Organizing Tips for Your Home

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A Guide to Organizing Your Home – Here’s Where to Start

This may be difficult to hear, but the golden rule of organizing is to approach it as a lifestyle. When you put effective systems in place and make organizing part of every day, keeping your home tidy becomes less tiresome and much easier to maintain. However, if you’re reading this, you might be looking for some help to jump start your efforts. We’ll get you on track with some easy rules for decluttering and organizing, then help you keep your home in check with tips from some of our favorite organization experts of 2021. 

 

Organizing a Specific Room?

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Organizing Your Home Has Some Benefits

We spoke with several professional organizers to get their home organization tips, and when we asked them about the advantages of organizing, they all said the same thing: getting your house in order leads to reduced stress, heightened mental clarity and increased energy. Need we say more?

 

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7 Rules to Create an Organized Home

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It’s time to get down to it. Here are our top guidelines for organizing your home. We’ll start by helping you get motivated, then move through the best ways to order and store everything in your house.

 

1. Set an Achievable Goal

Start by setting aside some time on your calendar. Making a concrete plan will help you commit to the project and give you time eliminate distractions, like finding a babysitter for the kids or continuing to push organizing aside when something more fun comes up.

Separate your home into chunks to avoid getting in over your head. Organize one room at a time, or even one section of a room at a time if you’re dealing with a large or particularly unorganized section of the house. These small steps will make the end goal less daunting. 

Get Help and Make Organizing Fun

Don’t leave what can be an overwhelming task all to yourself. Professional organizer Jane Stoller says to involve the people you live with. Have everyone sort through their own belongings and see what they can get rid of. Incentivize your kids by having a garage sale and telling them they get to keep the earnings on the items they sell.

 

 

2. Take Everything Out

When you can see every item you’ve shoved in a closet or drawer, you’ll get a better sense of just how much stuff you have and whether or not it’s really necessary to keep it all. With a glance, you can first decide if everything you see is even in the right part of the house.

If you’re organizing an area of the home that acts as storage, such as the garage, attic or basement, considering making an inventory list of everything in the room. This will help you keep track of what you own and how many of each item you have to organize and declutter effectively.

 

 

3. Group Like Items Together

Categorizing your belongings will help you keep track of everything. If you store all your cleaning supplies in the same place, you can quickly and easily find what you need when there’s a spill to clean up. This will also allow you to see what’s not being used. As you’re grouping items together, create a pile for anything you haven’t used in a while and duplicates. Assuming they are in good condition, decide if you want to donate or sell these items. Also, create a group for outdated, broken and damaged items and recycle or toss these things. Make sure to get anything you don’t use out of the house ASAP.

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4. Give Everything a Permanent Home

Now, give your grouped items a designated place so you’ll know exactly where to put them away after each use, making cleaning up a breeze. This makes it easier to keep your home organized moving forward. 

Take Note of What Doesn’t Fit in the Space

As you’re grouping your belongings and putting them away, take stock of how you’re organizing. Are you using a successful system? For example, do you have more shoes than cubby space or more coats than hooks? This may help you reconsider getting rid of things you decided to keep. If they’re truly items you use often, you may want to add more storage space.

 

 

5. Invest in Innovative Organization Solutions

Don’t be afraid to get creative when you’re putting things away. Try the following storage tips when organizing your home:

Vertical Space

This can be a useful space-saving tactic and as simple as hanging hooks on the mudroom wall for coats in the kitchen to store pots, pans and cooking utensils. Use shelves anywhere in the home for some extra space or try hanging organizers on the back of doors to keep track of craft supplies, jewelry, shoes, etc.

Plastic Bins

Containers you can close and stack are an easy way to keep track of items that don’t get used often, like holiday decorations and seasonal clothing.

Pro-Tip: Bins are easy to label to keep like items grouped together and organized. Use anything as simple as painter’s tape or sticky notes and a permanent marker, or get fancy with a label maker. 

Baskets

If you’re looking for a decorative but effective way to keep a frequently-used space in order, baskets keep toys, blankets and other items from taking up space on the floor or in living areas.

Cubbies

Use cubbies in your closet, the mudroom or wherever your children do their homework to keep track of shoes, sporting equipment and school supplies.

Pedboards

These can be used in a variety of ways, from hanging tools at your workbench in the garage to holding baskets to organize supplies in your home office.

Drawer Dividers

An obvious and effective solution to keeping clutter at bay in the kitchen, bathroom, bedroom and anywhere else you have an unruly drawer. Drawer dividers are a great way to save space and organize like items.

 

 

6. Minimize Clutter on Surfaces

As you’re implementing these new storage ideas, do your best to make sure everything is going into a cubby, basket, drawer or whichever storage solution you have in play. This will help keep your counters and other open spaces clear; anything left out should be something you use every day, but even these items should be contained. For example, keep a jar on your kitchen counter for sugar for your morning coffee, or use a tray on the bathroom vanity to hold your glasses and everyday jewelry when you’re not wearing them.

 

 

7. Create a System for Paperwork

Have a designated place for mail, bills and important paperwork, and keep them organized with a filing system. Immediately toss anything you don’t need, like junk mail, or shred important documents that you no longer need to keep. Don’t let these papers take up space on your counter or desk or in drawers.

Pro-Tip: Eliminate paper clutter by switching to paperless billing statements and removing yourself from junk mail lists.

 

Tips and Tricks to Keep Your Home Organized

Once you get your home in order, don’t let your hard work go to waste. You can finally go searching for anything you need and know exactly where to find it. Your mind is clear, you waste no time sifting through clutter and you have more time to do things that matter most to you. Use the following advice to keep your home organized once and for all.

1. Always put items back in their correct spot after using them.
2. Get rid of older items as soon as you replace them.
3. Label your storage solutions.
4. Create “zones,” in storage-related areas of the home for each storage category.
5. Designate 15 minutes a day to tidy up anything out of place. 

 

 

TL;DR: Follow The Organizational Triangle®

It’s as simple as 1, 2, 3: one home for everything, like with like, and something in-something out. Professional organizer Andrew Mellen says to follow these three golden rules to keep a clutter-free and organized home.

The first part is simple – every item needs a home. But, more than that, you should always put items back in their designated home once you’re done using them. This means that everything you own should only be in one of two places: in your hand or where it’s stored.

The next leg of the triangle, like with like, leaves no exceptions. Mellen says that all like objects should be grouped together, not most of them. For example, you take a screwdriver from its home – the workbench in your garage – to tighten a kitchen cabinet screw. You decide to leave it in a kitchen drawer instead of putting it back with the rest of your tools so it’s in a “more convenient” spot the next time you need it. However, months go by and the next time you need a screwdriver, you go to the garage, assuming it will be with all of your other tools. Now you can’t remember the “more convenient” place you last left it. Your so-called hack has failed. Stick to the tried and true – group all like objects together and put them away as soon as you’re done using them.

“Once everything has a home and its siblings are together, you are organized,” Mellen says. “Staying organized is the trick.” For that, he says to follow the final leg of the triangle: something in-something out. According to Mellen, there’s no rule on how many of each item you can have; you can have however many things fit into the space you have. But once everything has a home and all like things are together, then it’s all about staying organized.

 

 

How to Organize Your Home Room by Room

Kitchen Organization Bathroom Organization Home Office Organization	Bedroom Closet Organization Hall Closet Organization
Garage Organization Workbench Organization Ideas	Basement Organization Attic Organization Mudroom Organization

 

 

Now You Have What You Need to Get Organized

You have the mindset to organize your home like a pro, so it’s time to get rid of clutter and create a system. If you’re having trouble getting motivated, start with low-hanging fruit, like organizing small areas of the home or tossing items that you know belong in the garbage. Try renting a dumpster if you’re cleaning out a lot of clutter to help you start fresh. When you get stuck figuring out the next step, organize your home with our room-by-room checklist as you put this list of rules to work.

 

Recommended reading: How to Get Rid of Clutter | Decluttering Challenge

 

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