Do you really need to hire a professional organizer to clear your clutter? Clearing household clutter can be as simple as one, two three!

When I married I discovered I had a wonderful mother-in-law who made June Cleaver from the television series Leave It to Beaver look like a slob. When she came to my house, I had to take her coat and, with the others, throw them on the bed. Even though my house was temporarily picked up for entertaining, I certainly wasn’t going to let her or any of my other guests look in my closets!

After getting over my irrational fear of my tidy and well-organized mother-in-law, I decided she was onto something. Her closets, drawers, and everything else were clutter free and well organized. She had time for her priorities–her family, her friends, and her golfing. My fear turned to admiration. How could I cure closet chaos too?

Here is a secret from Professional Organizers:

Primary, secondary and tertiary space and stuff. You can think like a professional organizer in your own home. I teach this organizing principle to my students. This organizing rule of thumb is: Primary stuff goes in primary space. Secondary stuff is kept in secondary space. And, tertiary stuff in, well, you get the idea.

Primary space is space that is easy to get to. Primary stuff is stuff you use frequently. In a kitchen, primary space is from waist to shoulder height. That is why the silverware drawer, which is used several times per day, is in primary space. Primary space is prime real estate—choice locations you use all the time because they are easy to reach and you spend your time there. The kitchen counter is prime real estate—only utensils used daily may live on the counter. Secondary stuff like dusty crock-pots, stand mixers, and infrequently used bread machines move elsewhere.

Secondary space is less accessible. Reach up into a kitchen cupboard for a platter or bend down and take a pot from a lower cabinet to access secondary stuff stored in secondary space. If you use that crock-pot or bread machine weekly, they may live in secondary space.

Tertiary kitchen storage includes the cabinet above the refrigerator or the dead corner of a base cabinet. I used to go crawling in on my hands and knees into our base cabinet dead corner with a flashlight to look for my crock-pot and other “fun” surprises hidden there.

The problem was tertiary and secondary stuff creeping into my primary space. The bread maker I hadn’t used in months lived on my kitchen counter! I wasn’t using it, but I regularly had to move it to clean under it and wipe it down. I even had the audacity to complain about not having enough counter space.

I wasn’t the only one complaining. My husband complained that his shirts were overcrowded on his side of our small bedroom closet. I discovered they were crushed together and bent at an angle on their hangers because his high school trombone was sitting at one end of his side of the closet. The trombone crowded his shirts and prevented them from hanging straight. I moved his trombone, which I know he will never part with, to a basement storage closet. He didn’t notice the trombone was gone, but he quit complaining that his shirts were jammed in and wrinkled up in the closet.

I tell my students that I hope they won’t find my husband’s trombone in their closet. But, seriously, I do ask them to go home and look for their own “trombones.”  Maybe it will be the bocce ball set that crowded the boots all winter in the entryway closet. Maybe it will be the doughnut fryer in the kitchen cabinet that limits space for everyday pots and pans. Find your trombones. If you aren’t willing to toss them, at least you can move them out of your primary space. You can think like a professional organizer to improve your living space and free up time and energy for your priorities!

Barbara Tako is the author of Clutter Clearing Choices: Clear Clutter, Organize Your Home, & Reclaim Your Life (O Books, 2010), a seasonally organized book that provides a variety of doable clutter clearing tips that readers are encouraged to pick and choose from to fit their personal style and needs. Go to http://www.clutterclearingchoices.comto sign up for her FREE monthly clutter clearing tips newsletter.

Tags: cleaning, clutter, home, household, organizing, professional organizer