# Organizing Your Rules

Keep a stylesheet in order as it grows: know where the browser's default styles come from and tame them with a small reset, nest related rules, and sort your styles into cascade layers so the right ones always win.

Updated: November 10, 2026

## [Defaults and Resets](https://www.ask-codey.com/courses/css-in-depth/topics/css-defaults-and-resets)

1. [Browser Defaults and a Small Reset](https://www.ask-codey.com/lessons/css-browser-defaults-and-resets) (Apprentice): Every browser styles a page before your CSS arrives, with big headings, blue underlined links and margins you never wrote, and a short modern reset tames the defaults that get in your way without throwing away the useful ones.

## [CSS Nesting](https://www.ask-codey.com/courses/css-in-depth/topics/css-nesting-topic)

1. [CSS Nesting](https://www.ask-codey.com/lessons/css-nesting) (Journeyman): CSS nesting lets you write a rule inside another rule, so a component's parts, its hover state and its media queries live together in one place instead of scattered through the file.

## [Cascade Layers](https://www.ask-codey.com/courses/css-in-depth/topics/css-cascade-layers-topic)

1. [Cascade Layers with @layer](https://www.ask-codey.com/lessons/css-cascade-layers) (Journeyman): Cascade layers sort your rules into ranked groups such as reset, base, components and utilities, so a rule in a later layer wins whatever its selector, and specificity fights and !important stop being the way styles get settled.

## [Exercise: Organize the Board Game Café's Styles](https://www.ask-codey.com/courses/css-in-depth/topics/exercise-css-board-game-cafe-layers)

1. [Exercise: Organize the Board Game Café's Styles](https://www.ask-codey.com/lessons/exercise-css-board-game-cafe-layers) (Journeyman): Sort Meeple's 260-line stylesheet into four cascade layers, nest the rules that belong together and remove every !important, while a check compares every style on the page with the original to prove nothing changed.

Source: https://www.ask-codey.com/courses/css-in-depth/chapters/css-organizing-your-rules