Who moved my dishwasher? And my fridge? And my TVs? If you haven’t been robbed, try this simple declutter habit. It doesn’t take long for a home to get cluttered to where you can’t find what you need. If you are looking everywhere for stuff that you know you have – look no longer.
Who Moved My Dishwasher?
Who moved my dishwasher? I’ve got company coming over, and I’ve got dishes everywhere. Oh, it’s in the kitchen next to the sink under the countertop.
Uh, not a real conversation. How do I know this? Because if you have a dishwasher, you know exactly where it is. Am I right? The reason being is our dishwasher has a place.
Every Dishwasher Has a Place
It’s a dedicated place inside the kitchen where it never moves. And it’s hooked up to a water line, and it’s stationary, and check it out. Everyone in the entire family knows where we keep the dishwasher. I know it’s an amazing concept. We also know by the same token, where we keep the refrigerator, it’s true.
Every time you go to make a snack and open that refrigerator door, you go straight to the refrigerator. You opened it up without hesitation. You did not go looking around the house for the refrigerator. I wonder where we keep the food now. You don’t do that. You know why? Because your kitchen has a place for the refrigerator and the refrigerator is in its place.
Our House Has Toilets That Don’t Move
Now in my house, we have four, check it out, four toilets, four toilets. They’re scattered all over the house, but what’s cool about this is they don’t move either. They’re in the exact same four bathrooms that they’ve been in since we moved into the house.
And I can get up in the middle of the night, and it’s pitch dark outside, and I am half asleep, and I can wander into any one of those four bathrooms.
I know exactly how to get in there without turning on a light. Huh? Check it out. Give me a thumbs up if you, too, can get out of bed half asleep and find the toilet in the middle of the night. If you can, why is that? I’ll tell you why it is. It’s because your toilet has a place, and it’s in its place, and it doesn’t move.
Your TVs Probably Don’t Move Either
You probably have, check it out, multiple TVs in your house. Now, if you’re like most modern families, you have 3, 4, 5, 6, 8 televisions. Right? But they’re in the exact same spot every single time. When you want to go watch a movie, you don’t have to go, “gosh, where did we leave that television? It’s, you know, 46 inches. It’s got to be around here somewhere.”
No, you go straight to the TV with your popcorn, and you sit down, and you watch a movie. You know where it is. There are a lot of us that don’t give ourselves credit for knowing where stuff is.
Oh, my house is so cluttered. And it might be cluttered, but the reality is there’s a lot of stuff in your house that you know exactly where it is. It’s always in the exact same spot and you don’t have to go looking anywhere for it. It’s always there. Right.
Why Having a Place for Everything Works
And the reason it’s so effective it’s because when you have a place for something, and the thing is in its place and everyone in the house knows where that is. Everyone can participate in the game of putting everything back.
That’s it, put everything back. And I’ve got a buddy of mine who specializes in decluttering and organization. And her philosophy is I’m going to ask myself the question. Where’s the most logical place to put this, and then I’m going to go put this in that space. And that is a great program.
If there’s only one person in the house, because if there are five people in the house and all five of them do that, you’re going to end up with that thing in five different places in the house. Again, you have chaos and confusion.
Your House Should Be Your Safe Space
The home is a place of safety. It’s a place of peace. It’s a place of harmony and balance with our stuff. What that means is, when you grab an item and you’re not sure where it goes. Stop, don’t put it anywhere. And ask the family, “where’s the most logical place for us to put this?”
And then have everyone in the family agree on it. Here’s the really cool thing. If everyone in the family agrees on that one thing. And everybody puts it back in that one spot. If you start going through your house and you find other items like that, you go, whoa, you duplicate in my house.
Agree On Where Items Should Go In Your Home
For example, we did this with a cheese grater, where should we put this cheese grater? We got this really skinny little drawer cabinet that pulls out. It’s kind of useless, except that it holds like vases and, uh, cheese graters.
There’s really not a lot in there. The reality is when we agreed to that skinny drawer for the cheese grater that became its new home and everyone in the family agreed on that.
What Happens When You Can’t Find an Item
What happened then? We’d open up other cupboards and we’re like, whoa, holy guacamole. There’s another cheese grater. And we realized we have duplicates. And as we cleaned out the pantry and we cleaned up the drawers, what we found out is we had four cheese graters.
Here’s how it came to be. We needed a cheese grater, but we couldn’t find it. So, we went out and we bought another one. And then somebody put it where they wanted it to go. But it didn’t make logical sense to anyone else.
They couldn’t find it, so they went out and bought a cheese grater, right? To the point where we had duplicates of a lot of stuff. So, you probably have duplicates of a lot of stuff too.
Get Rid of All of Your Duplicate Items
And the object is to get rid of all the duplicates and have one of the things only one person can use at a time. So, like for the cheese graters, for example, only one of us is ever going to use a cheese grater. If someone else comes in the kitchen to help make a meal, they’ll pick up something else and they’ll do a different part of the meal.
Two of us are not going to be grating cheese at the same time. So, both of us do not need to have the same tool. One tool will work. So, we don’t need to get rid of all the toilets because maybe there are two or three people using the toilets at the same time. Maybe there are, but that’s okay.
We will leave them because they have a place and they’re in the place and everything is there in case you need to use it, right. In this case multiple people need to use it. And we’ll have to take turns if there are more than four people at a time.
Never Ask Who Moved My Dishwasher Again
My point, in the reality of organizing your stuff, if everyone in the home will agree to a place and then put everything back in the place they agreed on, you will not spend hours and days and weeks of your life looking for stuff or wasting money.
You don’t have, don’t want to spend it on buying replacements for stuff you cannot find. And never again, will you ask the question “who moved my dishwasher?”
