Which important property did Mendeleev use to classify the elements in his periodic table and did he stick to that?

(N/A) Mendeleev arranged the elements in his periodic table ordered by atomic weight or mass. He arranged the elements in periods and groups in order of their increasing atomic weight. He placed the elements with similar properties in the same group.
However,he did not stick to this arrangement for long. He found out that if the elements were arranged strictly in order of their increasing atomic weights,then some elements did not fit within this scheme of classification.
Therefore,he ignored the order of atomic weights in some cases. For example,the atomic weight of iodine $(I)$ is lower than that of tellurium $(Te)$. Still,Mendeleev placed tellurium (in Group $VI$) before iodine (in Group $VII$) simply because iodine's properties are so similar to fluorine $(F)$,chlorine $(Cl)$,and bromine $(Br)$.