organizing with bins

Within a week or so I will have two new people and two new cats living with me. My physical space tends toward disorder. I have a very hard time keeping things clean and organized. I tend to get pulled in a lot of directions, and working on one thing often brings to light other things I should be working on, which leads to a near-endless regression of related tasks. Because I undertake tasks that cannot be completed in one sitting, and because I am prone to forgetting about where I am in any given task, I'll often leave out the related components in a way that suggests the next steps to be taken when I return. In the process of cleaning, I'll often just end up re-engaged in the task. To my mind, cleaning up requires finishing the task; if I put away the components, the task may never be completed at all! It's entirely possible I'll forget the task needs doing until it's too late. But more people in my space means I cannot afford such a sprawling method of so-called "organization" anymore.

I have trouble keeping track of what I have on hand much of the time, and I have trouble knowing where things are. I'll even forget that I have certain things at all, sometimes, because they get tucked away somewhere obscure. When I was a kid, I had boxes for my toys, and cleaning up consisted of putting the toys back in the boxes. I had the idea that I might combine this with a text-based method of accounting for component locations and their associated tasks. (Text-based because every "todo" mobile app I've ever used has involved too much latency. If it's text-based, I have the option of building my own interface that hopefully won't require any loading time at all.)

I've bought a bunch of "field boxes" (stackable, plastic, water-resistant boxes with hinged, locking lids; dimensions: 292x143x184mm or 11.5x5.625x7.25in) in which to store my things, and I've used liquid chalk markers to write identifiers on them. I've also bought a few 432x546x381mm (17x21.5x15in) plastic bins in which to store larger items, on which I've also written identifiers. I've been looking for anything that does not belong "out" (e.g., decorations), marking them with identifiers, putting them in boxes or bins (depending on size), and adding an entry noting its identifier, its location, its name, its condition, its associated project (if any), the quantity (if applicable), a brief description (if the name doesn't convey enough information), and any additional notes, to one of several category-divided tab-separated value (TSV) files using sc-im (a vim-like spreadsheet editor for the command line).

This has taken up most of my time lately. Choosing a category is sometimes the hardest part. I hope to return to my food project soon, but my physical space needs sorted before more people move in.

My system will almost certainly evolve. I will keep my "systems" page for it updated as it does.

Related

My physical organization system

sc-im, a vim-like spreadsheet editor for the command line