Meghan Carter: Home organization is both frustrating and overwhelming but the people here at White Space have it down to an exact science and can show you exactly where to start when organizing your home. So, today, I will be speaking with Cynthia Ivie, master simplifier to know where to start.
I’m hitting the road searching for answers and finding great design. It is a quest for beauty, function and of course inspiration.
Why is it important to organize? Like why should you have an organized home?
Cynthia Ivie: To make life simpler. I don’t care how neat your sector is, I don’t care how neat your closet is Meghan. It’s all about you being able to find all the time you need to do the things that make your heart sing. And it’s not about searching for a pair of shoes or belt in your closet or a particular handbag or anything like that or a document that you need for text filing season. It’s about having everything in a place where you have a sense of security underneath you, where you could find what you need when you need it. So, that you have more time to devote to a higher quality of life.
Meghan Carter: Where do you start though?
Cynthia Ivie: It’s just like eating one bite at a time and you will choose the area that affects your life.
Meghan Carter: Eating an elephant?
Cynthia Ivie: Yes, how do you eat an elephant, one bite at a time? You start in the area that creates the most stress for you on a day-to-day basis. And for most people that’s going to be one of three areas, the closet, the kitchen, or the garage.
Meghan Carter: Is the first step to rip everything out by just to take everything out of your closets, everything out of the drawers and start over or do you work small pieces at a time?
Cynthia Ivie: I’m starting at one area at a time. You don’t want to turn your entire house into chaos. You want to work in an area. So, you might choose a room, maybe it’s a home office, maybe it’s a master closet, maybe it’s a guest room or the kitchen. But start in one main area and focus there for a concentrated period of time and resolve it first then you’ll have a good positive example to help promote you in moving forward to the rest of the house.
Meghan Carter: And then what’s next? So, you’d bring it all out and—
Cynthia Ivie: And everything out. You want to sort it and put like items together because people are often surprised to find out how much duplication they have accumulated, six wine poles, 24 pairs of running shoes, 16 ball caps—
Meghan Carter: Six bags of sugar in my case.
Cynthia Ivie: Six bags of sugar in your case and because people often buy duplicates because they cannot find the original. So, once they pull everything out and group it, like items together then it’s really easy to make decisions about it. You can decide based on quality of the item based on the wear and tear and the functionality of the item. And then it’s really easy to get rid of the access.
Meghan Carter: So, you have your piles.
Cynthia Ivie: You have your piles.
Meghan Carter: That you throw away, they keep.
Cynthia Ivie: Right.
Meghan Carter: And then where do you decide to put it back though? I think that’s the hardest part. It’s choosing where to place each item.
Cynthia Ivie: There is a natural flow to every room. And it’s up to—you have to determine what that flow is. Kitchens are very easy. They are designed to have flow but people often don’t organize them to take advantage of that flow. Same thing with closets, at white Space we use a principle called the Theory of Primary State, which is whatever you use most often needs to be easiest to access that is closest to hand.
Meghan Carter: Make sense, logical.
Cynthia Ivie: Yes.
Meghan Carter: So, then how do you choose what you use most? Is it just you’re going through and say, “Here’s the checklist of what you use in your day or—“
Cynthia Ivie: I don’t think you need to create a checklist because it’s probably pretty easy to do that just on a verbal basis and sorting. It doesn’t have to be a conversing process. It can be very quick and very rapid.
Meghan Carter: Is
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