This is part of my series on Decluttering Mental Models.

Your home is a collection of containers (a container of containers!). Every drawer, closet, and cubby is a container for your stuff.

You should zone each container for a specific purpose. For example, my bookcases hold my books. And my books go on the bookcases and nowhere else (except for my nightstand). This way, when I’m looking for The Heart of the Buddha’s Teaching, I know exactly where to find it. Best yet, I don’t have random books strewn about my home.

Some containers are zoned for multiple things. For example, I zoned my bedroom closet for my shirts and pants that I hang up, my wife’s clothes, and extra bathroom supplies. When I need more toothpaste, I know exactly where to find it. Similarly, I zoned my dresser for folded clothes and a few winter items, like gloves and hats. When I need a warm hat, I know precisely where to look.

And this is probably obvious, but I never shove things in my closet that don’t belong in it. I never stuff it with office supplies or exercise equipment—those are zoned for other containers.

Benefits

When I first started zoning my home and putting similar items in the same container, I unearthed a ton of duplicate things. At one point, I had seven sets of nail clippers and six pairs of tweezers. And let’s not discuss how many random t-shirts I’d accumulated. Having similar items in one spot made it easy to discard the excess.

I also realized some abandoned hobbies consumed a lot of space. I’d collected old desktop computers, random computer parts, and miles of cables for a homegrown supercomputer. Seeing all of this stuff in one place made me realize how much space it took up. It became easy to discard 95% of the stuff for my abandoned hobby.

Zoning my home’s containers has had four other benefits:

  1. I instantly find things when I need them
  2. I easily inventory what I have and add needed things to my shopping list. (On the first Saturday of the month, I inventory bathroom supplies.)
  3. I no longer waste money on duplicate (or triplicate!) items because I couldn’t find the original
  4. I own fewer things and need less space, which makes cleaning and organizing easier

Marie Kondō echoed this idea:

Once you choose a place for your things, you can keep your house in order. So decide where your things belong and when you finish using them, put them there. This is the main requirement for storage.

Where to start

Many decluttering experts advise that you start with a space with the least sentimental value, like your garage.

Now, this isn’t a terrible approach. But I suggest a different strategy: pick a small space, like really small, that you can declutter quickly. Maybe that’s one small drawer or one small cupboard. Zone this small space, declutter it, and celebrate a small win.

When you first start zoning your home, you really need a succession of small wins. A chain of little victories will make you feel good and propel you to tackle increasingly larger spaces. Eventually, you’ll get to the large areas and declutter the entire garage. (And it’s completely reasonable to start with one shelf in the garage.)

Take action: Take one tiny area of your home, like one drawer in a nightstand, and zone it. Only store things in that space that belong there.

More Decluttering Mental Models:

Top 10 Favorites

  1. How I answer the question: “What if I need this later?”
  2. “The Container strategy” will simplify your decluttering
  3. Selling clothes is for suckers (unless you earn $15/hour)
  4. Wait 48 hours before buying stuff
  5. 21 questions to ask before you buy
  6. The radical way to measure wealth, part 1 and part 2
  7. We’re trained to be dissatisfied with what we have (and how to fix this)
  8. Clear clutter by zoning your home
  9. How screen time kills your motivation to declutter
  10. Dear car dealers: I don't want a "free" T-shirt with your logo

Get started

  1. Clear clutter by zoning your home
  2. How I answer the question: “What if I need this later?”
  3. “The Container strategy” will simplify your decluttering
  4. Hold each item and ask, “Does this spark joy?”
  5. When the “Does this Spark Joy?” fails you, ask these 6 questions
  6. Create your “Discard by Feb. 2022” box
  7. Decluttering yearbooks? Ask these 8 questions first

Shopping

  1. 21 questions to ask before you buy
  2. Wait 48 hours before buying stuff - version 1 and version 2
  3. How a grocery shopping list saves me time, money, and pounds

Manage your clothes

  1. Selling clothes is for suckers (unless you can earn $15/hour)
  2. Dear Dude with too many T-shirts: no one wants to buy them—just recycle/trash them
  3. Don't be like my friend Giorgio with his 400 Hawaiian shirts
  4. None of my clothes "spark joy"—so what do i get rid of?

Happiness & satisfaction

  1. Limit pleasurable things so they don’t lose their novelty
  2. We’re trained to be dissatisfied with what we have (and how to fix this)
  3. Craving never stops and my potato chip addiction
  4. Reminder: happiness levels stay consistent

Get motivated

  1. Want to boost your motivation to declutter? Immerse yourself in decluttering videos, podcasts, & books!
  2. How screen time kills your motivation to declutter
  3. Imagine your ideal home… Imagine all the clutter is gone…
  4. Feeling unmotivated? Declutter with a 5-minute time box

Manage your money

  1. The radical way to measure wealth, part 1 and part 2
  2. Save money by controlling aspirational identities
  3. I wasted so much money starting projects (and how I fixed it)

Manage consumption spirals

  1. How consumption spirals work
  2. Buying a house led to an enormous consumption spiral
  3. How craving completeness drives my consumption

Shift your Paradigm

  1. Change your environment, change your consumption
  2. 3 thought experiments to adopt a decluttering mindset
  3. Your home is not a storage unit for other people's crap!
  4. Before you buy stuff, do this little mental exercise
  5. Less space, less stuff
  6. That’s right, you and I pay for the privilege of seeing viagra ads
  7. Your home is an expensive container for your stuff. What’s your cost per sqft?

Manage your emotions

  1. Can you tolerate boredom?
  2. Fill the void with a long term goal

Control the Clutter

  1. Dear car dealers: I don't want a "free" T-shirt with your logo