Household: De-Clutter with a Six-Month “Maybe Box”

The site “lifehacker” is one of my favorite blogs. While not about “Lean” per se, there’s often a great deal of overlap between personal productivity and Lean concepts.

In the post I’ve linked to above talks about de-cluttering the house, which is reminiscent of the early stages of a factory’s “5S” initiatives (or a hospital’s), where you go through a workspace and identify items that are broken, outdated, obsolete, or not needed. These items can be removed — trashed, repurposed, or donated — thus freeing up space for more productive uses, reducing waste.

It’s important to recognize that this “spring cleaning” aspect of 5S is really just part of the overall equation of Sort, Store, Shine, Standardized, and Sustain. Spring cleaning really focuses on the first 3. We don’t want 5S to just be a one-time or annual activity.

So the lesson from Lifehacker is a good one — for work or home. Don’t immediately throw all items into the trash. Some items are obviously trashable, but some items might be of questionable value. Some caution might be in order, as the post says:

…the Zen Habits blog suggests creating a “Maybe” box, stashing non-dire items in there, and …

Then store the box somewhere hidden, out of the way. Put a note on your calendar six months from now to look in the box. Then pull it out, six months later, and see if it’s anything you really needed. Usually, you can just dump the whole box, because you never needed that stuff.

Good advice! In a workplace, we often set up a “Red Tag area” or a “boneyard” where questionable items can be set aside. I often do this for just a week or two, not necessarily six months. This time frame is a “buffer” to make sure everybody has a chance to look to see if items can really be disposed of without harming operations. The night shifts and weekend shifts deserve a chance to review items. This way, decisions are not made exclusively by the day shift or those who happened to be around while the 5S sweep was taking place.

About LeanBlog.org: Mark Graban is a consultant, author, and speaker in the “lean healthcare” methodology, focused on improving quality and patient safety, improving access, reducing costs, and fully engaging healthcare professionals. He is also the Chief Improvement Officer for KaiNexus.

Tagged as: 5S, Everyday Lean