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Organise with El Ela | Home Organising
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So they finally work on normal days
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How to keep kitchen counters clear without constant tidying?Clearing them isn't usually the hard part.Working out why th...
20/06/2026

How to keep kitchen counters clear without constant tidying?

Clearing them isn't usually the hard part.

Working out why the same things keep ending up there is.

đź’«That's exactly what I've written about in my latest blog.
If your kitchen counter never seems to stay clear for long, comment LANDING and I'll send you the link.

# calmhome

19/06/2026

One thing that comes up during sessions is that not everything is difficult for the same reason.

A box of shoes might be straightforward.

A box of craft supplies, children’s artwork or keepsakes can be something completely different.

That’s why I don’t start by telling someone what to keep or what to let go of.

We talk it through.

We look at what’s making the decisions difficult and what would make the space work better going forward.

Every room is different.
Every person is different.
And that’s why every session is different too.

18/06/2026

You sit down for a minute.

Then you notice something on the counter.
Something on the stairs.
Something that still needs dealing with.

Five minutes later you're back on your feet.
Sometimes it's not the amount of clutter.
It's the fact it keeps asking for your attention.

17/06/2026

Every time I walked into my daughter's room, I used to be annoyed.

All I could see was the mess.

Now I see it differently.
Once I stopped focusing on the mess itself, I started understanding it better.

It wasn't someone trying to make my life difficult.
There was simply more going on than I could see.

I think a lot of clutter works like that.
We focus on what's visible.
But what's visible isn't always the real problem.

16/06/2026

How to keep kitchen counters clear without constant tidying?

Clearing them isn't usually the hard part.
Working out why the same things keep ending up there is.

That's exactly what I've written about in my latest blog.
Comment LANDING and I'll send you the link.

15/06/2026

The same thing happens at home.

If something is easy to put away, we usually do it.
If we have to move three things first, squeeze it into a full cupboard or walk to another room, we often leave it until later.

Not because we don't care.

Because we're busy.

That's why I'm always interested in he things that feel awkward, annoying or harder than it needs to be.

Those are often the spaces causing the most frustration.

What space in your home feels harder than it should?

14/06/2026

There will always be laundry.
There will always be things to put away.
There will always be surfaces that need wiping and jobs that need doing.

I think most women already know that.

The problem is when keeping on top of everything starts to feel harder than it should.

When you're constantly catching up.
Constantly moving things around.
Constantly dealing with the same frustrations in the same spaces.

For me, the goal was never having a perfect home.
It was getting to the point where everyday life felt easier.
Where I wasn't spending every weekend catching up.
Where I wasn't constantly annoyed by the same problems.

That's why I'm usually less interested in making a space look better and more interested in making it work better.
Because the jobs around the house will never disappear.
But some of the frustration can.

13/06/2026

Paperwork is one of those things that can sit in the same spot for weeks.

Not because you forgot about it.
Quite often it's the opposite.

You know it's there.
You know it needs dealing with.
You just haven't got round to making a decision about it yet.

Do I need it?
Do I need to action it?
Do I need to keep it?
Where does it belong?

That's why paperwork often isn't really a storage problem.
It's usually a decision that's waiting to be made.

Once you start looking at it that way, the pile makes a lot more sense.
And it becomes easier to work out what needs to happen next.

That's one of the reasons I spend so much time looking at what keeps getting put off, not just what keeps piling up.

12/06/2026

One thing that comes up quite often during my virtual sessions is sentimental items.

Children’s drawings.

School projects.

Cards.

Little keepsakes that have been kept for years.

On the surface, it can look like a storage problem.

But quite often that’s not the difficult part.

The difficult part is deciding what those things mean to you now.

One woman I spoke to had boxes of drawings and crafts from when her children were little.

At the time, every single one felt precious.

Years later, the feeling wasn’t the same for all of them.

And that’s completely normal.

One of the things we talked about was the difference between keeping memories and keeping everything.

Because those aren’t the same thing.

Sometimes the most valuable thing isn’t keeping every drawing.

It’s choosing the ones that still mean the most and storing them somewhere you can actually enjoy them.

Not hidden away in a loft or a box that never gets opened.

These conversations are rarely about organising.

They’re often about helping women work through a different stage of life and decide what still deserves a place in it.

This is exactly the kind of thing we work through during my virtual sessions.

11/06/2026

Kitchen counters seem to attract everything.

Post.
Shopping lists.
Letters.
Reusable bags.
Things that belong somewhere else.
Things that need dealing with later.

It's easy to look at the counter and think:
"I need a better storage solution."

Sometimes you do.

But what interests me more is what keeps ending up there.

Because it's usually not random.

The same types of things tend to come back again and again.
That tells me something.

It tells me there's probably a reason those things are easier to leave there than deal with properly.

That's why I rarely start with the counter itself.
I start with what keeps landing there.
Because once you understand that part, it becomes much easier to work out what actually needs changing.

This is often one of the first things I look at when a space keeps becoming frustrating.

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