Introduction

I want to keep this simple but complete by going to the “how” of this writing as soon as possible. I couldn’t find a decent guide that was free and did not contain any “buy this” affiliate links. There is no affiliate link in this writing.

I also want to write this just in case reincarnation or something is real. I want to remind my future self to follow the guidance that you’re about to read. I gain nothing except maybe posterity.

Everybody knows it’s good to be clean and organized. It’s not easy to do so because there’s so much going on in our modern digital life. The thing is, by being an organized and clean person, you make life far more manageable.

Consider this fact. The average lifespan is 78.6 in the US (2017). Let’s round the numbers up because we’re optimistic people. After the 2 years gain, we are 80 years old. This gives us:

  • 29,200 days
  • 4,171 weeks
  • 960 months
  • 700,800 hours

No matter how you look at it, none of it are big numbers. Even if you lived to 100, you are still within the 1,000 months figure. Consider another fact that we spend 1/3 of our life in bed. 1/3 of 29,200 days is about 9,733 in bed or 19,467 waking hours.

Of the 19,467, a good chunk of it aren’t even your hours.

If you only have a bedroom, you want your bedroom to be spent in quality time. If we were to use very rough figures, you spend about 10–15 years in school (K-12, maybe some college for most people in the world) and another 40 or more years working.

If we retire at the age of 60, we’re left with all the extra things we’ve collected over the years. Assuming nothing bad has happened to us (like house burning down), then what? Have your kids sort it out for you? Waste their time sorting out your jacket and underwear collection?

You want to live a quality life throughout your whole life. Not after you retire and then decide you want to organize and clean up your life. As you close your the last chapter in your life, you don’t want any unfinished business.

Death is still a taboo subject but it’s something I wish more people would explore. It was a topic that I always explored in college. I always got good grades for it because I would generally be the only one willing to talk and write about it.

I haven’t even gotten to other factors like having kids and extracurriculars. There are so much happening in our life that it’s sometimes just overwhelming. It’s okay. Chaos is natural but unproductive.

Here is another fact to instill a sense of urgency. We know that life is short, we are limited on our time. We also know that we will spend most of it in school or work.

Because of this, we should try to micromanage our time even more. Instead, that’s not what happens. We end up spending about one hour daily looking for something they own but can’t find. We end up buying things, a majority (80%) that we never use.

You don’t need to go all out. If you can make a little progress everyday, you’re good to go. You can start right now. You just need some guideline and thoughts to keep in mind.

You should read this from top to bottom. It’s organized from most important to least (though still) important.

Rationale

There are three main reasoning that you should keep in mind. Think of it as the first principle.

Costs

You don’t own more than you have to. For example, you don’t need 50 pairs of shoes. You should ask yourself something like: “When did I buy this? Have I worn this since I bought it?”

This is reasoning by costs. You save money by not buying more than you have to and you help others along the day by giving away anything you don’t need. This helps fight clutter.

Time

Ask yourself if you’ll need it in 1–3–5-10 years. If you find yourself saying “I’ve held this for 4 years already, I don’t think it’ll change in another year,” you should throw it out. It’s good to think of scenarios where you might need something but in all likelihood, it’s probably not going to happen due to the laws of averages.

If you are keeping it for sentimental reasons, that is fine. It is unlikely that everything you own is for sentimental reasons. You will want to think about the fact that you may be hoarding and they are not necessarily for sentimental reasons. This too helps with fighting clutter.

Goal

In short, your goal is to be consistent, not perfection. Clothes that you need to wash will always pile up. Until the day somebody invents self-washing clothes. There will always be something to do until humanity reaches singularity.

As of now, you’ll want to get to a point where you can automate the cleaning or at least get your organizing down to a routine. By doing this, you will find yourself with more time.

Step by Step

There are some nuances to this and because of this, you are required to do some thinking of what applies to you more. Measure twice, then cut once.

If you are a survivalist, then your weight in any of the three changes. You may need more shopping to rotate your food supply which means your cost goes up.

You can still find ways to organize in this lifestyle. The core ideas remains the same, for example, you probably don’t need 50 different rifles.

The same applies if you are a minimalist, modern, etc.

First Thing First

You will want to organize before you clean. If you have bags of potato chip or candy wrappers lying around, they’re going to get your things dirty again.

Definition

If that didn’t make sense, then here is how I define the two terms. Often the terms are interchangeable in daily use but I try to be a little more specific here.

Organizing is the act of moving things around. If you are throwing something away, you are organizing. Just because you are organized doesn’t mean you are clean. It is entirely possible to have no clutter but everything you own is dusty.

Cleaning is the act of restoring something to its original state. It is entirely possibly to have cleaned everything due to OCD but clutter reigns supreme. It would be nice that the things you keep is free of dirt. Put some elbow grease into it.

Another thing to keep in mind is, when I write birth certificate or passport, I don’t necessarily mean those two specific documents. I just mean important documents in general.

What’s important is specific to you as an individual. I’m just using examples. If you don’t find any documents important, then maybe you are just lucky. (Though I am willing to contest that. If it all disappeared one day, at the very least, you will lament this.)

Consistency

Perfection is not the goal. Consistency is the goal. You want to do a little everyday. For a busy person, it’s not unreasonable to say “I will organize 30 minutes on the weekdays and 2 hours on the weekends.”

That’s all you need in times of time commitment.

Justification

You should be able to reason about your organization. For example, ask yourself if you’re hoarding or if it’s an actual necessity. There is a difference between buying all the medical masks in a store for yourself and buying one or two extra battery supplies.

Don’t hoard, especially if it’s medical supplies that you don’t need. People tend to overestimate their own needs and underestimate other’s needs. Don’t be Mnuchin.

Medical masks shortage during COVID-19 killed people.

Separation

This is probably the hardest because it has a bit of catch-22 element to it. If you already have a bit of separation in your organization, then you are already organized to some degree by definition.

What you need to separate is your physical and digital life.

  • Think about what you would do if internet were to die one day.
  • Think about what you would do if all your stuff disappeared one day (due to a fire or something).

We’re often emotionally tied to the things that go around us that we don’t make that separation.

For example, I’ve seen a lot of people stick their passport somewhere in a small paper box in the corner of their bedroom and move on. Then they forget where they put it or their house burn down and it’s gone when organization could’ve prevented this.

Organizing

First work on your physical life, then work on your digital life. The first thing you’ll want to do is make your bed. If you haven’t, switch out the bed and pillow sheets to wash. If the Navy SEAL who killed Osama bin Laden thinks you should do it, you should do it.

I took at a look at the most common rooms available to most people in the world. In general, work on the following room in the following order:

  1. Bed
  2. Bathroom
  3. Closet
  4. Living room
  5. Kitchen

Some places don’t have a pantry room or whatever so you’ll have to make your own judgment call. The order isn’t set in stone, if you have a different order, make sure you can justify it.

I started with bedroom because that is what we typically prize above all. You start and end the day with it. It also has the most impact on you. If you don’t sleep well, you’re not going to have a good time waking up.

When you need to buy a new house or rent an apartment, one of the most important room they tell you is how good the bedroom is, followed by bathroom count. They will never leave out bedroom.

They could leave out some detail but bedroom bedazzle is the easiest way to a sale. Whether they tell you about the bedroom first or leave the best for last, it will be mentioned.

It is likely you do not live alone. You have most control over your bedroom and least control over the kitchen. People are generally more sensitive about the kitchen than the bathroom.

There are less items to consider in the bathroom, so it is a follow-up and easy to organze. People will wage war over if you throw out food that you know expired “but I will eat it!”

If you are one of the lucky one where you have the place completely to yourself, you can do whatever you want. If you are sharing, you want to do your best to respect other people’s space.

Start in the bedroom by throwing away everything that is clearly trash. Then get those boxes that lets you separate things. Jewelry boxes for jewelries, clothes bin for clothes, etc.

While you are packing, you should ask yourself if any of it is something you can give away. Note I did not use the term donation because it’s a topic of concern.

A lot of times, donating things mean they take it to re-sell it. They pocket it and don’t even actually help those in needs.

We’d like to think the stuff we donate go to those who need it but that often doesn’t happen. You can re-sell it yourself and make that extra cash anyway.

Storage pieces such as organizers and dividers are godsends. I personally have a few of these and basically stored my entire life in them. You can even toss a throw blanket over it. You now have a makeshift table. I can’t recommend the box highly enough. You can throw away the tool bin container that it comes or plant flowers in it.

For example, this is good geo-redundancy. Make a copy of your birth certificate, then stick it in one safe at your parent’s place and another at your apartment.

I also recommend fire safes if you do not have a lot of items or you want separations and you categorize it. For example, clothes in the chest and important documents in the safe.

The fire safe should also be flood resistant. It’s likely useless against thieves / burglary but it’s better than nothing and is a separate topic altogether.

It is very unlikely that a fire will burn down both your parent’s place and your apartment at the same time.

If this does happen, please feel free to reach out to me with proof. I can post your story here. (Originally I wanted to offer sympathy $1 via Venmo but I found this to be costly. While I was getting feedback of this writing, a lot of people have apparently experienced this.)

In your kitchen, you should get rid of expired goods. You should actually try to use the food you bought. You should also try to separate liquid from dry items.

After you are done with your kitchen, it should be not have unwashed dishes and unclosed cabinet doors. A chef should be able to walk into the room and be comfortable cooking.

Your goal is to destroy clutter. You should not have a used up pen in every room. There is no reason for there to be a pen laying around on the ground in the living room, bathroom, etc.

As you box, label everything as well. This will allow you to categorize things. For example, your knife probably belongs in your kitchen collection or your martial arts collection but not both.

If it doesn’t belong on the ground, it shouldn’t be on the ground if you can help it.

Digital Priority 1

For digital life, the one place a lot of people are very messy in is their emails. I wrote this in the order it affects most people.

Start unsubscribing, then delete it.

Delete emails that you know are useless. If you have many email accounts, there are two things you can do. Close the account you don’ t use anymore. You can also just forward all your emails from different accounts to one.

Digital Priority 2

Get a password manager. Start closing accounts you don’t use anymore.

You’ll notice that you don’t have control over what you thought you owned. You should start demanding businesses to hand these over to you. For example, some companies won’t delete your account because they need it to sell your personal data. GDPR, CCPA issues. If the product is free, you are the product.

Digital Priority 3

If you have many computers, find some way to streamline the process.

If you have an extra computer that you know you don’t need anymore, format the computer and donate it to a family that you know needs one. You don’t need to go overboard, nobody cares about your porn collection. Just make sure it’s formatted, that’s all you need.

Cleaning

Cleaning is the next step after you organize everything. This comes after because you won’t be wasting time scrubbing something that you end up throwing out in the trash.

As I mentioned earlier, try to automate some things if you can afford it.

Buy robot vacuum that roams around. They’ll pick up any dirt like dead bugs and cigarette butt or ash. Maybe pet hair too.

Use air filters.

Drop a toilet bleach tablet.

Dust and vacuum every room. Get a good vacuum, the cheap one is nothing more than a fan that blows dust away.

Mop every room as well. Scrub hard. Don’t be afraid to use chemicals to beat it back and wash your hand often after every session.

Conclusion

There are some things I have not gone into, like separating personal from professional. This is something you will need to make a judgement call on.

What I can definitely say is, as long as you keep the two separated by carving out one spot in your place for work, you should be okay. If possible, avoid taking work to your bedroom, bathroom, etc. It should start and end in one place. So, that is to say, you can take your work to the bathroom, but it should not stay there.

I hope this was helpful. You don’t need Marie Kondo’s method. If it helps, that’s great. It looks to me as if she just exported Japanese / East Asian culture and re-packaged it into something that claims to help you “physically, mentally, spiritually.”

You don’t need a giant place or a fancy car. If you can fit everything you own in one or two moving truck, you should be good. You need to be careful of those who tell you “YOLO” when reasoning about materialistic things or “FOMO” you into doing something.

As you do this, you should be thinking long-term goals. As you do this, you should be thinking long-term goals. Goals such as surviving retirement, achievements in life, etc.

It is true that you only live once, it is also true that unwise decisions can shorten that otherwise good life.

Yes, you may also miss out some things in life. That’s okay. You’ve done some things that others have missed out on. It’s impossible to experience everything in life. Don’t set yourself up for failure because of your refusal to budge on some of these issues.

Real health and wealth is when you finally have control over your life. You never want to give up your future because you need something now. You want to beat that akrasia effect.

In the end, you know you’re there when you beat that time curve and can put all your life in a few of those boxes. So hurry up and get started!

Originally published at: The Complete Guide to Organizing and Cleaning