There is nothing like having an organized home. Having it clutter-free with everything at your fingertips can make coming home a rewarding experience at the end of a long day. Yet, wanting an organized home and being successful at home organization are two different things. The beginning can be overwhelming.
What is the best way to organize your home? There are many ways to create order out of chaos in your home. Some of the best practices include purging, tackling clutter magnets, arranging by using cubbies, using wall space, and taming the dreaded junk drawer.
This article will show you how to tackle any kind of home organization project head on!
The Purge
Before taking on any home organization project, you first need to purge your home of all unwanted and unnecessary items. Clothing and other goods that are in good condition should be donated to your local donation center. Items that are broken or worn out should be discarded or recycled when possible.
When trying to decide what stays and what goes, remember the 80/20 rule. Most people only use about 20 percent of what they have. It can make it easier to decide what to keep.
To help determine what to toss, set up a three-box system. Label the first box Keep. Mark the second one as Store. Finally, write Toss on the third. Go through one area at a time, depositing items into the appropriate box. Once finished, put the storage box in a separate storage space, label and inventory if desired, and put the toss box where you can quickly discard the items. You can now organize the items in your keep box.
Look for Clutter Spots
The easiest way to begin purging and ultimately succeeding in home organization is to look for areas that tend to be clutter magnets. Places like the kitchen counter or dining room table tend to be a catch-all for items that don’t really belong there.
Start by clearing these cluttered areas by putting things away or throwing them in the trash, depending on what they are. Do you dump piles of junk mail on the table with the intent to put it in the recycling bin? Now is the time to relocate it to its proper place. You should do the same thing with keys, wallets, and watches. It’s time to find a better home for these things. Have a dozen charging cables? Invest in a charging station.
Once you’ve cleared your clutter magnets of the mess, Womansday.com recommends setting the area so that it blocks future clutter from occurring. For example, if the kitchen table is a holder for all of your junk, set the table as though you intend to use it. Put a tablecloth and placemats on the tabletop and decorate it with a centerpiece. It helps to brighten up the area and keeps you and your family from using it as a place to discard junk.
It’s All in the Arrangement
Arranging your items is a necessary part of home organization. Go room by room to organize your closets, cabinets, and other storage spaces. A good rule of thumb is to make sure you put the most often used things at the front of each area. Doing so allows you to quickly grab items you frequently use without rifling through the cabinets of shelves.
If you have a small space and items you need to get to, such as spices, consider using a Lazy Susan as a storage shelf. The turntable allows you to access herbs that you have at the back of the cabinet without taking everything out to get to them.
If you don’t already have a place for the detergent in your laundry room, consider installing shelving or cubbies. You can buy inexpensive plastic crates and screw them into the wall studs to have a place to store supplies. If your laundry area doubles as storage for brooms and mops, consider getting Command hooks or broom holders. These handy contraptions keep your brooms and mops off the floor and from falling all over the place. They also help to make a small space look tidier.
Cubbies Are Your Friend
The Family Handyman notes that cubbies can make it easy to store items, especially in children’s rooms and play areas. These handy shelves are usually low enough that children can easily access their toys and books. You can organize them in a way where they can see exactly what they want to grab without emptying the toy box to find that one special toy.
They also make excellent bookcases for small children’s books. Arrange the spines out or covers forward, so they know which ones they are picking. As they grow, you can easily replace the titles with age-appropriate material.
While cubbies are great for kids, other uses can help you organize your space. Use bins in the cubby holes to collect items you don’t want to display. Be sure to use cubby labels to keep track of where you put the remotes or the extra HDMI cables. You can also use them to organize your video game systems and controllers so they are not left all over the living room.
Looking for a media center with a lot of storage for DVDs, players, and cable boxes? Cubbies work wonders. You can use them to design a media center that works best for your space.
Go Up in the Kitchen
Some homes have spacious kitchens with plenty of room for everything you have. Others are too small to adequately store pots, pans, and all of your dishes. It might be time to get creative so that your kitchen remains organized, and you don’t spend too much time looking for specific items.
Pots and pans don’t have to go under the counter to remain organized. Good Housekeeping recommends investing in an overhead potholder or wall hooks and hang your pans for easy accessibility.
Other items going on the wall may make finding them more manageable. Use Command hooks to organize:
- Potholders
- Serving Spoons
- Aprons
- Dry Measuring Cups
- Coffee Mugs
Using the walls are not the only way to organize things in your kitchen. Adding a thin board to the back of your cabinet doors can also allow you to hang measuring cups and other items.
Drawers Aren’t Catchalls
Every home inevitably has a junk drawer. It’s a single drawer, usually in the kitchen or laundry room, where things are tossed and left to collect dust. Eventually, you need to find those batteries or that lone screwdriver that works on almost anything in the house. When that time comes, battling the junk drawer is a nightmare.
Don’t look at that drawer as a catch-all for things you don’t know where to store to organize your home. Instead, use a drawer organizer or dividers to give like items a space to go. Homedit.com also suggests purchasing small containers. Get a small container as a place for batteries, so they aren’t rolling all over the drawer. If there is enough space, get a small box for each battery type and label them as such.
If you use a drawer to contain all of your arts and crafts items, set limits. Do you really need fifteen rolls of washi tape? Or how about three dozen rolls of ribbon? Probably not. Set a limit on how many you can have and stick to it. If you have room, consider setting up rods to hold ribbons and tape where you can clearly see what you have and what you might need.
Conclusion
Like most things, home organization is not a once and done type of thing. You must continually keep up with it to ensure that clutter doesn’t win the day. By routinely purging your home, using cubbies, putting stuff on the wall, arranging things by use, and organizing the junk drawer, you can keep your home looking nice and be able to find what you need when you need it.
Sources
- https://www.womansday.com/home/organizing-cleaning/g2801/life-changing-organization-tips/
- https://www.goodhousekeeping.com/home/tips/g2610/best-organizing-tips/?slide=27
- https://www.familyhandyman.com/list/the-50-organizing-tips-youll-regret-you-didnt-know-sooner/
- https://www.homedit.com/home-organization/
