Basement Organization - Sort

Before I start my post on my organizing project update I want to remind you to enter the Tastefully Simple Giveaway that ends this Sunday at noon!

As I wrote about last week, my laundry/junk room has gotten out of control and needs to be reined in.  Unfortunately this tends to be a once a year project.  I clean and organize the area, then life happens and it gets out of control again.  I am committed (and forcing family commitment) to not let it get this bad again.

In case you've forgotten, here is the room before I started working on it this past week.

I'm taking a 5S approach to this cleaning project in the hope that I will be able to SUSTAIN (the final S) the organization that I've put into place.

To give you a brief overview, Lean is a philosophy derived mostly from Toyota that is centered on preserving value with less work.  Basically there are a set of 'tools' that assist in the identification and elimination of waste.  The Japanese word 'Seiri' is the first step come in the 5S system, our word in English is SORT.  If this was a workplace 5S I would be doing a Red Tag Event that would include attaching a red tag to anything that did not belong in the workstation and logging it in a book.  Since this is my own personal event I'm not going to that detail :)  I did break my sort down into three categories

• Discarded because it is no longer needed (either garbage or donation pile)
• Item(s) are being kept but need a designated place (I grouped these together and will need to determine an appropriate place for them at a later date)
• Item is needed and in it's appropriate place (i.e. laundry detergent will probably be left in it's current place)

I didn't get completely through the sort process (I was suppose to be convalescing after all!) but my husband was pretty impressed with my progress and I am pleased with how far I've gotten.  Here is the current state of the laundry room.  See - I told you there was a table in that mess!

Here is a picture of my donation pile.  I thought about taking a picture of the thousands (it felt like thousands) of used dryer sheets that I threw away but I thought that may be a little overkill!

That's my update for this week.  How about you?  Did you get as far on your project as you would have liked?

I'll be linking this up over at I'm an Organizing Junkie