Sorting Out The Chaos? Teacher Zhao Jing Teaches You Scientific Organization, Saying Goodbye To Clutter Is Super Easy
Space Diagnosis: Why is your home always in clutter?
Many people fall into the misconception that as long as they are diligent, spend time organizing, and do it every week or even every day, they can overcome clutter. However, the result is often that just a few days after tidying up, clothes appear on the sofa again, and the desktop is once again occupied by clutter. The main reason for this kind of "ineffective effort" is that you only see the superficial appearance of the item, but do not solve the problem from the perspective of space planning and storage logic. The essence of tidying up is not simply to put things in order, but to build a system for your home that will not be messy.
Teacher Keiko’s core rule: plan first, organize later
Teacher Jingzi, known as the "Chinese Storage Queen", the key to her methodology is space planning. Before carrying out any storage activities, we must carry out functional positioning for each area of the home like a designer. For example, if the focus of the living room is socialization and relaxation, then only items related to this should be kept. If the dining table is filled with documents and water glasses, it means that the function of this space is disordered. The correct approach is to first determine the sphere of influence of each area, and then match the items.
Layout optimization: moving lines determine efficiency
The key to the layout is to fit your life flow. Why is the entrance always messy and disorderly? It’s because the flow of changing shoes, placing bags and taking out keys after entering the door is not smooth. Optimizing the layout is to set up "stops" at these key nodes. Leave a blank space in the middle of the entrance cabinet to place bags and keys, and leave 15cm of space at the bottom to facilitate the placement of frequently worn slippers and home shoes. The same is true in the kitchen. Once the golden triangle movement line of "getting vegetables from the refrigerator → washing vegetables in the sink → chopping vegetables in the meal preparation area → cooking on the stove" is formed, not only the efficiency can be doubled, but also the smooth placement will evolve into muscle memory.
Partitioning method: from two-dimensional plane to three-dimensional solid
Most people only pay attention to two-dimensional surfaces such as the floor and desktop when tidying up, but professional tidyers use vertical space. In the wardrobe, we divide the space into three areas: upper, middle and lower. The top is the high area for storing out-of-season bedding and items that are not commonly used. The middle is the golden area for hanging clothes that are often worn in the season. They are arranged in order from long to short. This way, space can be naturally left to place suitcases or drawer-type storage boxes. The bottom uses drawers to store small items such as underwear and socks. Through this three-dimensional partitioning, the space utilization rate is increased by at least 50%.
Practical steps: Teacher Keiko’s “Heartbeat Screening Method”
Practical organization must follow the order of "discard → sort → store". The first step is to take all the items out of the cabinet and spread them out together. At this time, Teacher Keiko suggested that we touch every object and ask ourselves: "Can it make my heart move? Do I really need it?" One student, when faced with a cabinet full of books, used this method to find that all he had left behind were psychological works, but those thick legal books had become a burden. Only by discarding those things that are inappropriate and cannot make your heart move can you make room for your real needs.
Storage tools: measure the size first, then buy the tools
Many people are keen to buy a bunch of colorful storage boxes first, but later find that they either cannot fit into the cabinet, or the size is awkward, resulting in a waste of space. The appropriate approach is to accurately measure the length, width, and height of the cabinet, especially the internal clearance size, after completing the classification, and then look for matching storage tools of the same color. For example, kitchen drawers use adjustable dividers to store pots and cutting boards upright; transparent crisper boxes with handles are used inside the refrigerator to store ingredients, which can prevent odor transfer and make it easy to take.
Multi-scene solution: unified logic for the whole house
Organizing is not for a single room, but for the logical unification of the whole house.
There is such a kitchen scene adopted by the so-called "Twenty-Eight Principle", which puts 20% of the pots and spices that must be used every day outside and in front of you, stores 80% of the spare ingredients, stockpiles, and rarely used small appliances into cabinets, and uses the wall to install hanging rods and shelves to free up countertop space.
Regarding the scene layout of the children's room, labels and transparent low cabinets are used to achieve the purpose of allowing children to see their own toys. Adopt a "rotation system" where only the toys that you currently love most are placed outside, and the rest are stored in high places or in storage rooms, and rotated regularly to prevent visual overload.
In the wardrobe scene, Teacher Keiko's original T-shirt folding method allows each T-shirt to be placed upright like a book, which is clear at a glance, and when you take out one of them, you will not mess up the clothes next to it.
Effect comparison: from "maintain" to "never return to chaos"
If you master this complete system of the entire process including space planning, circulation optimization, and classification logic, then you don’t need to waste willpower to persist. In the past, general cleaning might have taken a whole day, but now that every item has a fixed place and can be easily returned to its original place, the time can be reduced to one hour. The desktop has gone from taking 20 minutes to clean up every day to just wiping it down. Now that you’ve created a mind map of your items, organizing becomes less of a chore and more of a daily ritual as natural as breathing.
This is not only a change in space, but also a reshaping of the mentality of life. As Teacher Keiko often says, what we organize is not only our belongings, but also our own lives. When you create your home into an orderly, comfortable and pleasant space that can nourish your body and mind, you will be able to better control your life and meet future challenges.
