I have noticed in looking around at desks of various people in my office, that some people, like myself, take a “Google” approach to organizing: everything is just in one big pile, and when you need something, you just sort through it and find what you need. Other people take the “Yahoo!” approach to organizing: everything is in nice, neat piles, or even filed away by project or what have you.
I, and the popularity of the search engine hints that I’m not alone, think the Google approach is superior. Sure, you think you’re saving time when you can grab the needed document at a moment’s notice with the Yahoo! approach, but look at all of the time you wasted organizing and categorizing all of your documents, many of which you may consult very rarely. With the Google approach, you start to develop your own “search algorithm” which becomes keener over time, and may even rival the at-moment-of-need find time of the Yahoo! approach.
I take this approach with other things in life, such as silverware. I don’t bother organizing everything into forks, spoons, and knives as I unload my dishwasher. It takes so much less time out of my life to just throw them all in one tray, and find the needed utensil as I need it.
I do laundry this way, too. Whatever clothing items wrinkles are of consequence on (shirts and pants) get folded or hung up when I am done with my laundry. Other items (socks, underwear, t-shirts) remain in my clothes hamper, and I take them out as needed. When I need to hamper again to take my dirty clothes to the washer, I just throw the remaining clean clothes on the floor. I dream of a dresser that is just two hampers that you could switch back and forth in this manner. Seriously, do you need to match up and fold your socks, put them in the drawer, take them out of the drawer to wear them, put them in the hamper, put them in the washing machine, put them in the dryer, put them back in the hamper, fold them, and put them back in the dresser? Throw a step or two out of this convoluted process.
Yes, I am single, and live alone, which is conducive to these strange ways of doing things.
I told a friend at work about the hamper thing, and he told me that in the “smart house” that my firm is working on in a retirement center at the University of Florida, they have a dishwasher much like my hamper philosophy. It consists of two dishwashers. You store your dishes in one, take them out as you need them, then put the dirty dishes back into the other dishwasher. When those dishes are cleaned, you then start taking your dishes from that dishwasher and putting the dirty ones back into the dishwasher that originally stored the dishes. He added that if you think about it, the innovation of the dishwasher was just dropped into the modern kitchen with no consideration for its potential to make storing dishes in cabinets obsolete.
PortfolioGenius said,
September 18, 2004 @ 7:50 pm
Best & Post & Ever.
Got a pile of really clean clothes taking up the big corner of my room. It’s an excellent system.
Pg
kadavy said,
September 26, 2004 @ 10:09 pm
Like anyone could know that, PortfolioGenius.
Mary McKinney said,
June 20, 2005 @ 9:20 am
This is fun — organizing for the creative person who hates to organize.
But what do you do when the piles grow so large that you can’t find what you want? I think that my mind’s “spider” doesn’t have many legs to crawl around with….
kadavy said,
June 20, 2005 @ 11:59 am
It does get tough sometimes when it comes to the socks.
I recently folded everything and put it in the place it was “supposed” to go (I had to vacuum my floor). It took several days of waking up horrified to see there weren’t any clean clothes on the floor for me to wear, only to sigh with relief remembering where I had put them.
Bryan Larsen said,
December 14, 2005 @ 7:49 am
I keep two large laundry hampers on top of my dresser; one for clean, one for dirty. I do pair socks while pulling out the wrinklables: I find that saves time in the long run. I do plan on throwing out most of my socks and buying a large number of identical socks so I don’t have to worry about matching….
buster said,
December 14, 2005 @ 8:10 am
I wear black socks all the time for work. I never sorted them. But over time the separate black socks aged differently, so there were some differences if not properly paired. Now I just tie the socks together when I take them off and wash them while tied together. Problem solved
Joe said,
December 14, 2005 @ 8:55 am
The dishwasher idea is great. I never thought of it that way. The thing is a total waste of space, why not use it as a storage solution?
kadavy said,
December 14, 2005 @ 9:02 am
buster,
Great idea!
Bryan,
Unbelievable! That’s pretty much what I do right now. I don’t have a dresser, though, I just bought a couple of IKEA, standup hampers for $4 apiece.
theorajones said,
December 14, 2005 @ 10:02 am
How do you clean the apartment around the big piles of clothes? I’ve taken the same approach, but I’ve always found that things get really dusty. And anything delivate, like stockings or camisoilles, get snagged and ruined.
jen said,
December 14, 2005 @ 11:00 am
my house has the ideal system for saving time when it comes to the organization of (or lack thereof) clothing. i have a bedroom with a walk-THROUGH closet. it walks straight through to a small laundry room. i just take my clothes off and throw them right into the washer and wait for it to fill up enough to start. my washer acts as hamper and a “thingy to wash clothes”. once this has been done and i have clean clothes, i’m right there in my closet. i have stackable plastic “organizers” to throw wrinkle stuff (socks, bras, undies)…and yes, i agree that pairing socks is a big waste of time. i think these ways are a bit unusual for a girl. perhaps i’m the ideal girl for those,less than organized, boy-types so as to avoid the “nag syndrome”.
donna said,
December 14, 2005 @ 11:51 am
I found storage bins for my kids that serve this purpose - they keep clean clothes in one bin, dirty clothes in the other, take to washer when needed. Or, they just use laundry baskets when things overflow.
I still like my clothes in drawers and hung up, though.
bo williams said,
December 14, 2005 @ 12:02 pm
ikea sells a wardrobe that has an optional built-in sliding ‘hamper shelf’ that holds two hanging hampers. take one out to do laundry, pull out the shirts/pants and hang them in the wardrobe, put the clean hamper back in the rack. voila!
here’s the hamper:
http://www.ikea.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/ProductDisplay?topcategoryId=15597&catalogId=10103&storeId=12&productId=20739&langId=-1&parentCats=15597
which fits in almost any of their wardrobes.
kadavy said,
December 14, 2005 @ 12:07 pm
That looks like a great product, bo. Actually, I have since picked up a couple of JALL hampers from IKEA.
Ron said,
December 19, 2005 @ 8:12 am
Moving all you non-foldables into one big pile makes sense. As well you can store more in one area by not folding. Rubermaid makes bins of different sized that work well as sealable drawers. I have one for socks and underwear, another for sheets and pillowcases, and another for all of that stuff that you can’t classify eaily but you want to hang onto (the junk drawer). Build a frame from Ikea shelving and you have a fully configurable / highly portable dresser storage system.
I hang my t-shirts to dry as they transfer easily to a hanger then closet. Saves energy from not drying and wear and tear on your t-shirts (dryers are pretty nasty on material) and your t-shirt’s and other hangables always look nice and neat.
Now I’m looking for other for other areas that would benefit from a Google sort.
Karen said,
January 8, 2006 @ 5:56 am
Now that you mention it, I categorize my dresser drawers by frequency of clothing wear (underwear unsorted in top drawer, tops for work in second drawer, other stuff that I don’t wear often in the bottom). I am going to experiment with clean a basket for each type of washer load in the laundry room (whites-cold, blacks-cold, reds/browns-cold, mixed colors-warm, sheets and towels-hot) and mirror clothing storage the same way.
Casey said,
January 23, 2006 @ 3:55 pm
You know i vaccilate…as a matter of fact jsut today i decided not to empty the clean hamper of its undies and socks for this very reason.
but there is something pleasurable about folding things and making them into a neat stack, or putting things into rows.
it just depends on how i am feeling and when i have the time.