A few weeks ago a discussion with a friend prompted me to try to write down some brief practical guidance for achieving Order from Chaos. The resulting Practical approaches to Order from Chaos summarises into the following steps:

1. Be clear about what specific categories of stuff you want to deal with.
2. Figure out why you want to keep each category.
3. Take the opportunity to reassess what you really want to keep/collect going forward.
4. Decide where the best place is to store each category.
5. Be clear about the specific space you are going to use for storage.
6. Decide how you will set out, equip and organise the storage space.
7. Do a quick sort of each category into sub-categories.
8. As you do the quick sort, set aside the stuff you want to throw away or dispose of.
9. Decide exactly how you will store each sub-category.
10. Go through each sub-category in detail, organising as required.
11. Set up the storage space/containers/equipment and store the sorted sub-categories.

Should anyone try to apply these suggestions, I’d be interested to hear how you got on.