Have you ever been chugging along on a decluttering project, making real progress on your home organization journey, only to be tripped up by something small or seemingly insignificant? Straggler items can sabotage your momentum and stall your organizing efforts before you know it. 😬
🧥In the case of a coat closet spruce-up, it might look like this:
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You remove all the coats, hats, shoes, boots, and miscellany and pile them all on the dining room table and floor.
👉You’re off to a great start!
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You wipe down the shelves, Swiffer the floors, and even pop in one of those natural room deodorizers to ensure months of eucalyptus freshness every time you open the door.
🔥You’re on fire!
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You turn all the hangers in the same direction and rehang the coats. You might even get on a roll and organize them by owner, color, or seasonality. The hats and gloves go into bins and on shelves and for a moment - if you squint - your coat closet looks like a page from the Container Store catalogue.
🎯You’re in the homestretch!
Now…you just have to deal with what’s left. 😐
It might be a handful of innocuous items, just one-off enough from the other closet residents so as not to have an obvious category.
This so-close-to-finish-line-just-have-these-last-few-things-to-put-away moment is where the whole project can, and often does, collapse.
⚠️What usually happens at this critical moment when an organized space and a handful of random leftovers collide?
Scenario #1:
🙈 Shove all the things back into the closet wherever you can physically fit them which immediately destroys the beautiful order you created as well as the motivation to keep it organized because well, it sure doesn’t look like the Container Store anymore does it?
Scenario #2:
😩 Leave all the bits and pieces on the dining room table and create a straggler vector, thus contaminating that space also. Alternately, pile all of the stragglers into a box then dump the box into some other arbitrary space or closet. Neither option actually solves the problem, you just transferred the problem from the closet to somewhere else.
Let’s take another example: cleaning out kitchen drawers.
Different space, same story. 🙄
In this script, you have chosen a simple project with limited scope and are not trying to mastermind your entire home organization in one day - very practical thinking!
This is quite doable as a typical kitchen has four to ten drawers (mega mansions notwithstanding but in that case, you probably aren’t reading this as you have staff, you yourself are probably busy working on your new celebrity skincare collab or whatever rich people with more than ten kitchen drawers do in their spare time).
You dump every drawer, extracting all the random cereal flakes, broken rubber bands and bread ties and wipe them down. 🧽
🏃🏽♀️Go go go!
Then you hit the easy targets - tossing old batteries, dried up pens, soy sauce stained menus from a restaurant that closed three years ago, weirdly melted number birthday candles (was it an 8? or a 3?) and ponder how on earth you let all of that pointless paraphernalia accumulate?
👏 Well no more, silly clutter won’t be a part of THIS drawer’s future!
Now comes the fun part of putting everything back into their clean spaces - utensils go back into their compartmentalized inserts, specialty utensils into their spots, neatly folded dish towels and potholders into theirs and then…😱 SCREECH…you come across the first straggler.
In kitchens and closets there is usually more than one straggler and by their sheer number they gang up on you. Anyone can handle a bike lock (with no key) but a bike lock (with no key) + a bungee cord + a mysterious tool whose use is not obvious but it could be important = defeat. Toss in a couple of receipts and old photos and you might never attempt any of these projects again. 😵
Note: stragglers aren’t obvious throwaways like old menus, single mittens and so forth. Stragglers are items that have a use - or might have a use - but just not a clear destination which is likely how they ended up floating around in the dark recesses of closets and drawers.
Nothing kills the happy buzz of a home organization undertaking like letting the stragglers become the strangler of your project. 😩
🧠 So... How Do You Fix It?
✅ Step 1: Segregate 🚫
Do. Not. Deal. With. Them. Now.
Trying to sort the stragglers in the midst of a project will eat up precious time while you are sidetracked and deflate you by decision fatigue.
It is imperative to segregate these troublemakers and get them out of sight for now so you can finish your beautiful org job. Place all of the stragglers in a box and move them to somewhere else to be sorted and analyzed. Put the box somewhere where it will be in your way, do not store it out of sight.
✅ Step 2: Schedule 🗓️
Designate a time to work on this box as its very own project.
Examine each item as if it just fell from the sky and figure out where it logically belongs in your home, not in context of where it was previously stored, otherwise you will be tempted to put it right back where you originally found it.
💡Just because it found its way into a closet or kitchen drawer does not mean that is where it organically belongs.
*Note: If you cohabitate with someone, the other person might randomly leave items in incongruous spots. This can cause the other person to assume the placement was intentional and the things just stay in their mystery spots forever.
💡Helpful hint: if you are really stuck, think about where you would find the item merchandised in a store. Hardware, Tech, Sporting Goods, Garden, Office, Hair Accessories, etc? That can help bring the picture into focus as to where the item should be stored going forward.
✅ Step 3: Rehome or Release 👋
🤝Put the items in their new, logical spaces with the rest of their brethren. Tools, meet new tool! Garden gizmos, here’s a new pal who will be living with you now!
💡Helpful hint: if in doubt, throw it out (aka get rid of in an environmentally responsible manner). This feels edgy and dangerous but it is not. The fact that these items have been living in nooks and crannies means they weren’t needed for everyday use and if they had been you wouldn’t have even known where to find them.
✨Takeway
Master the stragglers and don’t let them be the stranglers of your next home organization project! 💪🏽✨