Problem Solving through Creative Organization at Home

This has taken some time to think about, I have fixed many issues but not many that would fill up two pages. For some reason I have always been good at thinking up how to fix things, or to do things better.
Step one of the creative process is finding something that needs to be resolved or a new chance exists. This means you see something that needs fixing, or an opportunity that you can take away from. The problem I found that need to be fixed was at my job I work in a catering kitchen, in the dishwasher area where we place the clean dishes, can get piled up after a couple of runs. There are big things like sheet pans, pots and pans, and then there are small things such as ladles spatulas, whisks, squeeze bottles, bowls, and soup cups.
Step two is called immersion. This is where you focus on the problem at hand. You think about many ways to fix the issue while still working on the issue. While doing dishes I would think what we could do to fix the issue of the area getting crowed. I would think about everything that we clean, what goes through the dishwasher and what gets washed by hand. When placing things on the table I would think how could we rearrange things on the table or add shelf’s to the table. Step three is the incubation. This step means you do not act but steadily think about the information you have thought of and think about what will work next. I though how do we take stuff from the table to be put away, the big and little items. I thought how we try to take a lot of thing to reduce our trips to and from the dish table. Trying to think of the placing of items on the table and taking them away, what would work best for each so what I would come up with would work with both.
Step four is insight. Insight is where the solution to your problem comes into your mind when you least expect it. Some examples would be on the way to work, cleaning dishes, eating dinner. The solution to the clutter came in to my mind while I was taking the trash out at work. We have two sets of trash containers, one for card board and the other for trash and recycle. So the trash is sorted before you take it out. I thought we have bus tubs; we can sort what goes into them then take the whole tub when you go to put it away. The sorting of the tubs would be by two tubs. One tub would be what goes to the far side of the kitchen, what the back of the house uses for service like tongs, spatulas spoons, and ladles. The second tub would be what goes closest to the dish machine, which would be front of the house ladles, serving utensils, locking tongs, squeeze bottles, bar items, and similar items.
Step five is verification and application, which you see if what you thought of will work to your satisfaction and fix the problem. This would mean you gather evidence that your solution works. I noticed that when we do take stuff to put it away we will put multiple items in our arms or whatever we are carrying. With the bus tubs they would sit on the table and you would throw the items into the right tub. This made a lot more space on the table for the bigger items. It took a few times for this to get into place, but after a while we all use this system. Having all the little items contained to one place worked better than we thought. We have a lot more space to put other items down. Now when we go to put the stuff away we take the whole tub, empty it and return it.