It’s been my experience that the best organized solutions work in tandem with your natural routines. Having said that, when you organize tools used in routines, the whole process just flows.
I wrote a blog post many years ago called, Behavior Based Organizing. The gist of the article states that ‘the key is the efficiency of the steps in the routine, in terms of behavior’.
Part of behavior-based organizing is the way we organize tools for each routine. In the article mentioned above, it states that you need to be able to access the required tools quickly. The time it takes to complete each step in a routine is based on repetitiveness until it becomes a habit.
How you organize tools is key to be able to access them quickly and that’s what we will talk about in this article. The first thing to consider is where this routine will be performed. That is the starting point for storing tools required to perform a routine. Ease of access is the next consideration in terms of storage for the required tools in each routine.
Read on to learn more about storage and ease of access below.
Storage
In many past blog posts about organizing, storage comes up frequently. After all, organizing efficiency requires storage. How and where your things live is key to be able to find what you need, when you need it.
Storing things where you use them is another important factor of organizing efficiency. As mentioned above, where you perform a routine typically indicates the location to organize tools required for the routine.
For example, bathing and getting ready for the day is centered around the bathroom. Open shelves, hooks, racks, vanity drawers & cabinets and linen closets are great storage options. Bins and drawer dividers are smaller storage options within shelves, vanity drawers and linen closets to separate categories of tools.
When talking about storage, I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the importance of labels. There are some instances when a category of items needs to live in a container with a lid. Whether the bin is clear, which is my preference, or not, a label draws your eye so that you know what lives in it at a glance.
Ease of access
When you organize tools in the storage options mentioned above, ease of access comes into play to quickly grab what you need to complete each step in your routine. If you need to open containers and fish around for a required tool, you will waste valuable time and it could throw the whole routine off.
Many containers have lids that can be placed under the container so that you can see the contents and quickly grab what you need. Items that live on open shelves, hooks and racks are easy to see and access without much thought.
These aspects, storage and ease of access, are important factors when you organize tools for efficiency. If you have a routine that isn’t working for you, consider these factors to tweak it to work more efficiently for you.
