All organisation articles

  • Three friends smiling for a phone selfie while holding moving boxes outside a building
    Organisation5 min read

    How to split rent fairly in a shared house

    Splitting rent equally feels fair until the rooms turn out to be different sizes. There are two common ways to handle it properly, and a real legal reason to settle on one before moving in, not after the first missed payment.

  • Hands holding a phone calculator showing the number 45, over bills and a bank card on a wooden desk
    Organisation5 min read

    How much of your income should go on rent?

    There's a well-worn rule of thumb about how much of your income should go on rent. Where it actually comes from, and a stricter second threshold sitting above it, are worth knowing before you rely on it.

  • Two gloved hands using a wrench to tighten a large brass pipe fitting against foil-wrapped insulation
    Organisation5 min read

    Finding your stopcock before you need it

    A slow drip and a burst pipe are separate emergencies, and what fixes one does nothing for the other. This is about the one that can flood a flat, and the small job worth doing well before it happens.

  • Person in a beige shirt holding a yellow-cased phone beside a cup of tea and a plate of cut sandwiches
    Organisation6 min read

    Do the admin when your brain is awake: a five-minute test

    A meter reading sent late at night with a digit missing is not proof that you are hopeless at admin. A free five-minute test, taken twice on one phone, shows what tiredness is doing to you and when the costly jobs should happen.

  • Digital prepayment electricity meter and consumer unit mounted on a plain white wall
    Organisation7 min read

    What to do before the price cap changes on 1 October

    The price cap moves on 1 October. How much that costs you comes down to a meter reading, the name of your tariff and one line on your direct debit statement that most people never read.

  • Narrow beige hallway with a white front door, two fleece jackets on wall hooks and trainers on the floor
    Organisation7 min read

    Organising a shared hallway in a flat

    Coats, shoes, a bike and the recycling all collect by the front door. This goes through what fire guidance says about that, and how to measure whether your hallway really has room for any of it.

  • Person in a checked shirt sitting cross-legged on a sofa with a calculator, a laptop and a sheaf of printed forms on a wooden tray
    Organisation7 min read

    Running a home on a first-job salary

    The bills that turn up with a first flat, and the discounts and caps attached to them. They rarely come up in conversation, yet they make a first salary go further than you might expect.

  • Man in a white T-shirt opening a pale wooden wall cupboard of cups and plates above a steel sink
    Organisation8 min read

    Under-sink storage that survives a leak

    Slow leaks hide in the cupboard under a rented sink. Arrange it differently and a drip gives itself away in a day rather than a fortnight, before anything inside is ruined.

  • Woman in pink trousers wiping a white sideboard with a cloth at night, dark window behind her
    Organisation7 min read

    The 15-minute reset that stops a flat sliding

    A short nightly order keeps a flat ahead of itself in a way a long weekend blitz never manages, and the sequence you follow matters more than the minutes you put in.

  • Woman lifting spoons from a grey cutlery tray in an open drawer beside a steel hob-top kettle
    Organisation7 min read

    Organise a small kitchen without buying anything

    You can reorganise a small rented kitchen without anything new from the shops. Two real safety rules answer most of the questions about where each thing should live.

  • Row of grey lever-arch files with a single red one, spines labelled by month, on a dark shelf
    Organisation7 min read

    A filing system for paper and admin you will keep

    A filing setup that fits on one bookshelf, built around what HMRC and the deposit schemes actually ask you to keep, and when each piece of paper can finally go.

  • Open wardrobe with a green puffer jacket on wooden hangers, wire basket drawers and a paper bag above
    Organisation7 min read

    Sort your wardrobe by how often you wear it

    Sort a wardrobe by type and the few things you reach for end up spread along the whole rail. Here is a layout built around what you actually wear, with storage that keeps wool away from moths.

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