Quick and Not so Dirty
One hour. Two spaces. Let’s go!
This summer, I signed up as a sitter on Rover… hang with me, this has to do with organizing I swear. Since we have Umbra ➡️, a 3yr old Australian Shepherd and I always wanted more dogs, Rover seemed like a great fit.
Our first pups arrived with a travel bag stuffed with treats, toys, and other necessities and a tote of food. I went from feeling ready to disorganized. I hadn’t thought about where I’d store all of their stuff while they stayed with us. Ope! 🙈
Sure I could have put it all on the kitchen counter, but counters are kind of my deal. If the kitchen counters are cluttered, specifically the peninsula which is where it would have ended up, it makes me feel like the entire house is messy.
So without much thought, I placed it all on top of our washer and dryer. Those things are always getting used as substitute counters anyways.
(I don’t always remember to take photos, so trust it was not nice.)
It got the job done. It gave their stuff a dedicated home so that it wouldn’t get misplaced, I could close the door to keep the dogs out (all bags must be sniffed thoroughly by our little TSA agent), and most importantly, I wouldn’t have to see the mess.
But I inadvertently turned our entire washroom into a closet that I had to walk through to get to the garage. 🤦♀️ The room was messy, the washer and dryer were unusable, and the dogs were “counter surfing” on the machines. Not cool.
I needed something different and fast. Those pups left Sunday night and the next dog was arriving Tuesday morning for a week. I was short on time and energy. And still being new to this sitter thing, I don’t know exactly what I’ll need or what will work long term yet.
the challenge
Make it work without spending 💸
I needed space that:
acted as a home for visiting pup’s belongings
was easily accessible throughout the day
could be closed off
bonus points: we wouldn’t have to see it and it didn’t disrupt our existing flow
The space needed to be on the main floor in the kitchen, hall closet, or washroom.
My dog is capable of pushing open the door on the hall closet so that was immediately out. I can’t have him getting into another dog’s food or treats. Seriously. 🤢 He’ll get sick.
The kitchen would require a lot of ⏰ shuffling around, and it would’ve been really disruptive to our existing flow.
Which means I was stuck with making the washroom work without using the washer and dryer as counters. That left only one spot.
The cleaning closet.
I don’t know about you, but I set mine up when we moved in and haven’t really touched it since. For me, it’s definitely one of those closets that falls prey to making something fit and closing the door on it.
(The closet in my office is like that, as well as the storage room, but we’ll get to those some other time.)
What’s great about doing an organizing project when you’re short on time and energy, is you go with your gut, make a decision, and move on. For this space I used the 4-bin method (keep, donate, trash, storage) but without the bins.
1. I pulled everything out of the closet and gave the closet a quick clean. If I’m going to take everything out of the space in too long, I’m going to clean it. 🧽 I recommend the same, but you do you. (Don’t mind my in-progress paint job.)
2. I identified the absolute essentials to keep in this space. Read: What did I need to put back in this closet otherwise my husband wouldn’t be able to find it.
3. All non-essentials needed to find a new home (I’ll come back to this)
4. I disposed of any trash or expired cleaning products.
5. And set aside reusable bags for donation, we had more than we needed and some I honestly just don’t like using.
And would you look at that, we had a usable space!
took less than 30 minutes
cleared an entire shelf
included a small table for dog food (or my husband’s work bag when we aren’t dog sitting)
Let me wax poetic about this $10 TV tray and tell you it’s ok to keep things you don’t use all the time. I've had this for years and love to use it as temporary furniture: plant stand, night stand, etc. It allows me to test an idea or layout before investing in furniture. Low cost, low commitment, and oh so easy to store since it folds flat. My favorite!
ok, but what happened to everything else?!
All those non-essentials became spillover. Spillover is all the stuff you want to keep but not in the original space you’re organizing. You have an idea of where in the home you want it to go, but for it to go there, ‘there’ has to be organized too.
This is what gets us. All of sudden what you set out to do has blown scope and you’re distracted or the overwhelm sets in.
To find a new home for all the non-essentials I sorted them based on frequency of use: cleaning supplies we’d still need frequent access to, cleaning tools we’d need less often, and a paint pole (why was that in here?!).
Designate a space in your home to act as your container for spillover so that you can set it and forget it until you have capacity for it.
All the cleaning supplies needed to go under the kitchen sink, the tools and backstock dog food would go into storage (my designated spillover space), and the paint pole just needed to go in the garage with the rest of the paint supplies (where it belonged 🙄).
Having a dedicated space for spillover can save your sanity when you’re short on time and energy.
Choose a space for spillover that you’ll be forced to address every couple of months. If I want to access my seasonal decor (which I do) I have to deal with what I’ve done to our storage room.
With two of the three spillover categories handled in a few seconds, I only needed to deal with under the kitchen sink and the cleaning supplies.
Rinse and repeat the 4-bin method.
My goal here was straight forward, make it all fit and do it as quickly as possible. That meant using what I had on hand and trying to maintain the general setup to not disrupt my husband’s routine (since he deals with the dishes and trash).
That nearly empty trash bag box became a container for all the general cleaning supplies. Was a container necessary, no, but it keeps them from getting knocked over and jumbled around.
The clear container, originally from the cleaning closet, contains all the carpet cleaning supplies. Separated from cleaning supplies because dogs.
The trash was trashed, and there wasn’t anything to donate.
But there were more items than could fit in this space. (Will it ever stop? Yo, I don’t know!)
We are a Costco household and thankfully, just a few weeks prior, I reorganized under all our bathroom sinks. (coming soon!) When I did that, I created a space in the home for all the backstock supplies. And just as luck would have it, all the items that couldn’t fit under the sink were the unopened extras. 👌 They went straight into our backstock cupboard and that was that.
In under an hour, the cleaning closet and under the kitchen sink were both overhauled. Pretty, no. Functional, yes. Priorities. Maybe some day I’ll get nice bins or containers but not when I’m short on time and energy.
The best part of this overhaul, my husband hasn’t asked me once where something is after I gave him the 5 second flyover of what all changed.
When our next Rover pup arrived, it was super easy to place all their stuff in the closet and not feel like it was disrupting our home or our flow. Everything we needed for their week long visit from storage went on the shelf and getting their food every meal was super convenient.
The entire experience was better! 👏
