Let's Get Organized!
The Three-Step Bachelor Plan
Step One: Gathering

By David Mitchell

Some relentless sorting, organizing, and discarding can bring order to your "stuff." Stuff that is now stacked on every flat surface and bulging out of every closet and cabinet you own.

Organization is easy with the "bachelor" plan. It all starts with bins for sorting. The organizing is done when the mood strikes you.

Go to a discount store and buy six 10 gallon tote boxes or bins--the plastic ones with covers. They are cheap, stackable, and reusable. I bought several colors so I would know at a glance what was in them.

Label by the eventual fate of the bin:

• Charity
• Garbage
• File
• Kids
• Other Room
• Unknown

Take one room at a time and go through your house: closet by closet, cabinet by cabinet, drawer by drawer, actually thinking about your possessions.

Try to put all clutter and out-of-place items in those containers.

Toss more items than you keep. Be hard-hearted and merciless!

I was a mess!

If you are like I was, you'll find your divorce papers in your sock drawer. Place it in your "File" bin.

Then you'll discover your socks in your desk. Place them in your "Other Room" bin.

When you have gone through every room, you'll be amazed at the space left in your home when you finish.

You'll also be amazed at the size of your bins.

The Garbage and Charity bins are easy to eliminate.  The rest can be stacked in your now empty coat closet until a rainy day.

That rainy day is when you will organize your storage and decide the fate of the items in your bins.

After possessions are gathered, they must be stored.

This is the easy part.

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