Home Organization: Tips to downsize, declutter, organize and simplify your home.

25 Organizing and De-cluttering Tips to help you regain control of your home and your life. Step-by-step instructions for managing clutter and.
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Put the box aside for a day and return items when you have a free 15 minutes. Most people love looking at photos but dread arranging them in albums. Or hang a canvas laundry bag in the closet, toss in items, and donate little by little, rather than conducting a massive overhaul. I have a shoe hanger in the hall closet for my husband and me and a storage bench for our two girls, but shoes still get strewn all over the entryway. My 2-year-old is young, but my 6-year-old should be doing a better job. Identify who in your clan is left-brained technically oriented and who is right-brained creative, free-flowing , then tailor tasks to the individuals.

Kids are more likely to put away their stuff if you work with them to create systems. Your husband might not put mail in the bin, but he sure knows how to arrange his baseball-hat collection. Let him organize the things he finds most important. Make him your partner in organization and let his solutions surprise you. Now I have a house full of containers. And place small containers in a kitchen cabinet to corral dry-soup packets. If, in your frenzied bin binge, you bought containers in all the colors of the rainbow, that might be a good thing. Before hitting the store, measure the width, height, and depth of your closets and shelves.

One rule of thumb: Your hats and gloves are stashed in one bin, and your winter jackets fill another. I have an accordion file overflowing with college-tuition bills and credit-card statements. For more toss-it tips, see 5 Steps to Simpler Record-Keeping. Does it fit, flatter, and make you feel like a million bucks? Organize this area first and you will be amazed at how much more inviting your home feels when you return to it each day. This goes for your workspace or office too, the first place your eyes detect clutter — start there. This quick video has great ideas for organizing very small spaces and making them highly functional.

Love her entry way ideas. Could they work for you? Tackle one room per week and one section of room per day. Carry two boxes with you and a trash bag.

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Resist the temptation to make piles. One box if for items you do not use anymore, but are in usable condition. No, you don't need 15, rubber bands. Get rid of them, with the exception of maybe a dozen. Ask yourself honestly — do I need all this? If the answer is no - recycle, throw away or prepare to sell the items.

It's important to get a grasp on what you may actually use someday and what is reality. If you haven't used it in six months, you most likely aren't going to. Get rid of it. As each box fills, attend to it. Put items away and put your for sale items in one location in your home.


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Sit down with a piece of paper as you do your room by room and allocate a place in that room for everything that belongs there. Everything should have a specific place that you go to find it. Map it out, draw it out whatever you need to do, but ensure that you get to a point where everything has a set place. Use labels if needed to help you remember where you put things. Planning is important here, write it down and you'll be more successful at organizing and remaining that way.

Hooks immediately inside the door for coats, purses and keys. You walk in, they come off and go straight on the hooks. No more fumbling for keys, finding coats, wondering where you left your purse. This one tip, developed into an amazing habit for me that has saved me many hours of wasted time and frustration. Junk drawers are clutter creators and they reinforce bad habits. If you must have a junk drawer or drawer for miscellaneous stuff, limit yourself to one such drawer and make cleaning it out a monthly chore.

Want to get clutter under control? Stop bringing new stuff in. Learn to use what you have and if you can't use what you have, make sure that you throw something out for every new item you bring into your home. Going to the grocery store? Clean out the fridge. Buying a new decorative item? Get rid of an old one. This act of trading not only stops excess clutter; it makes us mindful of what we are bringing into our space and prevents hoarding of unnecessary objects.

Every home or office has maintenance tasks that must be done daily, weekly, monthy, semi-annually, and yearly. Make a list of these tasks see my sample one to the right. Put the checklist on your fridge or in a prominent location. Every family member should have assigned tasks from each section and they should be required to check them off when completed. Even younger children should be involved; it develops good habits. It also develops a sense of satisfaction when you see that tasks are being done.

If your children resist this idea, use incentives. Around here, we are not allowed video games until homework and tasks are completed. Incentive helps kids better cooperate. Kitchens are the worst. This video shows a pro organizer redoing her brothers small apartment kitchen to make it more functional. I like that she's mindful of attachments to items and things like that. A space should be functional, but also personal. Stacking things develops bad habits. Stacks of items tend to grow into unmanageable piles of clutter and chaos that then take hours to clean and sort.

This could be your mail, the laundry, dishes etc. This rule will save you hours of wasted time when you learn to follow it. For mail and papers get an inbox and outbox. Place this on your weekly task list.

Bills go out, the papers get tossed or filed. Things come in, attend to them right away or place them only temporarily in the inbox. All dishes go immediately into the dishwasher or get washed in the sink after use; no leaving them in other areas or allowing them to pile up.

Take mental note of your space. Where do items tend to stack up and why? When possible, you may want to create a station or workable organized area near this place. For example, if you find you pile your mail and school papers and such on the dining room table, perhaps it's because this is the first large, flat surface you come in contact with when you enter the home. Instead, place a small plastic chest of drawers on or near this table with labels.

Perhaps when you go into your office you see a jumble of papers all tacked to a bulletin board or piled on the desk. Purchase a file or office trays and label them for the various types of items that are piling up. The key is figure out why it piles up, what it is and what you can do to make it function within the same space if you can. Speaking of things that tend to pile up! A load or two of laundry every single day keeps this situation under control. Every bedroom should have a hamper if you don't have a laundry chute.

10 Creative Ways to Declutter Your Home

Part of each child's morning ritual should be emptying their hamper and their wastebasket. Have them do it on their way down to breakfast, it only takes a minute. Clothes should be immediately folded, placed in a basket and then taken and put away. When you use something and set it down, it makes you have to go back to put it away later, which requires you to touch it twice.

The touch it once rule is a simple way to remember the concept of use and put away. Drink from the glass put it immediately into the dishwasher, not leave it sitting on your desk. Don't take off your shirt when you come home and throw it on the bed. Later you have to take it to the laundry. This makes a two-step issue out of something that should only be one simple step. The same premise goes for frequently used and lost items like remote controls.

Don't leave it sitting on the couch or chair where it will surely get lost. Closets should be organized neatly with a place for everything. I enjoy shoe organizers and the hanging folding shelves for many items. There are many frugal ways to organize closet space and make it more functional. Map out the closets in your home, what you keep there and what should go together. You may need to rework closets to get like items together in an area where they function the best.

Decluttering The Living Room

For example your hall closet should have shoes, coats, dog leashes, outdoor toys, etc. Storage rooms should also be organized according to function. Keep like items with like items for functionality. Binders are great for organizing everything from your most frequently used recipes to your kids art and assignments. Every child gets a binder. Papers you want to keep are 3-hole punched and placed in the binder immediately.

Every year go through and clean out what you don't need. Consider scanning pieces of art instead of keeping all the originals — that way you can enjoy them without them hogging up space all over the house. Keep a binder of your most commonly used recipes in the kitchen so you don't have to dig for a specific recipe book etc. This is very handy when you keep it tabbed! Mine has non-food recipes in one section I make soaps, lotions etc and holiday recipes in another tap, and common recipes in the front tab! Speaking of kitchens, how much do you struggle with knowing what you have on hand and what you need to purchase?

Does your fridge regularly frighten you with odd odors and things you can no longer identify?

10 Creative Ways to Declutter Your Home

This happens to the best of us at times, and kitchens are the one area of the house it pays literally to be more organized. Map your pantry out. One shelf for canned goods and like cans in a row, boxes on another shelf, etc. Keep cereals and other frequently used items in plastic, air-tight containers to preserve freshness and easily see at a glance when its running low!

Leftovers should be cleared at a minimum of once a week. I'm a realist, no one does this daily ;.

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Deep freezers can be sorted with milk crates. I use crates for different products and keep like products together. Cheap solution and easy to get to exactly what you need. Those were the biggies - here are some more "quick tips" I use that will also hopefully help you organize and declutter. What is your favorite organizing tip or how do you get rid of clutter in your life? Feel free to share a tidbit of advice for fellow readers in the comments: Sign in or sign up and post using a HubPages Network account.

Comments are not for promoting your articles or other sites. Can't wait to start organizing tomorrow. I'm an impulse buyer and I do have a tendency towards chaos Thanks peeples - the desk is a source of aggravation for me as well. I actually bought a different one from a flea market and rehabbed it, looks great and has a lot more storage. I was in heaven. Now if I could just find the same thing for my husband. I am always on him about his cluttered desk since it's in the same room as mine lol. I can deal with clutter in the rest of the house when I have to, but can't deal with it in my workspace like at all No piles of anything not even neat ones!

LMBO here because this is exactly what my husband says to me! My biggest downfall is my desk, which is rather large, and my go to pile things spot. I always tell hubby "but it's neat" I currently have 3 piles on it! I simply suck at organizing it all! I can barely keep up with the mess the kids make, my desk is the last thing to get cleaned.

Organize, declutter and simplify Music to my ears. I love the thought of all 3. Getting it all done feels sooooo good. I need to do this 3 times a year. Pls don't ask me how I collect so much junk and let things get disorganized!! I totally relate to your comment as I have a packrat nature myself. My problem area is our storage room because our old house lacks closet space and I have to work to purge that often so that it doesn't get out of hand. I appreciate the read, vote and share: My two worst 'clutter enablers' are a 1 small drawer in my kitchen where I routinely dump things that don't have a home and 2 too many closets.

The drawer is purposely small so that I have no choice but to clean it out at least once a month. The closets only get my attention twice a year, but I do my best to be merciless regarding their contents at those times. I have to purge since my nature is that of a pack rat. If I ever let my 'stuff' get too much ahead of me, it would take over my home! Thanks Sara - my junk drawer inevitably seems to spread into other areas - so yep, time for me also to minimize some stuff this fall: I'm organizationally challenged at home at least so I find all these tips very helpful.

A thumbs up from me - great hub! I need to get rid of those extra "junk drawers" and keep only one. Thanks so much varonny for reading and commenting. I'm glad you enjoyed the hub and that your daughter enjoys her cubbies! It's so helpful when kids want to participate: It's funny how I always need organization for everything and yet my house is a complete mess!

I procrastinate a lot when it comes to cleaning and organizing my own house, but when I'm at work I need organization at all times! I just recently got a nice piece of furniture from my mom that allows me to have "cubbies" like you mentioned. It did in fact help and my daughter loves it because she gets to have her own cubby like she has in school.