Instiling order at home: 3 tidying tips for lazy people

The headline «Marie Kondo doesn’t tidy up any more» was both shocking and refreshingly honest at the same time. Tidiness consultant, author and Netflix celebrity from Japan, Kondo, confessed she’d quit tidying after the birth of her third child. Obviously, her flat was taken over by chaos. But only briefly, because Kondo has since followed up with an account of how she teaches her children to clean up.

News that makes Martina Frischknecht laugh heartily. She’s better known by her alias «Frau Ordnung» or «Ms Order» – making her the Marie Kondo of Switzerland, so to speak. She’s also a mother and knows, «When you have kids, you have to resign for a few years.»

For people like me, this is upsetting to hear. I love things to be tidy, while at the same time I attract chaos – even without children. So, is all hope for a tidy home lost for me and many others in a similar boat? When even organisational geniuses and tidying professionals like Marie Kondo throw in the towel – and don’t put it away afterwards?

«Don’t worry,» says tidiness coach Martina Frischknecht. She has a few tips on how each of us can cultivate some sense of order. The prerequisite being you follow a few simple rules at home.

Tidiness is individual – and not as easy for everyone

Being tidy doesn’t need to be linked with pedantry. It’s just meant to simplify your everyday life. But to make it work, you have to set the rules yourself. Ms Order knows from her work that: «Tidiness is unique to the individual. There’s no such thing as standard orderliness. But if you no longer feel comfortable in your surroundings and can’t rest and recharge at home because there’s too much lying around and unpaid bills awaiting you, it’s zapping your energy and becomes draining.»

Incidentally, it’s particularly difficult for creative people to have an orderly and structured routine. Martina knows this from first-hand experience with her clients – but she can also vouch for it herself.

Because of her ADHD, she often struggles to keep things tidy. «Sometimes I get so engrossed in one thing that I forget everything around me. I think it’s exactly those people: creative, witty folk, maybe even on the ADHD spectrum, who don’t get to grips with it as well as structured, analytical types.»

But there are two sides to everything. While creative people find it more difficult to make order reign, chaos is actually considered an idea generator in science. Studies like this one explain that structure reduces information, and with it the cognitive flexibility and creativity required. So, chaotic people can be more creative? At least there’s that!

Basic level of tidiness: save yourself hassle

I consider myself one of those creative, easily distracted people. Following structure is difficult for me. For example, there’s a stack of letters I ignore at home. A whole load of pens that no longer work. Cables whose respective device I lost years ago. Once a week, I put everything into a pile and uncharitably clear it from the kitchen counter to the desk, where three similar piles are already waiting for me. What then usually happens is I quickly leave the room and close the door behind me. Out of sight, out of mind.

Martina Frischknecht reassures me that this isn’t bad. She also only discovered a zeal for orderliness where Marie Kondo lost it: upon having her child. Spending a lot of time at home with little day-to-day structure led the «Marie Kondo of Switzerland» to rely on a special kind of coping strategy: therapeutic tidying out, structuring and organising. Today, expert Martina Frischknecht helps others keep their home tidy, and she knows full well, «the trick isn’t tidying up; it’s being tidy.»

By this, she’s referring to what’s known as base-level orderliness: a system of tidiness in which every household object has its place. «Imagine emptying your dishwasher and picking up a clean plate. You don’t need to scratch your head and wonder where to put it. Equally, you don’t shove it on the shelf in the bathroom after a lot of thought. Why not? Because you’ve got a base-level of tidiness in the kitchen.»

Emptying the dishwasher is therefore an easy task – even for people like me. Bish bash bosh, everything is in its place. If you establish similar base-level order in the whole flat, you’ll no longer be having to constantly tidy up or even rearrange things first of all, our expert promises. «You then just put things in their set place, and order is restored.»

Step 1: define the space

Instiling a base-level of tidiness or order makes sense. But you won’t be able to transfer them from your dishwasher to the rest of the flat in one day – and I certainly won’t. The pile of unsorted letters, pens, and cables is sitting on a desk in a room that was supposed to be an office. But there they are, still lying around: a second desk, a pull-out couch, a rowing machine, a punching bag, five gym bands, two yoga mats, my laundry, sketch pads and colouring books, pens, brushes, watercolours and, strangely enough, all the balcony plants that I never wintered. The room is a 13-square-metre mishmash, a home to many things – but basic orderliness isn’t one of them.

It’s a longer process to establish that. It all starts with a simple question: what do I want to use this space for in the future? Or, as Martina puts it, «Define your space.» After that, at least in theory, it’s quite simple. Anything that doesn’t serve the purpose of the room has no place in it. In other words, no gardening gloves for the out-of-place balcony plants, and no rowing machine either.

Step 2: regularly tidy up for ten minutes

Because chaos is often a force of nature for me and therefore not so easy to tame, I need certain shortcuts that make day-to-day life easier. Fortunately, Martina has a hack for this: set a timer for ten minutes and give things a basic tidy-up. Each pen goes back where it belongs, laundry that’s been dry for days goes in the wardrobe, and anything that doesn’t yet have a permanent place goes in a basket that you can take care of later when you have more time. «You can fit those ten minutes into most days,» says Martina. «You get an incredible amount done in that time because the pressure of being against the clock makes you work faster than if you spent an hour cleaning up.»

More tips for everyday life: establish order today, base-level order tomorrow

Your motivation and (un)happiness are ultimately what determine order or chaos. Expert Martina reveals how you can run a reasonably structured and tidy household, even before you have base-level orderliness in place.

1. More order: the 2-minute rule

It sounds simple. Anything that can be achieved in two minutes or less, do it now. For instance, when you get home with your shopping bags, empty them out and put things away immediately. «If you sit down and have a cup of coffee first, you’ll need more oomph to get it done later,» Martina warns. The result being that, as time goes on, it takes more effort to put away what you’ve bought.

Something similar is the «5-second rule». Essentially, anything in the home that takes no more than five seconds to complete should be done right away. To give you three examples from everyday life: throwing empty cereal boxes into the paper bin, not leaving dirty laundry lying around and instead putting it in the laundry basket, or putting shoes on the rack rather than leaving them in the middle of the room.

2. Tidying up: don’t take on too much

The 2-minute and 5-second rules already show that when it comes to tidiness around the home, you’ll want to set small goals. «Don’t set out to clean the whole wardrobe in one afternoon. You won’t get it done,» says Ms Order, knowingly. Instead, set manageable goals. Start with a single drawer, and if you have time afterwards, tackle a second or third. «But if you set out to tidy the whole wardrobe, you start with a huge mess. That’s just frustrating and overwhelming.»

3. «Eat the Frog» – do the most unpleasant tasks first

This rule doesn’t just apply to the home. It also crosses over to organising yourself at work. Eating the frog means getting the task you least want to do out of the way first. For example, paying overdue bills, finally getting round to calling the tax office, or in my case, sorting through the three piles on my desk.

This is how Martina goes about it: «Every day, I write myself a list of six to eight things I need to get done. I then halve this list. Because we always try to take on more than we can actually accomplish in a day. I then prioritise the points that are left.» This means you can take tackle the unpleasant things first, check them off your list, and not have to deal with them for the rest of the day.