The Home Place--a Key Concept

Your country is your Home Place.

I was consulting at a Carolina company recently and stopped by the engineering department for a meeting. They were fortunate enough to have a lovely kitchenette in their office suite, with their own microwave! Awesome for them. Beside the microwave a laminated sign read:

"If you use the microwave, clean up after yourself!"

Good enough. I can't complain about folks wanting to use a clean microwave. Hey, leave it better than you found it, right? So, because I'm such an anal retentive nut job, I immediately looked around for some Windex and paper towels so I could clean the microwave, if I wanted too. I saw four bottles of hand soap and a dish rag, but no all purpose cleaning spray or paper towels. I could have taken five minutes and hunted through the cabinets to find what I needed, but why should I have to? If I was serious about wanting a clean microwave, shouldn't I keep my tools close to hand? Shouldn't there be a spot where those important tools go automatically? I'm thinking a spot, a HOME PLACE, and a sign: "Paper Towels and All Purpose Cleaner for Microwave." I would put this right on the counter next to the microwave, or on top of the microwave, but you could make a case for labeling a cabinet and keeping your tools there. Just as good.

The point is to have a Home Place, and you don't have a Home Place without a place and a label, a sign, a pictogram, an arrow or something to indicate what goes there. I know it sounds stupid or over-controlling, but think about your own kitchen. You don't have to look for a spatula. You know exactly where you keep the stupid spatula, and you don't need a label to find it! But have you ever tried to help your mother-in-law find a spatula in your kitchen?

"Honey bunches, where do you keep the spatula?"

"It's in the drawer, Ma!"

"Which drawer, sweetums?"

"By the refrigerator, Ma!"

"Which side, honey?"

"Left side!"

"I don't see it, dear one."

"Second drawer!"

Long pause with much clanging of metal kitchen knick-knacks, followed by mumbling that might be curses from the old country.

Find your tools in their Home Place.

You wince, get up, walk into the kitchen, cross over to the refrigerator, gently coax your mother-in-law aside, reach into the back left corner of the second drawer and pull out a spatula. Of course, that's when your mother-in-law says, "Oh," heavy sigh. "You kids don't have a plastic one?"

Anyway, if you want a clean break room, or folks to work the same way on all shift, or people to not wander around for five to ten minutes at a time looking for stuff, you may want to consider giving important items a Home Place, with a label.