> If they’re not in a permanent location, they’re probably in an arbitrary location.
The arbitrary location to often becomes the permanent location.
For me I found it helps to think which container I put stuff in. I have a box for my daily use tools. It's a drawer with tools, I know where to find it and it fits all the tools I need often. If I where to leave a tool on my desk its new 'container' would be the desk, or worse the room the desk is in. Sure the room is big enough as container to fit all my stuff and really easy to find. But no help in organising my tools.
Every place explicitly becomes a container in my mind with a set purpose and rules. For example the corner on my desk with important paperwork: container. No other stuff shall be placed there (my wife knows this as well).
The empty shelve in the kitchen where we randomly put stuff: container of (only) temporary stuff that I remind myself of to empty every week/month or so by relocating the items to a different container (often the bin).
I still do have a lot of big random containers everywhere with all kinds of stuff, but at least I now don't put the stuff I want to find easily in there, since the belong in a different container. And because I think of everything as container I have to define the size for it so when they overflow I get triggered to clean or renegotiate the container with myself.
The arbitrary location to often becomes the permanent location.
For me I found it helps to think which container I put stuff in. I have a box for my daily use tools. It's a drawer with tools, I know where to find it and it fits all the tools I need often. If I where to leave a tool on my desk its new 'container' would be the desk, or worse the room the desk is in. Sure the room is big enough as container to fit all my stuff and really easy to find. But no help in organising my tools.
Every place explicitly becomes a container in my mind with a set purpose and rules. For example the corner on my desk with important paperwork: container. No other stuff shall be placed there (my wife knows this as well). The empty shelve in the kitchen where we randomly put stuff: container of (only) temporary stuff that I remind myself of to empty every week/month or so by relocating the items to a different container (often the bin).
I still do have a lot of big random containers everywhere with all kinds of stuff, but at least I now don't put the stuff I want to find easily in there, since the belong in a different container. And because I think of everything as container I have to define the size for it so when they overflow I get triggered to clean or renegotiate the container with myself.