Every house has an anvil, the place things strike when someone comes in the door. For one family of ten, the dining table was the anvil. Another family of four found that the living room sofa drew incoming. The maple kitchen cart is my anvil. My old friend Mimi, a born competitor, claims to have four or more.
Both people and things come to rest when they enter the door. The trick is to sort things out before they cool off and then reward oneself with a moment’s respite before carrying on. My grandmother trained me to “take off my hat” (and hang it up) and sit for a moment to collect myself when I returned home. A brief interlude with a cup of tea restores cognition and morale and allows the pulse to return to normal.
The anvil is the parking lot of the house. It indicates the traffic patterns of the residents. Don’t fight the anvil; support it. It’s a valve, a switching point, as traffic engineers say. An intersection.
Unwittingly, my friend Mimi is using Lovejoy’s Pile Method of inventory management. I learned this system from garden writer Ann Lovejoy, who looked at the floor of her parlor and remarked that she used the pile method to keep house. At the time, we had three toddlers and two flaking Victorian relics to live in.
Twenty-four years of field testing has proved that Ann’s black humor is an effective way to manage possessions. The trick is to place a container under each pile. Set up an in-house routing system by keeping a stack of bins, a bold marker, and a pad of sticky notes by the anvil. Store things where you use them first. Leave them ready to use again after you have used them one time. Every time you handle something, set it down closer to its destination. For training, note the home position on the object and the object on the home position. I use electric green sticky dots from an office supplier.
Baskets are elegant containers and can be found woven as deep trays that nest. The big box store sells fabric versions of the same thing. Both resemble the corrugated plastic bins that the post office uses. Lidded plastic tubs are available in various sizes: too big is preferable to too small. Several dozen is not excessive. Whatever container you choose, get many, get the same size, and coordinate them with your shelving. Using just one kind of container to sort and manage inventory will train your eye and hand to respond effectively to maverick items. Rope them in and send them to the barn.
It’s convenient to store bins on a modular chromed or coated wire storage rack on heavy wheels. A commonly available line is designed with shelves that are fast and easy to adjust. Heavy wire shelving is self-cleaning, not cheap, and so serviceable it can be classified as a labor cost. I zip-tied pieces of lightweight rustic woven reed garden fencing to the back and sides of two rolling wire racks and discovered movable storage room dividers that can be washed with a garden hose.
Over the years, racks and bins have displaced most of the dressers and cupboards that used to fill up my rooms. I use the least promising spaces for dedicated storage and substitute hanging nylon shoe and sweater bags for dressers.
Clutter is telling one to slow down and take charge. Use self-sticking labels and a bold marker to note the destination on each container. It’s work to make a decision. It’s far less work to make a decision once and write it down. The principle is to keep house as if one knows how to read and write, a relatively recent development for domestic labor. Doing so de-classifies housekeeping practice and frees one from the role of handmaiden.
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More after the jump.
