We try the Ski Slope home organisation method for size

We discover if Californian interior designer Anita Yokota's tidying and decluttering techniques are a fit for Irish living spaces

The Ski Slope method focuses on location rather than category, working on small areas, crisscrossing the room (Billy storage shelves, €45 at Ikea).

All the joy sparked by orderly drawers and zen corners has been expunged by news that tidying sensation Marie Kondo no longer lives a domestic life of exquisite neatness now that child number three has arrived.

Can we expect doom piles to appear in the Kondo household now? Probably not, as I reckon what she considers messiness is a perfectly respectable clean-up for most of us, given her exacting standards.

There was a hint of this, though, in her last book, Kurashi at Home: How to Organize Your Space and Achieve Your Ideal Life that things were relaxing in order to do enjoyable things at home, explaining that while she loves what she does, “sometimes I pack my schedule so tightly I feel frazzled or am overcome with anxiety”.

The Ski Slope method can be applied to a home office or a desk overrun with the detritus of work or study (Emma's Desk from Interiosity, €1,495).

It means we’re off the hook if we never got beyond a cursory grilling of belongings for their joy-sparking qualities, but for tidying and decluttering fundamentalists, Kondo’s admission has created a vacancy for a new guru, and in a timely fashion.

Here comes Anita Yokota, Californian family therapist turned interior designer and home tidier, whose new book, Home Therapy, introduces us to the Ski Slope method.

The gist of it is, instead of trying to tackle an entire space, or even the bedroom chair standing sentry in charge of lightly worn clothes too clean to wash but too used to go back in the drawer, it’s a case of doing a little and completing it before moving on, focusing on location rather than a category of belongings Kondo-style.

“The idea is to imagine your messy room like a ski slope,” Yokota says. “If you try to go straight down, the steep angle feels scary and overwhelming. But if you traverse the slope — skiing from one side to the other — you lessen the angle and make it down the mountain without even noticing. Instead of looking at the room from front to back, look at it from corner to corner.”

Storage baskets for tidying up can also have a decorative effect, and double up as a Holding Box for decluttering projects (from €20 at Homesavers).

And before you think this is just another expert neat freak with a book to torment us, just like Marie Kondo she’s a mother of three.

“With growing girls, I simply couldn’t organise or purge to a place where I never had to tidy,” she says. “Out of necessity, I slowly began to adopt a new mindset and strategy for straightening up.”

The first thing I discovered trying out the method is there’s no doom pile of stuff excavated out of cupboards and landed in an unruly pile in the middle of the room, adding more mess initially, something which has defeated many a novice declutterer.

The stylish Festival baskets are like a piece of occasional furniture with plenty of storage (€39.95-€59.95 at Meadows & Byrne).

Up until now.

Yokota deploys a simple device, the Holding Box, for items you’re not sure about keeping or slinging, and waiting 24-48 hours before deciding.

“The Holding Box helps me to declutter once and for all without feeling anxious about getting rid of things and then having to go buy them again,” she explains. “It contains those mixed feelings, but you must give yourself a deadline for making that decision.”

I deployed my very first Holding Box - a basket, actually — as I plumbed the depths of a kitchen cupboard with odds and ends that needed a home but didn’t fit into the kitchen organisational algorithm, among them an ancient bottle of Holy Water with floating green furry bits (too guilty to sling), old phones (just in case) and an ashtray (sentimental attachment).

Little baskets can bring order to small items in drawers and cupboards, bathroom toiletries and personal trinkets (from €5 at Penneys).

The brimful Holding Box held its own for 24 hours, with disposal of the contents on day two. That was a week ago and so far I haven’t experienced any anxiety or regret.

Mid-purge it crossed my mind that this is a method the time-pressed might embrace, whose busy lives got them in a disorganised state in the first place. If you’re one of them, letting the Holding Box hold your ambivalence means time is freed up to get on with other things and the dread of how long it’s going to take is minimised.

For those who struggle to get started or focus, knowing you begin in a corner and cross to the opposite one might make it the method for you. It helps, too, that progress is evident as soon as you’ve tackled one corner, be it in a room or cupboard, and there’s nothing quite like seeing immediate progress for spurring us on to complete a project.

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