Regardless of whether you live alone, with a spouse or partner or as a family you should ensure that your home is organized in a way that makes it comfortable for all. Allowing your home to become disorganized, cluttered and filled with needless junk is as easy as playing online poker.
You may not believe it but after the initial push, organizing and maintaining your home is just as easy. You just need to take the decision to start organizing, make the initial steps and then come up with a system that ensures that the organization continues.
Check out some experts’ tips and tricks for organizing your home.
Decide to Start
Recognizing that you need to organize your home is the first step in creating a living space that will be more comfortable and convenient for all involved. Sometimes people don’t even realize that their house has become a dumping ground for everyone’s junk until it’s overwhelming — and then it seems too difficult to even get started.
So be honest with yourself. Is there too much junk in the house? Do you have difficulty finding things that you need? Do you feel as though you’re always cleaning and/or organizing? Do you find yourself feeling anxious when you look around your house? Do you avoid your home? Are you embarrassed by your house — or do family members seem to be embarrassed?
These are some signs that it’s time to get started with your home organization project.
As you begin to make decisions about which things to put away and which items to discard, remember that you can only keep as much as you have space to store. Start clearing the floor space of extraneous items, then move to tabletops and other surfaces and work towards emptying out drawers and interiors.
Keep these tips in mind:
Kitchen
You don’t have to start with the kitchen but it’s a good place to start. It’s the space where people tend to gather and it’s one of the easiest places to clear up because you have ready-made storage space — fridge, drawers and cabinets. Just remember that you’re going to make sure that, at the end of the day, your surfaces are clear and everything can be easily accessed on your shelves.
• Plastics — start by organizing your storage containers. That’s a good place to start because the amount of storage containers is always getting out of hand you keep old food containers to reuse and hold onto other containers of food that people bring to you. Go through them and get rid of anything that doesn’t have a lid — that should help you get rid of about half of what you have! Then stack the rest in a way that allows you to easily access them. If it doesn’t fit, send it to the recycle bin.
• Hanging — be creative with hooks and hangers. These will give you extra cupboard space and allow you to hang your pots in a way that lets you access them easily whenever you need to grab a pot. You can also hang wire baskets where you can store cups, small gadgets, etc.
• Appliances — keep your appliances stored away. Having blenders, food processors, mixers and other appliances taking up your counter space is a major no-no when decluttering your kitchen. Other than a coffee pot, store those appliances.
• Cabinets — double your storage space in your cabinets with stackable wire racks. They add storage space to your cabinets and cupboards. You can also get racks to attach to the backs of your cabinet doors where you can store spices and herbs and other small items.
• Cleaning Supplies — make sure that your cleaning supplies are all well-organized so you can see at a glance what you might need to replenish. If you have young children in the house, be certain that all cleaning liquids are out of reach of little hands.
Bathroom
Many of the bathroom tips are similar to kitchen tips – you need shelves and cabinets, hooks and other ways to store your bathroom items. Some suggestions:
• Medicine Cabinet — go through your medicines, creams and other medicine cabinet items once a year and throw out anything that is outdated. Outdated medicines are, at best, not as effective as they need to be and at worst, dangerous.
• Keep only those medicines on hand that are most generally needed – throat lozenges, aspirin, eye drops, etc. If you have anti-biotic or some other type of medicine left after an illness, toss it – you probably won’t need it and it just takes up space.
• Storage – if your shelf space in your bathroom is limited, get a hanging basket for things like shampoos, Q-Tips, make-up, etc. Hang some wire shelves on the back of the bathroom door. Same with the inside of cabinet doors. In the bathroom, the vanity is a mainstay and a focal point. So might consider a black bathroom vanity. Vanities come in different sizes and styles, but they are functional and can hold all the toiletries and towels you need. An organized bathroom will always be a plus point to your house whenever there is a visitor or if you plan to sell your home in the future.
• Cleaning Supplies – keep cleaning supplies organized and away from children’s reach.
Children’s Bedrooms/Playroom
For many parents, keeping toys and other children’s items put away is a major task. Much depends on the age of the child but older children can be taught to help keep things orderly through rewards and by taking things away if they don’t participate in clearing up after playtime. For many children, seeing their parents taking the organization and decluttering of a room seriously is enough to get them to participate.
If the children are young, consider keeping toys out of reach and taking one toy at a time off the shelf. When the child is finished playing with that toy, it can be put away and the next toy taken down. This is a good way to train the child to put things away as well as to keep the area tidy and organized.
Regardless of how big or little your living space is, with a little bit of determination you can push ahead to organize it and keep it that way.
