When to be anal, when to chill the F out
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When to be anal, when to chill the F out
Having an Instagram-ready home is exhausting; choose your battles.
Your House is Your Machine takes a new approach to home organization and life. Think: less buying bins, more sitting on your couch drawing flowcharts. I’m experimenting here and really appreciate your engagement and feedback! If you’d like to keep reading I encourage you to subscribe below.
Some people apparently like to hang their baby’s tiny clothes on tiny hangers in a tiny closet. At least this is what social media would have you believe. I’ve never seen this done in real life but I suppose it’s possible this happens.
Given how often babies soil their clothes and the amount of laundry that rotates through, I can’t fathom tediously hanging up their tiny clothes, no matter how cute it looks. But, that’s me. If it brings you joy to do this, then more power to you!
This post is all about identifying what really matters to you, and only hanging the tiny clothes on tiny hangers (or whatever your version is) when the payoff is worth it for you.
Here is an example from my world.
For me, when babies are tiny, folding/hanging clothes feels tedious. I do need to find pants vs tops vs socks so I can quickly dress them, so I have zones within their dresser. (Per my core tenet, I started with Amazon boxes-as-organizers, and only once I proved the system worked I upgraded to fancy drawer dividers.) I just toss their clothes into the appropriate zone, rumpled and wild:
Key in this is ensuring my husband is aware of and maintains the zones. He has about a 70% hit rate so I try to remind on occasion, and sometimes need to “fix” things after he does laundry (he is farsighted so has a hard time telling a shirt apart from pants). Labels would help if caretakers are all able to read them. Since no folding is involved this takes me 20 seconds and is not a big deal to me. (This might seem like a minor detail, but to me these details are essential to understanding how household systems work.)
For my clothes, on the other hand, rumpled and wild would make me crazy. So my clothes are folded Kondo-style (loosely, at least…I’m not winning any folding awards) and placed into the correct zone:
When I open my drawer I get a rush of satisfaction gazing upon my handiwork. I can find my things easily, and luckily I don’t spit up too much on my clothes so the volume of laundry is quite manageable, even with folding.
Another area where I believe it pays to be anal (for me) is in the Tupperware/food storage drawer. I use this drawer 5x a day so I need it to be tidy and appealing to interact with. I invested in nesting glass storage containers so we only need to dedicate one drawer to this, and treated myself to these spring-loaded drawer dividers once I found a system that worked (yes, I am the age where getting drawer dividers is considered a fun treat, let us not dwell on this):
What’s your version of baby-clothes-on-hangers? What’s super worth it to you to be fastidious about, and what is 100% NOT worth it?
When to be anal, when to chill the F out
Storing tupperwear with the lids on. Which would mean I would need to dry them torughly, which means I would have to do it and not outsource it to anyone old enough to unload the dishwasher (3 in our experience if you set up the kitchen right)
For me - emptying all dry food into containers. Super trendy, but behind cupboard doors nearly all the time in our kitchen. I do have a big container for rice, but I like switching up pasta shapes all the time so I just chuck an ikea clip on the bag and call it a day. Things like nuts I want to know the use-by date on and so the bag is useful!