After playing
You have finished a game. There are pieces all over the floor and you want to do something else.
What do you do?
Step 1: What Would You Do?
There is often more than one good answer. Pick one and see what happens.
Something is missing
You cannot find your favorite thing anywhere.
What is the best way to look?
Step 2: What That Was
The name for what you just worked out.
If a thing has one place it lives, you always know where it is.
Tidy when you finish, not later
Putting one thing away takes a moment. Putting twenty things away takes ages and feels horrible.
Lost things
Most lost things are not lost. They are somewhere they do not live.
Step 3: Quick Check
Two questions, then you are done.
Question 1 of 1
When is the easiest time to tidy up?
Step 4: Your Life Mission
Something to do away from the screen. Nobody is checking.
Give three things a home
- Pick three things you often cannot find.
- Decide where each one lives.
- Put them there every time this week.
Why: Three is enough to notice the difference, and few enough to actually keep up.
Step 5: What You Learned
- Everything has a place.
- Tidy as you finish.
- Lost usually means not put back.
For the grown-up
Tidying is a sorting task and small children genuinely find "tidy your room" incomprehensible as an instruction. "Put all the books on the shelf" is a task; "tidy up" is a category.
Fixed places have to be genuinely reachable by the child. A shelf they cannot reach guarantees the system fails and looks like unwillingness.
Tidying alongside them works far better than instructing at this age, and the habit outlasts the accompaniment.