Motivate yourself to clean with this genius organizing tactic.
By Rachel Sylvester, Real Simple
Picture this: You arrive home after a long day at work, and the first sight you see is that pesky stack of junk mail, save-the-dates, and permission slips you swore you would tackle just as soon as you had the time. Not only is countertop chaos a complete eyesore, but the disorder just serves as yet another reminder that you could use fewer daily mail deliveries and more hours in the day. The good news is that we all have our piles (mine includes a precarious stack of sweaters at the foot of my bed). The bad news is that if household clutter is threatening your sanity and your space, it may be time to rethink the way you organize.
There are hundreds of tidy up techniques available, and there's certainly no shortage of tried-and-true organizing tips and books out there to help pull you out of your cleaning rut. But when we got wind of this new organizing technique cleverly dubbed the "Mountain Method," we knew the cleaning approach was worth a try.
The Mountain Method aims to tackle household messes by corralling all of your chaos into one central location. While the thought of creating yet another pile of clutter begets even more disorder, the method's effectiveness kicks in once you begin sorting.
To try the organizing technique for yourself, start by choosing a single room in your home and piling all of said room's debris into a mound in the center of your space. If your bathroom is the designated space in need of a serious deep clean, that means gathering all of your cosmetics, toiletries and any other miscellaneous items stashed away in a forsaken drawer (hello unused Sephora samples!) and placing them in the middle of the floor. Next, determine which pieces in your pile can be tossed or donated and act accordingly. The resulting pile of belongings that need to be put away will be much more manageable, and the cleaning method is surprisingly speedier than most.
Whether your disorderly garage needs some TLC, or your shoe closet could use a thorough categorizing, the Mountain Method just may be the productive organizing technique you were searching for. Before you try to scale even your most intimidating mountain of clutter, remember to ask yourself these 5 questions first.
Picture this: You arrive home after a long day at work, and the first sight you see is that pesky stack of junk mail, save-the-dates, and permission slips you swore you would tackle just as soon as you had the time. Not only is countertop chaos a complete eyesore, but the disorder just serves as yet another reminder that you could use fewer daily mail deliveries and more hours in the day. The good news is that we all have our piles (mine includes a precarious stack of sweaters at the foot of my bed). The bad news is that if household clutter is threatening your sanity and your space, it may be time to rethink the way you organize.
There are hundreds of tidy up techniques available, and there's certainly no shortage of tried-and-true organizing tips and books out there to help pull you out of your cleaning rut. But when we got wind of this new organizing technique cleverly dubbed the "Mountain Method," we knew the cleaning approach was worth a try.
The Mountain Method aims to tackle household messes by corralling all of your chaos into one central location. While the thought of creating yet another pile of clutter begets even more disorder, the method's effectiveness kicks in once you begin sorting.
To try the organizing technique for yourself, start by choosing a single room in your home and piling all of said room's debris into a mound in the center of your space. If your bathroom is the designated space in need of a serious deep clean, that means gathering all of your cosmetics, toiletries and any other miscellaneous items stashed away in a forsaken drawer (hello unused Sephora samples!) and placing them in the middle of the floor. Next, determine which pieces in your pile can be tossed or donated and act accordingly. The resulting pile of belongings that need to be put away will be much more manageable, and the cleaning method is surprisingly speedier than most.
Whether your disorderly garage needs some TLC, or your shoe closet could use a thorough categorizing, the Mountain Method just may be the productive organizing technique you were searching for. Before you try to scale even your most intimidating mountain of clutter, remember to ask yourself these 5 questions first.
