Beth Jorgensen tries to be organized; she really does. About a year ago, for example, the 44-year-old mother of two from Fargo, North Dakota, decided to reorganize all her packed kitchen drawers, with mixed results. Among other things, she had heard that the dishes used most often should be kept closest to the dishwasher, so she decided to store the family’s drinking glasses and stemware in an adjacent cabinet — on a lazy Susan. A disaster waiting to happen with every spin? You betcha.

Beth’s husband, Mike, 41, a chiropractor, never liked the new system. Somehow, “it didn’t make sense to him,” she says. But Beth, a part-time legal assistant, couldn’t face the idea of reorganizing yet again, even after she opened the door of another cabinet and watched her mother’s cut-glass creamer fly out and smash to pieces.

And there were more problems. Despite Beth’s organizational attempts, each cabinet overflowed with items grouped with no rhyme and little reason. Antique china and glass serving bowls were stacked on high shelves — another opportunity for accidents. Then there was the clutter: spice containers tucked into every spare inch, special-occasion candlesticks crammed into prime real estate, not to mention the food-container drawer, where anything and everything jockeyed for space with the hand mixer and the lidless cottage-cheese tubs.

But all that was about to change. Real Simple shattered the old “system,” replacing it with a few strategic organizing tools and rules. Here’s how the pieces came together.