My daughter has some stacking shelves in her bedroom closet where she keeps her board games. I put up with them because they’re better than my previous organisation method of nothing, but I’m quickly realising they are less than ideal.

If she tries to grab, say, Hoot Owl Hoot, and it’s at the bottom of one of the shelves, the games on top of it come crashing down. That board game tower gives me mild anxiety, now that I think about it.

Boy, we really know how to wreck a good thing. Japan sends us their charismatic organizational expert and what do we do? We ruin her by turning her into a verb.

While organising and arranging cables behind your media centre or brand new computer might give you a rush of adrenaline, untangling said cables after you add, remove and rearrange the stuff in your life is always a hassle.

Video: At Brooklyn’s Books Are Magic, as at most bookstores, the books are organised sensibly.

Here at Lifehacker headquarters, I sit right next to our wonderful video producer, Heather.
All of two feet separate us at all times. While she works, diligently editing videos, I think to myself: does she judge me?

You know that disgusting drawer full of random ketchup packets, receipts, rubber bands and other assorted crap dumped from your pockets or purse at the end of the day? Some people call it the Junk Drawer. Others call it the Everything Drawer, or the Odds and Ends Drawer or simply “That Drawer.” I call it the Drawer of Tricks, as in Dirty Tricks, the type employed by Richard Nixon and hoarders. Some people don’t have a drawer and they have a Bowl of Tricks or a Shelf of Tricks or a Corner of the Kitchen Counter of Tricks.

Here’s another one of those small things you can knock out of the way before the year’s end: Organise your financial documents.

“OK, Mum, my room is clean!”

Looking for a job is difficult under the best of circumstances, and it gets considerably more so when you aren't prepared. Optimistically, we stick with a gig for a while even if we don't love it, neglecting to keep our resumes and other materials prepped if an opportunity comes up that we want to jump at.

There’s something about spring that seems like a fresh start. It’s still a second chance at a new year, a time to get everything in order and set some goals.

Video: Cupcakes are a universal good, and using silicone liners makes for a cleaner, cheaper and more colourful baking experience. But these little reusable wrappers have a wider range of uses beyond simply baking.

I’ve always been a fan of pre-travel planning, to the point that I build a packing grid before every trip. The packing grid includes outfit components for every day of travel (based on predicted weather and activity), as well as a list of essentials that I don’t want to leave behind: Advil, Band-Aids, my Fitbit charger and so on.

It is a decision I face daily. When my five-year-old daughter shows me her latest work of art, do I: A) talk to her about it and then stealthily slip it into the recycling bin, or B) talk to her about it, hang it on the wall or fridge, leave it there for a couple of years forgotten, and then stealthily slip it into the recycling bin? The mental load is real.

I appreciate the many storage bins, baskets and chests that have contained my kid's avalanche of toys. They're pretty - we have a few woven ombré ones. They're huge. And best of all, I've been able to toss things in there at a rapid-fire pace before guests arrive, and have my house instantly look like it's straight from the pages of an IKEA catalogue - or at least like Fisher Price did not just throw up in it. My continual solution for getting rid of clutter has been to buy more beautiful bins. And now I realise that these containers have got to go.

"So many books, so little time" might be an eye-rolling slogan slightly worse than "Keep calm and carry on," but it's also literally true. As is "so many books, so little space." When you have too many books, how do you decide which ones to get rid of? We asked authors, publishers, and booksellers (all notorious book hoarders) how they keep control of their home libraries.

There comes a time when enough is, quite simply, enough. I had been putting off the task of organising my sprawling Gmail inbox for months, if not years. But when Lifehacker told me that we were going to have a Spring Cleaning week, I knew it was time. And I wasn't going to waste precious hours trying to find apps or tools to do the task for me. I needed to Ron Swanson my inbox -- roll up my sleeves, jump in, and manage the mess manually.

Android/iOS: My boyfriend and I live in a two-bedroom apartment with exactly two, exceptionally small closets. The closest are big enough to hold our clothes, but when it comes to other things that one might put in a closet, that stuff is stashed all over our house.

When you're a geek with preferences on USB cable construction materials and a penchant for buying more than a few directional adaptors, organising the yards upon yards of wiring you've accumulated can be a bit daunting. Instead of learning enough knots to compete with the boys at the local yacht club, I turned to the old hook and loop fastener you might know as Velcro. With a single roll of cable-friendly straps, a pair of scissors, and somewhere to put it all, you can organise the tangled web of black cables you've woven around your keyboard or TV.

For everyone subscribed to the philosophy of GTD, myself included, task managers are essential to managing the process digitally. Of course, they're only useful if you actually use them, as evidenced by the trail of task managers I've left in my wake as I search for one with the right combination of cross-platform access, easy task management, and a little bit of sharing functionality. It would also help if it were in a place I wouldn't forget about (or avoid) such as my web browser.