Put it in a basket

A shortcut to making any space look clean

I like to have a clean house, though I don’t particularly like to spend a lot of time cleaning. Given that reality, I have noticed over the years that the reason things tend to look clean is that horizontal surfaces are clear. If the coffee table is clear, the living room looks picked up. If the kitchen counter is clear and so is the kitchen table, then the kitchen looks like it’s nice and tidy.

Now obviously stuff needs to live in both a living room and a kitchen. And things wind up there too that can be hard to corral. But here’s a short cut for achieving that neat-looking state: Just put it all in a basket.

Keeping everything in check

If you need to pick up quickly, and you’re mostly collecting random stuff, the basket can go over in a corner somewhere. If it’s stuff that makes sense, like coasters and a remote control on a coffee table, those can stay in the basket on the table. But put everything in a basket and a room instantly looks neater.

Honestly, this trick works almost anywhere. I have a giant basket on my office desk for papers I’m no longer actively using but don’t want to throw away. I have a basket on my bathroom counter for my make-up and hair products. Often, I just leave those things out. But if the bathroom needs to look neat, into the basket they go.

I can even imagine this working for a car. Just get a square basket of some variety and throw all the random stuff that lands in a car in there. The floor and seats will be clear and the whole space will look more inviting.

What’s at the bottom?

To be sure, this doesn’t work indefinitely. Eventually you have to go through the basket and put things where they belong, or get them out of the house. If not, you’ll wind up losing things in the bottom of the basket, or seeing things deteriorate into crud. I suspect this is already happening in the giant bin I keep on my porch, where lots of broken sidewalk chalk pieces and broken bubble-making toys tend to wind up. If you have too many baskets, that can wind up looking cluttered too.

But in any case, if you need a space to look neat, and you don’t have a whole lot of time for achieving neatness, just grab some baskets. Put whatever keeps you from having clear horizontal surfaces in there.

Just like that, the problem is solved.