Creative Ways to Organize Your Home

Are you satisfied with how organized your home is? Do you wish you could find creative ways to become more organized?

Just for a minute, visualize your ideal home environment. Close your eyes and walk through your house one room at a time and imagine each space as you wish it could be.

Okay, back to the real world. Can you think of what is keeping you from achieving that ideal in their home? Let’s take a quick minute to look at barriers and excuses that keep us from being organized.

Common excuses I hear from clients include:

~ I might need it someday
~ I keep it for the sentimental value
~ More is better
~ I’m saving that for my kids
~ It’s really old and might be worth something
~ My kids and husband just won’t help
~ I bought that when it was on sale
~ It still works, fits, etc.

Barriers we all encounter due to the hectic pace of modern life:

~ Busy lifestyle
~ Lack of time
~ Lack of energy
~ Lack of cooperation and motivation
~ Lack of knowledge about the organizing process
~ Feeling overwhelmed

Okay, so let’s dive in and look at some frequent organizing challenges in today’s home. Starting with PAPER! Paper creates more clutter and mess than anything else in your home. I recommend you start with what is known in the professional organizing world as a “quick sort”.

To do a quick sort you gather all the piles of paper that have accumulated around the house. Keep out only the most important papers (those related to a project or deadline). Then put all the remaining papers in a box and go through them as you have time. Make the commitment to make a final decision about each piece of paper. Unpaid bills need a home.

You can use an accordion folder which is great for organizing bills and receipts. You can also make use of manila folders that can be labeled with “Take action”, “To be filed”, “To read”, etc which are important categories to have when sorting paper.

When you are sorting the papers in the box set a timer for 15 minutes. Limit yourself to that length of time because if you remain at it longer than that you will lose interest and start making decisions that will not last. Remember this paper clutter is simply postponed decisions. So make a decision about every piece of paper in your home and than continue that trend to beat the paper clutter monster.

Another thing that can lead to chaos in our home is that everyone can be headed in different directions. One child needs to be at dance while the other has an after school club across town. This can lead to disorganization. So we recommend that you create a family “command” center. This is a place to sort mail, leave notes for each other, hang your keys and keep track of events.

A place together purses, keys, grocery lists and notes all in one place. A family calendar is also a must- one “master” calendar that lists where everyone is going to be and when (should be color coded as the kids get older). Some tech savvy families sync their Outlook or Google calendars rather than using the traditional paper calendar. Whatever works for your family is fine, as long as everyone knows where they are supposed to be.

Most of us have a home office, whether it is for homework and checking email or running a business out of. These rooms typically attract clutter and can fall victim to “drop it here syndrome”.

Drop it here syndrome is that chaos that ensues when you find out company is on their way over and you gather all the stuff from around the house and dump it in a room with a door that can close-it’s okay, we all tend to resort to this method when we don’t have an effective system in place.

Remember that in an office you should easily be able to access your telephone, printer and trashcan without getting out of your chair. Determine the function of your office and then move things out that do not match that function.

Let’s look at the steps to organizing the bathroom. First, evaluate if what is being stored in the bathroom needs to be there. Most bathrooms lack storage space so make sure there are not items in the bathroom that could find a new home and free up space for things that should be in the bathroom.

What should be in the bathroom? Washcloths, a hand towel and a bath towel for each person, things you need to take a bath (shampoo, body wash), things you need to clean your teeth, two rolls of toilet paper, hand soap and unfortunately bath toys. Now you don’t need four bottles of shampoo and three tubes of toothpaste so start by purging what you do not need. Store it elsewhere or get rid of it. If the 4th and 5th bottle of shampoo remains unopened you can donate it to a women’s or homeless shelter.

We have a basket on the counter that holds my boys fluoride rinse, deodorant, sunscreen etc instead of having it strewn all around the room. Get a mesh holder for bath toys that are kept in the tub when not in use. That way the excess water can drain into the tub and not accumulate in the bottom of some plastic tub- ew! They make nice over-the-door hangers for towels and robes. If your kids are tall enough install these so that they know where they are expected to hang their towel when done.

Let’s look at ways to organize the kitchen. One of the most important things to remember is to keep like items with like and to store things where it makes the most sense. Now that may seem elementary but how many of you know that you should not store spices above the stove? yet 9 times out of 10 that is exactly where you will find them in a typical home.

I have a caddy (usually used for silverware) that I keep stocked with flatware, napkins and placemats. This not only looks attractive but encourages cooperation from the members of my family. A tween is much more likely to volunteer to set the table when all the tools to do so have already been gathered.

Let’s talk about bedrooms for a minute, especially the master. Your bedroom should be your haven, your place of peace and rest. But how many of us have to move folded clothes off the bed to get in it, pick up our husband’s dirty socks off the floor and pry the remote out of his hand to go to sleep? To have an organized bedroom make a commitment that you will let the bedroom have one main function- relaxation. Don’t allow things in the room that detract from that. Some items that help organize a bedroom are baskets or trays to empty pockets at the end of the day, hold perfume and toiletries and a magazine basket.

Okay, now to organizing the kid’s rooms. Good luck! Just kidding. There are ways to keep a child’s area, whether it is a playroom or bedroom neat and tidy. First of all- expect more. Too often we let our kids off the hook very easily saying “they’re too little” or thinking it is easier to handle something ourselves. But the more responsibility they have for keeping the space clean, the longer it will stay clean.

You can divide a child’s room into zones. Split the room into fours and then give them a certain amount of time to get each zone clean. When they are done with a zone (to your satisfaction) they can have a break for a set time and then they go back to the next zone. This is especially good for kids that have attention issues.

Another old standby in the professional organizing field is… a place for everything and everything in its place. If an item gets put away one place one day and another the next you can’t expect your child to keep a space organized. The are durable products out their that can withstand even the roughest child.

Then there are the main living areas in your home- having a place for everything is important in these spaces as well and increasing storage is vital to keeping these spaces uncluttered. Magazines and catalogs can create a real mess in these rooms. Our rule of thumb is to only keep the current issue on hand. When you are done reading a magazine go through and tear out the articles of interest (if you really need the info and won’t be able to find it on the Internet) and store them in a file or three ring binder. I had an unused wine rack that I turned into storage for the magazines I am currently reading. I roll them up and they fit neatly in the wine bottle slot. It is an attractive storage option.

Before ending this article it is important to know how important maintenance is when a space is newly organized. It takes repeating a task consistently 21 times before it becomes a habit. Buying a product or reading an article and thinking it will make you organized is naive. But developing new systems and storage solutions and being dedicated to the process will yield huge results.