If you haven’t heard of Cas’ from Clutterbug’s organizing styles, you should definitely check it out. She often says that households should organize the common spaces to the visual and macro organizer’s style because the micro-hidden organizer will always have an easier time adjusting to everyone else’s style. In this post, I’m discussing scaling categories when organizing and how micro organizers can scale micro categories to be more macro.
This may seem like an odd topic. For some, this comes so naturally that you’ll just skip right past this post. For others, this piece seems impossible to understand. Let’s start by mentioning that this is a sliding scale and any variation in between is valid too.
Let’s use three examples. The first is “the dorm room”, the second is “the household”, and the third is “the business”. The dorm room is the most macro version, primarily because the typical college student doesn’t own very many items in any particular category, so they represent the most macro organizer. The household has a variety of items. They own more than the student, but less than a business.
The business is required to keep a decade of records, large tool sets, etc. The business, therefore, represents the most micro organization. In this case, imagine an automotive manufacturer that has various tool sets that multiple shifts will access as well as decades of records for safety audits and warranty investigations.
Micro Organizing for The Business:
Granted there will be some categories that a household will have more of. It’s unlikely that your workplace has more than paper plates. However, The Business has hundreds of computers. So you get the idea. The larger the inventory and the more people accessing it across longer timeframes, the more the microsystem is helpful.
The business will likely have records from hundreds of vendors over decades and records will be organized by vendors and dates in such a way that records could be accessed quickly but filed away by time period. So Year, then a vendor, then weeks within the vendor file.
The tool shop will contain inserts with obvious measurement labels for each size of tool, inside toolboxes assigned to machines.
All archived files would be boxed up by record type and year, then by month and day within the box. Possibly labeling Box 1-12 (A-F, etc.).
This is The Business. We organize this way because there is so much data, that without detailed categories it would take forever to locate a file. In The Business, we actually do reference old information and at the point it becomes unlikely, we box it up and move it to storage with a destroy date marked on the box.
Scaling Categories when Organizing for The Household:
In The Household, we have records. We have records that span years. However, we only access them within the Calendar year for tax time or active household budgets. Therefore, our paper organization most likely looks like putting all the bills, receipts, and notices together by month. This works because we don’t leave bills outstanding for months. We don’t have to send collectors after our paycheck. Each month is mostly a closed period and by the time we do taxes, the year is solidly closed.
The only exception is anything in dispute. Then the active records will matter. If you can close it within a calendar year, the above system still works.
Additionally, The Household contains a few major assets like cars, which we can keep records of, but we don’t have 12 cars, so it’s not hard to find the records for the current car that we own. So we keep the important ownership records and a basic maintenance log somewhere, but otherwise, any payments are treated like bills.
The Household has tools, but there are only a few sets of drill bits, wrenches, and sockets. So most tools don’t need to have shadow boxes that are clearly labeled to get everything back into its place for the next shift, because…well, the next shift is still you! In the Household, as we’re scaling categories when organizing tools could separate screwdrivers from wrenches, as shown below.
The Business may need to arrange hundreds of uniforms, The Household only manages a few people’s laundry. So the laundry system isn’t as intense either. There’s no need to barcode the items, or inventory what’s going to laundry. In The Household, each member could do their own laundry or everyone can mix together and do a load a day. The clothing doesn’t need to be sorted by all sizes, simply by person. This is how we use scaling categories when organizing laundry. Either way, your pants won’t end up in another city!
Macro Organizing for The Dorm:
Oh, The Dorm! I wish I’d paired down better myself. That room was LOADED down. I packed and moved out with nearly everything I’d touched in the last four years! Plus all the new things I’d bought with my graduation money. Lesson’s learned too late.
The Dorm life is small and simple. The Dorm does not have room for a library full of books, or a sewing room full of fabric and machines, and cutting mats. The Dorm is for necessities. It doesn’t even have a hammer. A screwdriver, yes. Hammer, no.
In The Dorm, we must make broad categories for our “office supplies” which includes anything we might use on paper. It’s all together. It might even have a tiny sewing kit for putting buttons back on. No more. It might have an “electronics” bin, where jump drives and headphones live together. It will be a gnarly mess of cables and charging blocks, but it won’t have hundreds. It won’t even be technology that’s older than one year! No CDs here!
The Dorm is a place of simplicity and bills are put on autopilot and ignored, so we throw them all in a box. As soon as we’re done with a test, it goes in the box.
I’m not saying that you can’t micro-sort some categories. I had paper clips in a section of my office supplies kit, which also contained the sewing supplies. It’s just important to understand that it doesn’t need to be detailed because there isn’t a long history of paper there. There isn’t a need for multiple people to access the same stuff, and it’s an environment where if anything is missing, you can ask around and get something to make work.
Since there isn’t much of any one category, we can put more categories together, such as my office supplies and sewing kit Sterlite stacking bin. All jewelry could be thrown together because there isn’t enough to require a cabinet. The tools necessary to maintain a dorm room are minimal as well.
You can slide up and down this scale in as many different categories as you need to in order to fit the containers and space that you have. This is how organizing works. The containers fit the space, and then you adjust the categories to fit the bins.
We don’t want to cram things in so they don’t function, so we may need to break that category into a few more. Let’s take the office supplies and sewing kit as an example. This was all in a stacking two layered Sterlite bin so the top was a wide open space and the bottom had six small compartments. I put paperclips into one, and thread into another. On the top were wax pencils, an exacto knife, the seam ripper, a magnet pin holder, measuring tape, and a stapler. They were mixed within the container and yet separated out by size and subsets of those sizes. Big on the top, and small on the bottom subcategorized.
Summary of Scaling Categories when Organizing
This is essentially how you will go about each space. Broadly, you zone first to try to keep what you need where you will need it. The tool cabinet for the machine is next to the machine. The paper files are in the office where they will be needed and created. Then we scale categories when organizing the space for the storage container, which might be a cabinet, a closet, etc. Then we find reasonable-sized sub-dividers like hanging file folders, photo boxes, or file boxes, to then make smaller and smaller categories until we’ve managed to find a balanced point between easy to maintain and easy to use.