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How to Organize Your Home, Room by Room
When it comes to organizing your home, you might feel overwhelmed by the sheer size of the project. Whether you tend to pile up clutter on the counters or your drawers and closets are overstuffed (or both), you might not know where to start.
The best way to get organized is to have the same general plan of attack for each room, from the kitchen and bathroom to the living room and bedrooms: Declutter, find a place for everything and make it easy to put your items away each time you use them.
Keep reading to learn how to put this strategy in motion for every area of your house!
Organize The Kitchen
Starting your organization project in the kitchen makes sense for a lot of people because it's where messes accumulate easily. When the kitchen is clean, that tidiness tends to extend to other areas of the home. Begin by going through each cabinet and thinking about which items you use on a regular basis.
Also, consider quantities: Do you really need 40 plastic storage containers? If you can't close the drawer where you keep the dishtowels, is it possible you have too many? Workweek Lunch explains what should go in a minimalist kitchen if you choose to go that route. For most people, asking yourself whether you truly use an item in question will help determine whether you should keep it.
Using drawer dividers and clear bins will help keep your equipment within easy reach. Also, consider which items should be kept together. While it might seem like keeping pots with their lids in the cabinet makes sense, this could be difficult if you have limited space. In that instance, stacking the pots and storing the lids upright in a nearby bin will conserve space and make it easier to find what you need. Go through the whole kitchen like this, evaluating whether your chosen storage spaces are the right ones based on your particular items.
Organize The Living Room
The living room is where the family typically congregates. If you have a den or family room in your house where everyone gathers to watch TV, play games, and spend time together, then that's the next room to focus on.
The types of items that need organizing in a living room are generally related to entertainment. A large entertainment center with plenty of drawers and bins might be the perfect place to stash board games, video games, DVDs, game system controllers, and so on.
Bookshelves can be used to hold board games in addition to books. If you have little ones, try placing the games and puzzles they use on the lower shelves so they can help themselves. Remember to declutter as the kids grow by donating games they've outgrown!
Organize The Home Office
Creating an office space that allows you to be comfortable and productive can be a challenge, especially if you're faced with a lack of space. First, clear anything unrelated to work out of the space. The home office shouldn't be an overflow area for other rooms in the house, so if you have children's toys, stacks of personal mail, or a pile of mending on your desk, get it out of there.
Try to keep your desk clear of anything you aren't using at any given moment. While you should have pens, legal pads, post-it notes, and highlighters in easy reach, they shouldn't be scattered all over the desk. Either use the drawers or invest in a few inexpensive bins to store these items.
A file cabinet or two is handy if you don't have a paperless office. You can often pick these up at yard sales or secondhand stores. If you're interested in going paperless, that will save a lot of space. HGTV has a helpful article on the steps to take if you're interested in going that route.
Organize The Bedroom
In an ideal world, the bedrooms in a home would all be neat and tidy, as this lends itself to relaxation and a good night's sleep. You can make this happen! First, go through the room with a basket or bag to collect items that don't belong in there. Household items that need attention tend to accumulate in the master bedroom. Find a different area for these belongings.
Make the bed, as that gives the room a tidy feel even if the rest of the space is a bit cluttered. Then go through one nightstand or dresser drawer at a time, pulling out items that you no longer use and putting the rest of the items back neatly. Declutter the surface area of the furniture, too. If you have a chair or loveseat in your bedroom, it should be empty except for a throw blanket and/or decorative pillow. Get the piles of clean laundry put away; don't let them languish in baskets on the floor, chair, or bed.
The closet is a separate project. Go through your racks of clothes, removing items you don't want or need. The only clothes you should keep are the ones you wear regularly and those you will continue to wear on special occasions. If it's been over a year since you've worn something, let it go. Pick your shoes off of the floor; use a shoe rack to keep them from being stepped on and tripped over. There are a wide variety of closet accessories you can use to keep yourself organized. Premier Closets and Storage Solutions recently published a piece called 7 Versatile Accessories for Organizing Your Custom Closets.
Organize The Garage
If one place in the house is likely to be disorganized, it's the garage; it tends to become the dumping ground for items that don't have a home. The biggest tip for getting this area under control is to purge, purge, purge. If an item has been exiled from the living area of the house and relocated to the garage, there's a good chance you don't need it anymore. In this case, have a garage sale, donate the excess items to a local charity, or, if something is broken, throw it away.
Once you've gotten rid of the clutter in the garage, it's time to make sense of the rest. Consider suspending bicycles from the ceiling using overhead racks; this is a great way to keep them from becoming damaged or, worse, scratching your car! Shelves or racks on the walls go a long way toward keeping items organized. Cabinets are also a good way to get items up off of the floor and behind closed doors, keeping them dust- and insect-free. If you can use the wall space around the perimeter of your garage, this will open up floor space for your car, a workbench, or even just letting the kids ride their bikes on a rainy day.
Conclusion
If you struggle with disorganization, your entire house in good order isn't going to happen in one day or even one week. Setting aside some time each day to begin going through each room will pay off more quickly than you might think, however. Work at decluttering each room, then focus on finding places to store each item. Before you know it, you'll have organized your home and can focus on simply maintaining it.