Use the ‘OHIO’ Method to Tidy Your Home, Once and For All

You might be familiar with the OHIO method because of its application when sorting through your to-dos and emails. The acronym stands for only handle it once, so it’s great for anyone who returns to tasks or messages over and over without getting much done—but it’s also a helpful framework to follow if you’re cleaning and organizing your home.

What OHIO is all about

As I mentioned, OHIO is all about only handling things one time, whether they’re responsibilities, correspondence, or physical items. No matter what you’re handling, using this technique forces you to be decisive and actionable instead of fretting over what to do with a particular thing. In the context of inbox management, going in with an OHIO mindset prevents you from putting off responding to messages, dithering over whether or not to delete something old, or just generally falling behind. You open a message. You either respond to it, archive it, or delete it. You move to the next one. It takes away all the room you leave yourself for worrying, getting emotional, or otherwise wasting time. Now imagine how useful that would be when you’re cleaning.

How to use OHIO when you’re cleaning or organizing

One of the hardest parts about tidying up, especially when you’re really trying to organize a big mess, is just knowing where to start. That’s why there are so many decluttering methods out there. Tackling the home organization project with an OHIO mindset won’t necessarily tell you where to start, like the ski-slope method does, nor will it help you identify whether you can afford to toss something out, like the 20/20 rule does. Still, when used in conjunction with a technique like those, it speeds up the process of cleaning considerably.

Wherever you’re starting in a room, make sure that when you pick something up, you only handle it once. Make a quick decision about where it should go. Once it’s in your hand, decide right then and there if you’ll keep it, throw it, donate it, or sell it—then toss it into the appropriate bin. (You can grab these four 17-quart plastic storage bins.) When you finish with that room, keep the philosophy in mind. The next time you pick up one of those bins, take it where it needs to go. Remember: You’re only allowed to handle it once.

If you’re not decluttering, but merely organizing items that have gotten messy, you can still use OHIO. When you pick something up, instead of considering whether you want to throw or donate it, just put it back where it goes. If you live in a larger home with a lot of rooms, you might still want to use the bins, assigning one to each room and dropping wayward, messy items into the bin that matches the room where it really belongs. When you’re finished, pick up the bin and bring it straight to that room, only handling it once, and put everything away.

The goal here is to make quick decisions and take action instead of just shuffling the clutter and mess around the room.