinet doors can close properly.

Solution 4:
Put your spices on the wall. You can use a wall mounted rack, or you can transfer your spices to containers that stick to the wall. If you go for the containers with the clear tops, make sure you label the back so you don't confuse your oregano with parsley flakes.

Things NOT to do:

DON'T use one of those "handy" spice holders for drawers. They are a huge waste of space, almost as wasteful as the ever-popular expand-a-shelf type "organizers." (The amount of dead space that is wasted just makes me cringe!)

If you can help it, don't use a spice rack where you have to transfer spices into different bottles. It's a hassle to do that, and probably have better things to do with your time.

Also, wherever you keep your spices, try to keep them away from heat and moisture (so right above the stove or the dishwasher are out).

If you have a good spice storage solution, please share! At the very least we can all help you with the admiring. :)

Pi R round, cornbread R square

And storage systems should be square also.

If you're ready to get some organizing products for your cabinets or shelves and you head out to your local super-store, you'll probably find a whole section full of organizing "stuff." I'm all for organization and storage, but not all products are created equal, and I'd hate for any newbies to get sucked in by the allure of some of those shiny "organizers" that are really space, money and time wasters.

Today's target: round or cylindrical storage. Chances are your cabinets and shelves are full of right angles, and to make the most of the space you have, your storage systems should have right angles also. Think about your kitchen cabinets, for example. If you put cylinders in there to hold your flour and sugar, there will be giant pockets of dead space around them since you just can't pack a lot of circles into a square footprint. It's far better to find containers with right angles (like this or this or this) that you can stack and pack into your cabinet to fill the entire volume of space. With a simple change like this you can almost double the efficiency of your cabinets.

"But what about spices?" you say. "Don't I need a lazy susan for those?" Absolutely not. Not only do you waste all that space in each of the corners of your cabinet, but you can only see what's on the outside edge, so you are basically shelling out $5-25 to showcase 10 spices while taking up an entire cabinet. And when you happen to need some fennel, you'll have to dig through all the stuff in the front to get to it. (I'll give you some better ideas to deal with spices in a future post.)

This "down with round" rule applies to every place where you store things: closets, bookshelves, basements, etc. Sometimes it's harder to find "right angle" storage, but it's worth the effort in the space you save!

Magnetic Tacks

I just found these tacks online and I am in love. You can just push them into your drywall and you have a place to hang all kinds of (metal) stuff! This lets you use your wall space for simple storage, but you don't have to install any shelving, and when you are not using them there is nothing there to take up visual space. You could even paint or wallpaper them to match your walls and make them truly invisible. These would be great for apartment living since you can't install shelves directly into the wall anyway. Others have suggested that this would be a good way to hang fabrics or prints without a frame by holding them up with a small piece of metal opposite the magnet.

If you are going to do this though, I would suggest keeping a bunch of magnets together in some kind of grouping. Otherwise, wouldn't it just look like your messy floor moved to the wall?

The Laws

Since the name of this blog is "Laws of Order," it's probably about time I filled you in on what those laws are. In brief:

Law #1: Rid yourself of "stuff"
Law #2: Make the most of the space you have
Law #3: Make it easy on yourself
Law #4: Never skimp on the admiring

Isn't it nice that everything falls into these 4 neat little categories? More on the "bylaws" of order in future posts.

Storage under the table

Since I live in a tiny apartment, I am the queen of using dead space. One of my very favorite storage ideas is using the bottom of a table to to hide tissues, wipes, newspapers, and other stuff that tends to accumulate on the table top.

As you can see, my table is quite tiny:

and a box of tissues would just take up half the surface space. But with a toddler around I always need tissues and wet wipes, so I just stuck them under the table instead.

On one side I used a piece of wide elastic and stapled it to the underside of the table, which allows me to put just about anything in that spot (different sizes of tissue boxes, newspapers, magazines, etc.).

In another spot I have a refillable box, so I attached a wide piece of velcro to the box and to the table.

For people with tables nicer than mine, you can also take a piece of cardboard, poster board, or other thick paper and slide it into the tiny space between the legs and the table top. (A lot of times there is some support piece there, and there is usually enough room to slip something in.) Then you can attach your elastic or velcro to the paper and not to your table. This is great for coffee tables too, because no matter how pretty they try to make those tissue boxes, they are still kind of ugly. The one downside to this solution: you will have to show your guests where the tissues are.

Side note: Surprisingly, my 2 year old daughter shows no interest in these boxes even though they are tantalizingly within reach. I guess with the chairs pushed in she can't really see them?