HBO
Coming home to a messy house can quickly turn our good mood into a bad one.
After a long day at work, the last thing you want to see is a pile of your kid’s toys on the floor and your partner’s shoes flung across the room.
While you might be tempted to sit your family—and yourself—down to implement some new rules about where the clutter, interior designer and Youtuber, Caroline Winkler believes she has a more effective solution.
In her Youtube video, ‘You’re doing home organization WRONG’, Caroline explains the importance of implementing home organisation strategies that offer an ‘ease of maintenance’ for everyone in the home.
“If its not easily maintained by everyone in the home then its not going to work,” Caroline says. “There’s nothing more impossible than changing human behaviour.”
“It’s hard to create new habits for yourself let alone for me to create new habits for my pretend partner or my pretend kids,” Caroline jokes. “And if they can’t uphold my new organisation system then I’m left doing it all alone and that’s not why I got pretend married.”
To bring this concept into the way you organise your home, Caroline says you need to take notice of where you, your family or your roommates are creating mess.
“Watch where you are naturally dropping your stuff when you come home and then put drop zones there,” Caroline says.
“If the keys are always going on that table put a freaking bowl on that table. If the bag is always being dropped there then put a table, put a chair or put a stool.”
It seems like a simple concept but how many times do you complain about your partner’s dirty clothes not making it to the washing basket? Perhaps, moving the basket closer to the place they’re dropping the close will solve the problem. Likewise, we tend to place shoe baskets at the front door—but how often do people take their shoes off as soon as they step inside?
A lot of the time, its when you reach your couch, or when your kids plonk themselves down in front of the TV. Maybe the shoe basket becomes more effective there?
“Good design and good organisation systems are not about making people adhere to your system, it’s about making the system adhere to the habits people already have,” Caroline explains. “That’s the way they get maintained.”
“If we don’t consider the ease of maintenance then the drop zone could easily be on the side of the room where it would take you four more steps to get there and put your coat down.
“If it’s just a little inconvenient, it’s not going to happen.”
Watch Caroline Winkler’s Video On Home Organisation Below
