Simplify Your Space: A Conversation with Kate
An Our Circle conversation about organizing, executive function, and why the systems in your house are really about energy. Kate joins us November 19.
The business everyone assumes she's in
Ask most people what a professional organizer does and they will describe the result. Pinterest-worthy rainbow colors, labels, and lots of bins and boxes. Something you hire once everything else in your life is already handled — one of life's biggest luxuries.
Kate, who owns Simplify Your Space, is running a different business than what people might assume.
Over breakfast on a beautiful day in November she described her work less in terms of actual organizing and more in terms of building capacity. Her clients all have different reasons to come to her, but they all end with the same result: simplicity and systems.
Energy, not discipline
Kate talks about executive function the way I have spent fifteen years talking about customer journeys: the breakdown is usually not the person, it is the design around them.
Executive functioning is a term that always confused me. When I hear executive I think higher up (corporate trauma), and how you function like you're a top dog.
She taught me it's the mind's ability to start a task, and see it through. It's a person's ability to focus, plan, and remember instructions. That takes up a lot of mental energy for any of us, but it is especially hard for people who are neurodivergent.
When a task asks for more mental energy than someone has at 7:15am on a Tuesday, the task does not get done. Then the person concludes something is wrong with her. But it's actually not getting done because the right systems and routines are not in place to make it a light lift.
She made a second point that really resonates with me — inclusive systems are best for EVERYONE. As someone who lived her entire career in a Fortune 30 company, knowing that inclusive design helps everybody (not only the people it was built for) is something I couldn't agree more with. A system built for the hardest morning works beautifully on an easy one. A system built for an easy morning collapses the first time anyone is tired.
Start with one drawer
I asked Kate what she would offer the women of Our Circle, who are in wildly different seasons of life. She gave three things, all of them small on purpose.
Don't do it all.
The first is to stop trying to do it in one day. Don't tackle the entire kitchen — start with one drawer. She is firm that nobody should attempt a whole room in an afternoon, and equally firm that you do not need to buy anything to begin. Start with just going through what you have, and what it's used for.
Her rule is three months. If you have not touched it in three months, it goes. It is a deliberately unsentimental rule, and that is the point: a decision you have to make fresh every time is a decision you will avoid.
Let the bin be the boundary.
For families with children, Kate recommends keeping three bins in the closet. One for donation, one for selling items, one for the next size up.
"The bin is the boundary."
The phrase did more work in five words than most organizing advice manages in a paragraph. When the bin fills, that is the signal. There is no special Saturday to schedule and then move, no calendar reminder to dismiss four weeks running. The container itself tells you when it is time to act — which means the decision has already been made for you on the day you are least able to make it.
Put the week on the fridge.
Her third suggestion is the one I expect the most people to steal.
Meal planning, Kate says, is one of the hardest parts of a family's day — and this is not meal prep. Nobody has time for that and she does not pretend otherwise. It is a magnetic board on the refrigerator with the week's dinners written on it.
It does three things at once. It plans the week, so the 5pm question has already been answered. It tells everyone else in the household what to expect, which removes a surprising amount of friction. And it saves money, because a planned week is a shorter grocery list.
One thing she'd share
Lastly, I asked Kate if she could share one thing with the women of Our Circle, what would it be.
She did not pause.
"Don't be afraid to share your truth."
She means it and lives it. Kate is candid about the days that are hard and about not having everything figured out, and her position is that the candor is part of the service.
What I took home
I left breakfast understanding something about my own house that I never had a term for. Systems that work. There is a sock drawer next to the shoes, and I just purchased bins for the stairs instead of running and putting things away every day — I'm going to let the "bin be the boundary."
I walked into our chat thinking of organizing as a luxury and walked out thinking of it as gaining capacity. When you simplify your space, you simplify your mind — and most of us need the second one considerably more than the first.
Meet Kate on November 19
Kate will be joining Our Circle at our event on November 19. If this conversation was any indication — bring questions. She'll be there.
If you're looking for systems that work, from a mom who gets it, Kate would be an excellent resource. Tell her Our Circle sent you.