The 5 Foundational Systems Every Home Needs
TLDR: The 5 systems are:
Weekly Planning, Meal Planning, Laundry, Entryway, and Outflow.
Caveat: Every household has unique needs, but these systems
can provide a “Level 1” network of support.
Over a lifetime of observing the way other people run their homes (and twenty years of running and rethinking my own) I’ve discovered that there are five particular systems that, when combined, create the strongest foundation for easier home management.First, let’s recognize that every household is unique; unique in composition, unique in values, unique in lifestyles. We’re all wonderfully different in the things we love, the ways we are, and the people we share a home with.But … we’re also all the same.We all eat food, we all wear clothes, and we all create waste. We all come home and take our shoes off, or put our bags down, or look for somewhere to drop the mail. Most beautifully:We all want to do things.And though it might not be immediately obvious, those things are all intricately connected.Imagine coming home on a Monday evening. We walk through the door and drop the mail in an assorted pile of random papers, throw our jacket over a chair as we set our bag on the dining table before tripping over an empty Amazon box on the way to stare into an abyss of undetermined dinner options in the fridge. By the time we’ve actually eaten, we’ve lost most of the precious after-work time (and this applies whether you work outside or inside the home, for yourself, for someone else, or are retired).And its too bad because we’d hoped to use that precious time to “get some stuff done”.Now imagine an alternative scenario. We walk in the door, set the mail in a basket and notice that the check we’ve been waiting for has arrived. It was easy to spot, because the mail tray had been emptied during the weekly processing we did on Sunday. We hang our jacket and bag on a hook, pull out the easy-enough-for-a-Monday dinner we chose ahead, and look forward to an evening of taking the next step in our current project’s plan.This is a super condensed example, of course. But it serves to illustrate the fact that it's the little, everyday things that add up to either work for or against us and what we want to do.So let’s talk about addressing those little things though the lens of The Five Foundational Systems.1. Weekly Planning
It all starts with weekly planning. No matter the current state of your home, weekly planning gives you the overview you need to manage your life better (as in, easier). It allows you to look at your obligations, hopes, and priorities at the same time, making it more realistic to strike a balance between all three.It can also provide a simple way to solve the kind of problems that feel complex when you’re in the moment.For example, maybe you constantly find yourself agreeing to every social commitment thrown at you even though you know you’ve got too much on your plate. Seeing all those commitments in writing (squeezed into every last square inch because apparently saying ‘yes’ is your cardio) makes it easier to simply say “No thank you, I’m not able to meet that request right now.”It takes some practice to get used to the feeling of creating your own flow instead of being pushed around by other people’s urgency, but it is that simple. I PROMISE.There are so many great teachers out there when it comes to weekly planning (Lisa Woodruff from Organize365 is one whom I hold dear), but you don’t need to hold yourself up with the barrier of research to get started.Here’s the absolute simplest way to create a weekly plan:1. Use a blank sheet of paper (or join my Systems Library for a free printable) and write out the days of the week. Some people like listing them horizontally, some prefer listing them vertically. Try both - see which visual works for your brain.2. Gather all your ‘info inboxes’ (emails, texts, calendars, apps, etx.) and write in any appointments/commitments under the appropriate day.3. Sit back and look at the page. Where do YOU fit in? When specifically will you be able to declutter that drawer that drives you crazy every single morning? When specifically will you be able to listen to that new album that your soul has been crying out for? When specifically will you be able to meet with and support the struggling friend who's too shy to ask first?Soon enough, you’ll develop your planning muscles and be able to ask these kind of questions first. THAT is how you advance yourself toward where you want to go.
But if you’re a beginner, just spending 15 minutes on these three simple steps every week is taking a huge step in the direction of the home you want to have and life you want to live.2. Meal Planning
Now that you know what your week looks like, you can plan ahead to cover the most basic of basics — eating.Take your schedule into account when choosing meals. If you have a super busy day, plan something easy (or better yet, cook double the day before and eat some easy leftovers). If you’re into trying new recipes, plan that for a day when the payoff is the process, not the final product (aka maybe don’t plan a complex new meal on a day when you only have 20 minutes to work with).If you’ve been doing your weekly planning for a while, you may be actively working on your goals. And it’s seriously amazing how many different types of goals meal planning can support.If you have nutritional goals, planning your meals can help you meet the criteria that will improve your health. If you have financial goals, meal planning can save anywhere from a little to a lot of money, depending on the system you set up. If you have personal development goals, having meals planned in advance can help you get out the door, back to the office, or off to bed on time. And if you have kids … well … if ya know, ya know.For such a basic system, spending time meal planning can pay you back in spades.Just like weekly planning, start as simple as possible here. Make it as easy as you can to sit down every week and map out your meals. If you’re truly a beginner and don’t yet have a kitchen stocked with staples, you can literally write in the takeout foods you plan to eat. You’re still making real progress by reducing your daily decision fatigue and creating room in your mind for other things.Use that trusty blank sheet of paper (or you can get a free printable worksheet here). Write out meals for the next 7 days. If you can’t plan that far ahead for any reason, fill in the next 3 days and give it another shot on Wednesday. Remember: you’re making real progress. Planning meals half the time is twice as good as not doing it all.3. Laundry
Until the explosion of home content about ten years ago, I had no idea how much other people struggled with laundry. I once lived in a townhouse from which I had to carry multiple heavy baskets of clothes downstairs, outside, around the corner and down another set of stairs into a parking garage (and then through a heavy metal gate!)So I totally get it. I really do.But I can’t remember the last time I thought about laundry, and that’s because I have a system.Just like all systems, there are a myriad of ways you can do things. The important thing is that you choose whatever system is easiest for your brain to forget about, whatever that means for your particular circumstances.For example, a laundry “day” sounds like a nightmare to me because I currently do between 7 and 14 loads a week). But if you use a laundry mat, a set laundry day might make the most sense (and I highly recommend bringing a friend or making a ‘laundry cue’ of videos/podcasts/audiobooks to make the most use of the time).This is my brain’s version of the simplest routine: I do one load every morning, switch it to the dryer at some point during the day, and then empty the dryer sometime before bed. If it’s a heavy week, I just double that. It’s easy for me to see which loads are the priority because I separate my baskets into categories: each person’s basket, the overall towels basket, and a small hanging bag in my kitchen for cleaning cloths.The point is that laundry will never end, so I found the most reasonable way to stay on top of it. For me, that’s spending roughly 10 minutes a day to keep it going constantly. (Oh, and I pretty much never fold - for this LIFE CHANGING tip I must credit the ‘amazeballs’ Cas from Clutterbug).4. Entryway
Your entryway system will also be unique to your circumstances. If you have a large family, you may need to ‘build out’ and have a wide rack and a basket for each person. If you live alone and have infrequent guests you may only need a beautifully minimal hook and shelf (my dream!).When you’re designing your entryway, think about it as a the vestibule between the outside world and your private environment. It is essentially your transition space. What do you need to transition into being home? What do you need to transition into going out again?Some common examples are shoes, coats and bag, which you don’t need once you’re inside (but you will again soon, so it only makes sense to have them organized and easy to don again). Other common things we bring home are mail, school papers, shopping bags, and things that need to be put away somewhere inside the house.For this last one, I highly recommend a pretty “put back” basket - something on the smaller side so it forces you to address it regularly. This was something I started when I started walking in the door with a baby and couldn’t put him down to follow my clutter-free urges to “put it away, not down.”A similar list could be written for all the things we bring when we leave home. Basically, what you’re creating here is a way to get in and out the door with minimal effort, the lowest possible chance of forgetting about things and the least possible friction between people in your household (not to mention in your own mind).Again, experts abound in gorgeous ways to set up your entryway system. But again, don’t get caught up in trying to ‘interior design’ the space. Regardless of your artistic talent, this space must be functional first, and that can happen without buying anything (maybe some $3 command hooks if you’re starting from scratch).Remember, the space can be reiterated later into the visual that your heart needs. Right now, you need to get to work on time.5. Outflow
I started this essay by saying that the five systems work together to create the foundation of an easier home, so it would probably be wrong to say that any one of them is the most important. But …Outflow is probably the most important system.We live in this weird cross section of time where everything we could ever want is readily available to us and everything we could ever need is made crappier than ever before. So even when we’re acting like “responsible adults who desire a simpler and less materialistic life” we’re still ending up with too much stuff in our homes.When you add in the reality of all the psychological factors woven into the wanting process, the buying process, and the keeping process, the amount of things we have to manage can become enormous without us doing anything “wrong”.No shame. No guilt. Yes, ‘outflow’.Every single thing in your home is a thing your brain is aware of and has to think about, even if you’re not consciously aware of that fact.This isn’t a call to minimalism (I’ve been accused of that, but actually I’m a simplifist who knows her own mental, emotional, and physical limits). This is a call to ask yourself this question:WHAT DO I WANT TO USE MY BRAIN FOR?No one else can answer that question for you. But I bet it’s not “shuffling stuff constantly, being weighed down by gifts I hate, and trying to remember when trash day is.”Instituting an outflow system can make daily life dramatically easier and create the mental space required to figure out what you truly care about using your brain for.There are three categories of outflow items: returns, donations, and trash.Returns (like Amazon mail-back returns, or things you need to take back to the store) deserve a spot in your entryway (unless you have a separate space you travel through to get to your car every day). Yes, they’re another “thing” that could be considered ugly visual clutter but having them ready to go will prompt you to complete the return cycle quicker (and get your money back). I have a larger basket that matches my “put back basket” and it has worked well sitting on one end of my shoe bench. When I have nothing to return, I just nest the other basket inside of it and decrease the footprint.Donations are anything that you don’t want (or use — but that’s an essay for another day) that’s in good enough condition to share. The simplest system for donations is putting a box/bag in your closet and choosing things for the box as you operate in your daily life.Many people don’t have the time or energy to “do decluttering” and that’s both perfectly okay and not an excuse to have to live in clutter.The next time you’re using any space in your home, just notice the thing you never go for in that particular drawer/cabinet/shelf and put that thing in the box. Then put that box in your trunk as soon as you notice it’s full.If you live in the city like I do, there’s always a place to drop donations when you’re doing regular driving. If you live in the country (like I have before) you may need to dedicate a space in the garage and set a monthly calendar reminder to get them to where they need to go.Either way, the donations need to be removed from your home regularly enough to desensitize you to the fear of letting go.It’s the only way.Trash is a very specific beast, since there are so many different set ups for trash collection across types of housing. So I’ll just throw in my two top tips:1. Put an advanced alert for trash day in your calendar until you can reliably remember when it is.
2. Put a roll of new trash bags in the bottom of every can - it makes it so much easier to empty!Conclusion:
These five systems can’t eliminate all the stress in your life. They can’t make unexpected illness, exceptional busyness, or great loss not happen. They can’t even make the people in your household cooperate with them. None of these five systems will make your home perfect.Because perfect is a feeling, not a system.What these systems will do is give your home a foundation. Foundations aren’t exciting, because no ones really sees them. But foundations are the reason everything else in your life can stand.Weekly planning. Meal planning. Laundry. Your entryway. Outflow. Build these five systems first.Then build “Level 2”:The life you actually want.
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