Get your house in order with the Japanese 5S technique

How many times a week do you clean your room? You make him spotless and the next week he’s in chaos again? How much time does it take to tidy up your kids’ kitchen, living room, office or bedroom? Most likely you take longer than you would like. But is there an efficient method to save time in cleaning the house and keep everything in order for longer? Yes, this method exists.

O awesome.club brings you the Japanese technique of the 5S, which helps to keep environments in order through 5 steps. Today’s post shows a technique that can be used in any room, and that will help keep your home much tidier. Get to work!

The first step is called Seiri, or select, and means separating the necessary and the not necessary according to the frequency of use. Think about all the things you have in your room. There are many, right? Even if you don’t know where to start, don’t worry.

In order for you to successfully complete this step, it is important that you do not move anything out of place yet. That’s because this phase is dedicated only to selecting. First, sort and tag the things you use the least with a tag red🇧🇷 The most used objects should be marked with a tag green🇧🇷 To indicate infrequent use of items, you can use a tag Yellow as a middle ground.

Stop in the middle of the room and use the following scheme to help you select what to keep and what to keep handy:

For example, you’re in front of a DVD that doesn’t work. Will you fix it? Want to use? If the answers to these questions are no, put a red tag and set a place to keep them, knowing you won’t be using them anymore. The best thing to do with objects with this tag is to take them out of the room (they can be placed in a warehouse, for example). Items labeled yellow are used weekly or monthly, so they can go inside the closet. Some examples are bags that we don’t use all the time, or folders with documents that we only need to look at once a week or month. Finally, a daily notebook, headphones and other objects with the green label, which should be placed in their usual places, such as on a table,
for example.

Everything you previously marked with a red, yellow or green tag should have a place reserved inside or outside the room. This step, called seiton (“to organize”, in Portuguese) means to have the right place for each thing, that is, to define its place to facilitate its identification.

Tag and name the place of each object to make searching easier. If you’ve tagged a bag or two that you don’t use very often with a yellow tag, set aside some closet space and put a ‘bags’ tag on the shelf. Do the same with folders or other objects. Remember that everything with a green tag should be in plain sight and close at hand—on the table, for example. Don’t forget everyday objects, which should always be visible. For this, there is a very practical rule: they must be found and returned to the place after use within a maximum of 30 seconds.

Housekeeping is progressing. You have already selected the objects and placed them in the correct places. Now comes the cleaning part.

The third step of the 5S technique is called Sixo, or “clean”, which refers precisely to the cleaning of empty areas and spaces used to store objects. In this phase, the objective is not only to leave the space clean, but also free from possible accidents (objects scattered on the floor can cause serious accidents). Therefore, cleaning is a daily task that, when done well, avoids an infinite cleaning process in the next few days.

Only 2 steps to go, but both are very important.

seiketsu can be translated as standardize. It aims to evaluate the space and adjust any aspect that deviates from the pattern defined by the previous steps. That is, it refers to the surroundings of what has been established so far. For this, we must arrange a kind of route with a list of things that should always be checked. This can happen weekly or every 3 days.

The fifth and final step is called Shitsuke, or “keep”. It seeks to establish a schedule for monitoring and “auditing” the environment, in addition to ensuring that everyone understands their responsibilities within the 5S system.

For example, if we are talking about a shared room, the two people must have the tasks defined to maintain order and cleanliness. That last S is important to know if all the previous steps were understood. It helps to avoid errors and fix something that was not well defined. Therefore, it is important to go over the obligations of each one and establish an agreement in relation to what was theorized from the beginning.

To help you exercise good control of the 5S, we recommend making a spreadsheet with spaces for verification.

Did you already know this technique? What storage strategy do you use in your home? Share in the comments below!