Home Organization with NEAT Method

A stylish home design is not complete without a proper organization system like the NEAT Method. Which is why at BEYOND we are thrilled to share our latest partnership with Professional Organizer and owner of NEAT Method Frisco, Valerie Wood. She brings years of experience creating tidy spaces with a touch of luxury. We are pleased to now offer the NEAT method as a service to our clients and throughout each of our projects, ensuring every space is integrated with a custom organization system suited to individual needs. 

While we are sheltering in place, the organizational efforts do not need to halt. Valerie shared some of her expert recommendations to effectively organize your home for good, guidance on creating functional work from home spaces and more NEAT Method x BEYOND id goodness. Carry-on to learn more about our new favorite new service and how to make the most of this Spring cleaning season.

FIND A HOME FOR EVERYTHING: 

The biggest obstacle Valerie has found with her NEAT Method clients is that so many of their belongings do not have homes. Meaning items are left on the kitchen counter, thrown in the closet, piled on a desk, and flung randomly because there is no designated area for these items to live. 

According to the NEAT Method, when you begin cleaning an area, every single item must be pulled out and visible. This process creates the opportunity to edit belongings. Spotting out duplicates or untouched items to be sold, donated or tossed.

This also ensures when you’ve completed editing, each remaining item is placed in a designated home. If the space still looks and feels crowded and every item can’t find a home, then it’s time to ask if all of these materials are necessary or think about a secondary, long-term storage solution like watertight bins to keep in the attic or perhaps storage outside of the home.

LABEL, LABEL, LABEL:

So often, we’ll begin an organizing task but do not create sustainable solutions to make them lasting, that is where labels change the game. By adding item and category labels to bins, it makes certain that you and anyone in your household is kept accountable and can easily find and place items back in their respective bin where they belong.

For those family members who have difficulty sharing (you know who you are), Valerie suggests creating labeled pantry bins for each family member and dividing the food evenly within each bin. It’s an equitable division of the assets and no one can bogart the favorite chocolate chips cookies or midday snacks. Neat Method even created these custom labels to save you time and effort.

CONQUER THE CLOSET:

We’ve all seen it, the notorious closet turned black hole, where miscellaneous items are tossed into and never seen again. While daunting, Valerie offers some easy solutions to keep your closet in order. Once items have been pulled out, edited and sorted, it’s time to find each piece a home.

This may seem obvious but start by placing the clothing tops on the above-head rack and place bottoms on the lower rack. Housing tops and bottoms on separate racks helps visualize, find or store outfits together efficiently. If you have one rack, then it’s the perfect time to take advantage of the floor and the space above. Invest in shoe shelves, placing your bottoms on the shoe racks to create a new “bottoms” shelf. All seasonable items like scarves, mittens, gloves, bathing suits, and sun hats can be stored in the space above your rack and rotated to an easy to reach area of the closet seasonally. 

A WORK FROM HOME SPACE THAT ACTUALLY WORKS FOR YOU: 

For so many of us, working from home is our new normal, however, these at home work spaces are likely scattered and far from serene. Fortunately, portable file systems like these can keep your work belongings sorted and easily transported from room to room. Rolling carts are great if you have additional room.

Another tip for parents working from home, create a bin for your child that is filled with various special occasion activities (art projects, an electronic game, etc.). This bin serves as a tidy solution for housing activities but also serves as a go-to resource to keep your child preoccupied during those very important work calls. Once your task or call is complete, place the special occasion-activities bin away until next time.

AT HOME ORGANIZATION SOLUTIONS:

For those looking for tasks to tackle while sheltering in place, a Spring 2020 organization project is certainly a viable option.

Valerie also recommends investing in sturdier, better quality organization pieces rather than opting for the less expensive, poor quality alternatives. The NEAT Method has already done the research, testing out various store selections to find the products that remain tried and true. 

Spending a few extra bucks on better quality storage solutions will keep your items safe and outlive the cheaper alternatives ten-fold. If you’d like to shop these items yourself, continue below for some BEYOND id-approved picks.