How to Clean & Organize Any Room Quickly

                                          The Five Pile Method

           Before:           After:

Everyone gets a little messy with a place every now and then; some more, some less. In the end, though, we all need to pick up the clutter and organize it away.  No? Then you'll eventually have to climb like you’re in the Rocky Mountains to find your way around the maze of mess.  I will show you a quick method to organize any room's heavy mix of junk, treasures, trash, and other items that have all piled up over the months.

To begin, all you have to do is to form 5 different piles in the room.
These five piles will be called: Donate, Keep, Trash, Move, and Sell

Donate Pile: Things you feel you shouldn't trash, but cannot sell either. You can't move them elsewhere, nor keep them in the same room...Yet, they MUST GO.  Donate the items and let someone else hold it in their place.  Plus, you might get a donation tax right-off slip from the pick-up facility!

Keep Pile: Things you cannot possibly trash, donate, sell, or move anywhere else in the whole building. Items that MUST stay in the room!

Trash Pile (trashcan): Obvious trash, Uncovered Broken items beyond repair and hold no significance whatsoever, etc...This one should be simple for most people. Use the trashcan, unless the trash is full or the trash item is too big to fit...then place the trash next to the trashcan or in another trash bag and take it out when all the piles are pretty big.

Move Pile: Items that you can't trash, donate, sell or keep in the same room.  These are merely in the wrong room and must be moved into their correct storage place.

Sell Pile: Ahhh...The $$$ items.  Things you don't need, that you can certainly sell on eBay for some good ol' cash!  You get to decide on this one.  Be careful that no one else in your house or family or friendship wants the item though.  Make sure no one else would like to have it first, and then sell it on eBay.  Check around for a good price to slap on the item and off it goes.

There is also an exception to the 5-pile method:  If you don't have a donation pick-up spot near you, don't have a vehicle, or heavily dislike to donate anything at all, you can skip the donate pile completely and only work with the 4 left over piles: Keep, Trash, Move and Sell.

I still recommend you use a donate pile, though, because:

   1. Your trash...could be another person's treasure.
   2. Some items will probably not sell for much, or possibly not sell at all.
   3. Moving way too many items into the same room or a 2-3 rooms may only transport the mess.
   4. Keeping everything you could possibly donate will probably take up too much extra space.

The Goal

 Your goal is to free up as much space as possible. An advanced room is full of mass confusion!  more free space = a simpler room.  A simple room = A cleaner one.

Your room is also like a hard-drive.  It needs to be De-fragmented (organized) every so often, and when left alone, things can start to get frustrating.  I'm VERY sure that no one feels very happy when they can't find anything in an unorganized room.  Remember how quick your system runs after de-fragmenting it? The same goes for a room after organizing it. You'll be able to access items faster,  find information quicker and navigate your way around in a flash!  Remember how much smoother your system ran after deleting all those gigabytes of junk data?  The same goes for a room.   Form free space in the room by getting rid of things you don't need, and it'll work better for you.

It's not going to take forever to get the room straightened out.  If the mess is huge...span the process over a certain area of the room each day.  Sooner or later, you'll be satisfied and ready to put on a  big smile (or new bragging rights for yourself).

You don't have to put up 5 signs, but you should try to remember what each pile is for. 

When your piles get too big.

Process the piles once they get too big or when you've finished a certain part of the room...i.e. the desk surface, the supplies drawer, etc.
Processing the items in each pile should be fairly straightforward.

   1. Trash goes out to the dumpster (or main bin outside),
   2. Keep items go where they belong in your room...or stay in the keep pile until you decide where they will go or finally have access to where they normally reside in.
   3. Donate items go into a large box and into the back seat of your vehicle - or you didn't have a donate pile.
   4. Sell items go into a box that can be placed wherever you think is best for now...Closet, Garage, etc. Then sell them later on eBay.
   5. Move items go into a box that can be carried into the other rooms they all go into.  Keep moving around the rooms until your Move Pile box of item is empty for that session.

Now, keep repeating this process until your room is all set. :D

Tips and Tricks

Here are some to help you out along the way!

• Organization is done best when there is only ONE place to put a certain type of item in the room...i.e. only one place to hold all of your little gadgets, one place to hold all of your cash/coins, and one place to hold all of your paperwork (file-drawer for huge amounts), etc etc.
•  For offices, make sure you have a "Pending Paper-Work" box.  Place urgent papers in here that must be completed and sent-off or file-away, and get them done on time!  This works wonders
• Only keep a couple of pens in that cup! Some people LOAD they're writing tools cup with 50 pens...which is not needed! Pick 3 good ones and use them till they run out of ink.
• Clothes drawer or Closet too tight? Take everything out and find any pairs of clothes you don't need anymore.  Things that are too small, and take up space.
• Pull out a piece of paper and go through all your pens, testing each one to see if it still writes.  Toss the cheap ones that don't write at all anymore.  Keep any fancy pens that are pretty value and get refills for them the next time you visit your local supply store.
• CDs Stacks starting to reach for the clouds? Go through them all and toss out any unneeded CD-Rs you burned once and never needed again (old Linux distros or such that you have newer versions of, etc).  If you have any old drivers Disks and normally download the latest drivers from the websites instead, you can more than likely toss those too. (keep the internet device, or network card driver disk to be safe though)
• Sell a lot of items on eBay?  Keep the same items next to each other in the storage area, unless you've got two massive items that won't fit next to each other at all.  If you've got small items like coins, jewelry, etc, place them into a fancy box for safe-keeping.  If it's a lot of money invested in the many small items, then they definitely deserve a strong storage medium beside a cardboard box hehe.  Jewelry boxes also make great coin storage boxes. :-D
• Try REALLY hard to limit your use of cardboard boxes as a longterm storage medium for your bedroom, kitchen, den, livingroom, office, or bathroom.  The attic, garage, wharehouse, and similar are fine, but having too many cardboard boxes for longterm storage in your other rooms will keep the room looking like you are still moving in and constantly worry about never getting the job finished.  Cardboard boxes are for storage rooms. ;-)
  

Let's review:

   1. To clean and organize a room of yours, make 5 piles.
   2. Designate these piles as: Donate, Keep, Trash, Move, and Sell
   3. Decide whether you can Use or Disregard the Donate pile.
   4. Start with any part of the room (preferably one of the messiest)
   5. Once the piles get too big, or you finish one part of the room, process the items in them using the methods mentioned in When your piles get too big.
   6. Once your piles are empty again, move to another part of the room and repeat the cycle of sorting item into them
   7. Repeat this whole process until the whole room is completely organized!

Just Remember: SORT>PROCESS>REPEAT

 I hope my guide has simplified any worrisome thoughts of having to organize a cluttered room one day and that it's helped you step on top of it with massive pride!
Good luck my friend, and click the "yes" below to show your support for the guide!
Thanks!