Week 7 of the Marie Kondo Tidy Challenge was to find everything a home. Quite frankly, this has been the most difficult task for me so far.

I’m not a huge fan of the options for storage in our house. It isn’t quite right for where I’d logically want to keep things.

So, I’ve had to get a little creative on where I’d put stuff. I think that’s why we still haven’t quite finished finding everything a place yet.

I’m still not pleased with where everything is stored and think we could find better spots or solutions. I’m thinking this may be a work-in-progress for some time yet.

Find Everything a Home

There were certain areas of finding everything a home that was super simple. Clothes and most of the kitchen and pantry were easy.

Kitchen Struggles

Where I struggled in the kitchen was finding good storage for our pans and larger kitchen items. Our cabinets aren’t designed to store this type of item well.

Despite that, we made everything work and did find everything a spot in our kitchen. Some of it is even nicely organized by size.

Some of it can still be found in an ugly storage container on our counter because we didn’t have enough drawer space for our utensils.

Komono Struggles

For me, the tricker items to find a home for, was the komono. For instance, mine and my daughter’s craft supplies. I did my best to store these, but I just don’t care for where they are stored.

My daughter’s supplies are in our hallway closet. In theory that is fine. However, where I struggle with that is we have a lot of blankets that I enjoy which I also store there, and there just isn’t enough space for it all to fit comfortably.

I’m sure part of it is that we have too many throw blankets, but they bring me joy, so I kept them. If I had a larger living room, I would have considered getting a blanket ladder to display them on.

We still also struggle with papers. Mostly keeping up on the new ones that come into the house.

They have a tendency to pile up on our kitchen counters, which drives me crazy. We do have a spot for them to go, it’s just a matter of tending to them in a timely manner instead of leaving them to sit.

Baby Items

This last category of baby items is probably one that bothers me the most. We still haven’t decided whether we are done having kids or not.

While the baby stuff doesn’t bring me joy, I don’t want to get rid of it for practical purposes, just in case we decide to have another child in a few years.

Baby stuff is large and takes up a ton of space.

Not to mention that kids grow so fast, we have boxes and boxes of clothes that no longer fit our daughter.

I haven’t found a great way to store this stuff conveniently. Most of it I have stuffed in our small attic space for now. The larger items, I took apart as much as possible. Those I stored either in the attic or on shelves in our basement.

I’m still not pleased with it all. I like having some empty storage spaces on shelves – it brings me joy.

All this extra baby stuff that I’m not sure I’ll use again simply frustrates me. But, not more than how I would feel if I had to replace all of it in the future.

Deep Drawer Storage

Marie also has an entire day dedicated to deep drawer storage. This, I didn’t find necessary. I don’t have drawers deep enough in my house to have to consider this.

For most areas, Marie Kondo doesn’t recommend stacking items on top of one another. However, she makes an exception for deep drawer storage.

For deep drawers, she notes that you can store things on top of one another, but to keep the items on top in a separate box so it is easy to remove to get at the items below.

Books

One day this week for the challenge was to sort books by category. I had already done this back when we tidied books. It was nice to already have that work done and not have to worry about it this week.

You can pick whichever categories you like for storing your books by category. I only had a few categories – cookbooks, memoirs, self-help, and novels.

Recipes

Another day this week was dedicated to getting all of your recipes together and putting them into a recipe box. I was happy with the cookbooks I selected to keep and already had a recipe box. I didn’t have to do much for this day.

Use What Up What You Have

This day was dedicated to using up items you already had sitting in your pantry. The idea is to go through your remaining ingredients that are close to expiration and use them up to make a dinner.

My cooking skills are not so inclined, so again, I skipped this day.

Maximize Wall Space and Small Spaces

These were two separate days for week 7. The layout there didn’t really make much sense to me. It seemed to me that you’d find wall space and utilize small spaces as you were finding homes for everything on the initial day.

She recommends using wall storage organizing units when you can. For small items, look for small unused spaces, such as small drawers or cabinets in which to store things.

Tidy Challenge Notes on Finding Everything a Home

Tips

Store similar items together

Store items that you tidied together near each other. For example, store papers near other papers. It might make sense to have books and paper supplies near each other because of their similar nature.

Items Without a Home Cause Relapse

Marie has noted in her books that the main reason for people having “relapses” is that they never actually found a home for every single item.

If you have a home for every single item, then it can be put back easily and not cause clutter.

This has been a major struggle for me, personally. Even though most of our stuff has a dedicated home at this point, I sometimes have trouble remembering where the dedicated space is.

I know this is because not all of our storage is in ideal locations, so my brain doesn’t logically think of where the item’s home is, because it isn’t where you’d initially think of.

Put Everything Back

The other main part of making the tidying process work is to put everything back after you are done using it.

For some people, this can be the biggest struggle of it all. I personally don’t struggle with this, but my husband does.

We spent an entire afternoon tidying his woodshop. The next time I stepped into it, maybe a week later, it was a complete disaster. Tools were scattered everywhere and he hadn’t cleaned up his massive dust piles.

When he is done in his shop at the end of the day, he just shuts off the light and leaves. He doesn’t actually put anything back, despite it all having a designated place.

This is one thing that I don’t’ think Marie addresses in her books. She doesn’t really get into how to tackle the issue of not everyone putting things away as they should be.

This, in my opinion, is my family’s largest struggle. Trying to get everyone to actually put things in their rightful home.

I suppose, though, this is what Marie was talking about when she said you can’t force anyone to tidy. If people won’t keep up on putting things away, then there is only so much I can do besides taking care of my own tidying.

Feeling After Week 7 of the Marie Kondo Tidy Challenge

Week 7 of the Marie Kondo Tidy Challenge was the toughest week yet and I don’t think it’s over.

I have a feeling that I will be continuously moving things around my house until I feel like they are finally in their “right’ homes.

This has been the week by far that has left me feeling a little disappointed. It seems to be a continuing struggle to find the “right” places where it makes sense to store something and where I’ll remember that it is.

Then we’ve got the constant struggle to actually put things back where they belong after they are don’t being used.

I’m hoping that as we get items placed into “homes” that make more sense, we’ll all better remember where they go and to put them away as soon as they are done.

It’s definitely been more difficult than I anticipated. After all the previous weeks of work, I was thinking the hard part was behind me.

As it turns out, the hard part is now, finding a place for everything.

If you’re interested in reading the earlier weeks, feel free to start back on Week 1 of the Tidy Challenge.

Take the Tidy Challenge With Me!

With only one week left in the tidy challenge, I’m getting excited to finally be done.

I think there’s a good chance that I’ll be moving a few items around in our house until I’m more satisfied with their location. However, I also know that process will soon be complete. Each time I move something to a better location, I start to feel a bit better about it.

I’m curious to see how long it will actually take until I am fully pleased with the location of all the items in my home.

Going forward, the final week of the challenge is to bring joy into our home. That week is one I have slowly been working toward this whole time, knowing that it was coming.

I also knew that as we were clearing out items that did not bring us joy, the décor around our house was no longer items I loved. Most of them haven’t been updated since a few years after I graduated college.

It was definitely time for a refresh. Check-in next week to see how you can bring more joy into your home!

Please share below how your tidying is going – the challenges, the struggles, or suggestions!