How to Organize Your Life (and Your Closet!)

Apr 2018

If you want to learn a method that will teach you how to organize your life, then you are in the right place!

In today’s advice column, you will learn about a tool called the “5S” method. The 5S method is an easy to use, 5-step technique that will help you highlight and eliminate waste, inconsistency, and unreasonableness from your life. Because, when your environment is out of order, your life is often out of order too.

Read on to see why Rick’s friend Tess is constantly fighting with her Mom:

From: Tess <TessTickel@gmail.com>
Sent: February 13, 2018 9:11 PM
To: Rick Melnyck <rmelnyck@hotmail.com>
Subject: Fights with My Birthgiver

Hey Rick,

Need ur help! Moved home after college and have been fighting with Medusa non-stop. She’s getting on my case for not having a better job. Who is she to tell me that being a waitress at Hooter’s is not a promising career.

Anyways, that’s not the reason for my fights with Madame Grumpy either. The reason we fight so much is that my room is really messy because I have not cleaned out or organized my closet forever. This has caused a few ridiculous fights such as:

• Her not being able to find her yoga mat that I borrowed the other day. (I told her to buy another one, with the alimony ‘Dad’ pays her she can afford it.)

• Mother Superior said my messy room would be a turnoff for guys. When I replied with ‘so what’s your excuse?’, she went bananas.

• According to My Birthgiver, the fire department came the other day because my laptop was under a pile of clothes and almost caught on fire because my room ‘is such a pig sty’. After getting some inside info. from one of the firemen I am hooking up with (and 2 of the others I’m also sleeping with confirmed it), I discovered it wasn’t my laptop after all. The real reason was an electrical short in her ‘personal massager’ that she was charging in my room. Next time she should charge her stupid vibrator somewhere else.

I’m sure you don’t care about our stupid fights. But, do you have any ideas to help me end this madness? Anything you could suggest would be appreciated. I’m sick of her saying ‘you need to learn how to organize your life!’

Thanks,
Tess

From: Rick Melnyck <rmelnyck@hotmail.com>
Sent: February 14, 2018 5:41 AM
To: Tess <TessTickel@gmail.com>
Subject: RE: Fights with My Birthgiver

Hey Tess,

Sorry to hear you are having issues with your Mom.

The easy answer would be to just clean out your closet, but you need a bit more than that. You need a system to not only help you clean your closet but also figure out what to keep and more importantly make sure it doesn’t go back to how it was.

So…my suggestion is for you to Google the “5S” method. See if you can figure out how to use it in your situation and report back to me, please. It is definitely a technique you can use whenever you are trying to figure out how to organize your life.

Looking forward to seeing what you come up with!
Rick

From: Tess <TessTickel@gmail.com>
Sent: March 15, 2018 11:11 PM
To: Rick Melnyck <rmelnyck@hotmail.com>
Subject: RE: RE: Fights with My Birthgiver

Like you suggested, I Googled the “5S” method which is a simple 5 step technique for highlighting and eliminating waste, inconsistency, and unreasonableness from an environment; in this case my closet. Basically, it is the answer to ‘how to organize your life’.

The 5S method uses 5 Japanese words (that are translated into English below, thank God because I can’t speak Japanese) to create a neat and tidy environment where everything has a place, and everything is in its place.

The 5 steps of the 5S method are as follows:

Sort means organizing things so that they are easy to find. Sort divides things that are needed from things that are not needed, thus, creating an environment that has only what is needed and not a lot of junk that makes finding what is needed a time-consuming task.

Systematize means tidily placing “things” that are needed in their proper places, so anyone can access them or put them away.

Spic and Span is an attitude that considers a dirty and untidy environment intolerable (sounds like Mom’s attitude); it is proactive cleaning and maintenance.

Standardize is the development of an integrated system of “best practice” methods for sorting, systematizing, and spic and span.

Self-discipline is about spreading and maintaining the “5S” culture in all aspects of my life.

So, to get the ‘Matriarch of Her Misery’ off my back, I utilized the “5S” method to clean my closet.

I started with SORT:

I created three piles of clothes from what was in my closet, on my floor and everywhere else in my room:

1. Keep – stuff I wanted to keep was put in the ‘Keep’ pile, duh!

2. Donate – anything not worn in the past year or stuff I no longer wanted to keep that was still good was put it in the ‘Donate’ pile which I would later have an Uber driver take to Goodwill.

3. Ratchet – Anything that I haven’t worn in the past year or stuff I no longer want to keep that was not donatable was put in the ‘ratchet’ pile. I would give to my cousin Brittney, she’s extremely ‘ratchet’, hence, the name of the pile. It will fit in with the rest of her ratchet wardrobe, let it fill up her closet and floor and let Senora Shart’s crazy sister get up her ratchet ass.

Then I did SYSTEMATIZE:

I created a diagram for my new closet so that things would be put in logical places and easy to find.

• Shirts on one side
• Dress clothes on another
• Delightfully tacky yet unrefined work uniform on another
• Jeans on another
• A specific spot to hang my belts.

Next step was to SPIC AND SPAN or clean my closet:

Threw away old or broken hangers, dusted and cleaned, vacuumed the floor, and threw away stuff that accumulated since last time I cleaned (never):

You wouldn’t believe some of the stuff other than clothes that were in there:

• Interesting costumes from Halloween’s gone by – clown (ex-boyfriend had a clown fetish), a pregnant nun (different boyfriend, different fetish), wet t-shirt contest 5th place (that was prior to my boob job), plus-size Cinderella

• A stack of dollar bills from a previous job – needed to pay for college somehow

• Wedding dresses – why ‘The Crackerjack Wife’ kept all four from her previous marriages is beyond me, and why they were in my closet is even more beyond me

• A used pregnancy test – close call

• Handcuffs – you always find stuff after you need it

• Still wrapped Christmas present to me from Mom from 1998, she hid it in a place I would never find it, sadly she forgot about it

• Love letters to the Frumpster from Husband #3 (perhaps I will keep these, they may come in handy as blackmail material one day)

Then I used STANDARDIZE:

I assigned different color hangers for different items to make sure they were in the correct section of the closet. I also created labels for where dress shoes go, casual shoes etc.

Finally, SELF-DISCIPLINE

Lastly would be Self-Discipline or my daily maintenance, closet monitoring where every day I would spend 5 minutes making sure my closet was clean and that everything was tidy and in its place. I put a reminder on my phone to ensure I did what I was supposed to do.

Our fights have gone down ‘dramastically’! Instead of 3 fights per day, we only fought twice in a week time span and neither was due to my messy room! One was because she borrowed and ruined my skinny jeans – that’s what happens when you aren’t as skinny as you think. The other time she accidentally took my Adderall pills and was unable to sleep for 3 days after the crash, clearly, her tolerance isn’t as good as mine.

OH, I forgot one more very important and amazing thing! There has been an exciting recent development in my life. And it means I will likely not need to do the Self-Discipline step much longer because it looks like I will be moving out next week once I get a check from my new job!

Yes, you heard right, new job, I am so happy! I had an interview yesterday afternoon with a seemingly very respectable man about a job as a webcam model. He said it’s the hottest career going! All I need to do is give some nice people in Nigeria some personal information like my SSN and my date of birth, and then wire them some type of one-time initiation fee.

Thanks again!
Tess

Use It or Lose It – How to Organize Your Life Using the 5S Method!

To perform the 5S method:

First, do SORT – tag things you are not using or have not used in the last year by placing a red tag or post-it note on them, then either discard them, give them away or put them in storage

Then do SYSTEMATIZE – arrange the area so everything has a proper place

Next do SPIC & SPAN – clean the area daily or at a scheduled weekly time

Then do STANDARDIZE – develop rules or procedures so that everyone (including you!) follows the first 3 S’s

Lastly, do SELF-DISCIPLINE – perform routine checks to make sure that your organized and tidy area has been sustained

When to Use It

When you want to bring some order to a part of your life

Other Applications

You can go macro from cleaning out your garage
To micro when you organize the ‘junk’ drawer in your kitchen
To areas in between like the hard drive on your computer or your desk

What Do You Think?

Can you think of any other potential applications on how to organize your life using the 5S method?

Thanks for reading, and until next time remember…PYMFP!
Rick

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How to Organize Your Life (and Your Closet!)

Use It or Lose It – How to Organize Your Life Using the 5S Method!

When to Use It

Other Applications

What Do You Think?

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