Blog Post

Six Big Home Organization Ideas for Small Spaces

Mike Merritt • Dec 28, 2020

You loved the idea of moving into a small home, as downgrading made you feel more unencumbered. As the months and years have gone on though, your small space has become an organizational challenge. How do you keep your home neat and tidy when there’s not a lot of it?

The following home organization ideas for small spaces should come in handy:

Organize your kitchen pantry with accessories such as wine bottle racks, spice racks, and storage baskets
Add overhead storage to your garage for more floor space
Get custom closet systems such as a master closet
Install hanging baskets and hooks on your doors and walls
Use hidden storage around the house
Make creative use of all spaces, including those neglected nooks and crannies

Organizing your home might seem like a gargantuan task, but with the tips and tactics recommended above, you’ll soon realize how easy it is to tidy up. What’s nice is that since your space is so small, you can get it looking clean and neat again quickly!

Here’s how.

Organize Your Kitchen Pantry with Useful Accessories

Do you just kind of shovel a lot of food into your kitchen pantry because you have nowhere else to put it? Sure, this works in that you clear more counter space, but from an organizational standpoint, you’re only creating a headache for yourself later.

You can still use your pantry for the same purposes, but make sure it’s organized. When you create an ordered system for what goes into your pantry, you won’t have to rip it apart each time you want to prep a meal or dessert from scratch. Much more importantly, you’ll waste less money since foods won’t disappear into the abyss only to come out on the other side expired.

If you use your pantry for storing those expensive bottles of vino, a wine bottle rack will be your best friend. Each rack can accommodate up to three bottles of your most priceless wine so it doesn’t roll, shift, or otherwise risk falling and shattering.

Perhaps you have a sizable collection of spices. The problem is your pantry is so deep and dark that the small bottles sometimes vanish, never to be seen again. Keep all of your most-used spices close at hand with a wire spice rack. No more will your small spice bottles frustrate you.

For every other area of kitchen pantry storage, wired chrome baskets can store all your odds and ends, including cans, containers, and canisters. The wiring of these baskets allows you to see what’s in each one easily.

Use Overhead Storage in Your Garage

When you ran out of room in your small home, you began grabbing items and putting them in your garage. This worked well enough for a while until your garage too began filling up with stuff.

It’s not like you can take your lawnmower, beach chairs, or Christmas decorations and store them inside. They need to stay in the garage, but what do you do when space is more than sparse? Stop thinking about storage space as that which is only on the floor!

Overhead garage storage like a metal storage rack will declutter your garage in a jiffy. Whether you need a shorter storage rack that’s 24 inches or one that expands all the way to 42 inches, you can take advantage of this great solution for garage storage.

Gather those old holiday decorations, put them in plastic buckets, then stow them away until next Christmas. You can even add scooters, mini-vehicles, and bicycles on these storage racks so they’re up and out of the way during the off-season.

It’ll feel like having a new garage since you’ll now have much more floor space.

Get Custom Closet Systems Throughout the House

What about the rest of your small home outside of the kitchen and garage? It could use some love too. Well, more than likely, if space is limited, you’ve probably shoved what you could fit into the closets of your home, right? You’re even scared to open any of the closet doors in case a mountain of toys, clothes, or blankets comes tumbling out.

Custom closet systems that are designed to your organizational needs are a great option. No matter the room in your home that needs a revamp, you can get a closet to match.

Bedroom closets with shelves, drawers, and hanging rods will let you separate your business clothes from your everyday clothes as noted by Innovative Home Storage in Six Effortless Steps to Organizing Your Custom Closets. By adding a shoe fence or a tie rack, you can add more to your closet in an efficient way. You can even get divided drawers for underwear, socks, bras, or whatever you wish.

Don’t worry about your hall closets, as you can organize those as well. The above storage solutions will make it easy to keep the kids’ toys and games in a neat, yet accessible place. Even reach-in closets that you otherwise don’t get much use out of can be reinvigorated so they’re spots you can utilize all the time.

Install Hanging Baskets and Hooks on Available Doors and Walls

The mentality you took to organizing your garage can apply to the rest of your small spaces as well. Instead of thinking of storage as only that which is on the floors, look to those empty walls or even your doors.

Hanging hooks and baskets can be mounted to many walls, especially those in your laundry room or mudroom. You can use the hooks for attaching those items that take up too much space in your closets, such as your step ladder, your broom, and the accompanying dustpan.

Hanging baskets can clear more surfaces, letting you stow whatever items you usually keep in that room. For instance, in the laundry room, you might add small bottles of laundry detergent, clothes fresheners or softeners, and stain removers to the baskets.

Take Advantage of Hidden Storage

Your storage solutions don’t necessarily have to be so overt. If you want to maintain the appeal of your home as well as its neatness, then use hidden storage. As an example, you can get storage drawers added under your bed, suggests HGTV.

Almost no one is going to bother looking under here except for you and your family. Yet if someone ever did take a peek, they would see a series of tidy drawers. What you put in those drawers is your choice. You could stash off-season clothing, bulky garments that don’t fit in your dresser drawers, spare sheets, or other bedding.

Does your small home have a staircase? If so, then you have another awesome hidden storage opportunity at your fingertips. Bob Vila has a series of impressive under-stairs storage ideas that will get your creative juices flowing.

Some homeowners with deep staircases use the space as a tiny yet ultra-cozy spare room and others have gotten their washing machine and dryer installed there. This could work for you too considering these machines are so bulky but also necessary.

At the very least, an under-stairs storage space with drawers can be used to tidy up your living room, entertainment room, kitchen, or even a little bit of everything. Your stairs are already such a space-hog, so you might as well make them useful!

Don’t Ignore Those Nooks and Crannies

As you go through your small home to organize it, view it with creative eyes. Look at any and every space from the perspective of how it can be used to organize your home. For example, an extended windowsill can store some small items. You might be able to fit a bookshelf into that odd-shaped corner you haven’t found a purpose for. It just takes a bit of imagination to make the most of your home!

Conclusion

Having only small spaces to work with is great because you don’t have as much to clean, but the downside is you run out of storage room so much quicker. With the tips and solutions you now have, whether it’s a tiny kitchen, garage, living room, bedroom, or your whole home is small, you can organize it!