Quick Tips on How to Organize Your Home and Life

I am a self-diagnosed organizing addict.  It's what I think about while trying to fall asleep at night.  It's what I see when I walk into someone's house.  It's what I'd rather do than almost anything else.  Organizing and planning.  My sister, Michelle, has laughed when she has heard my 2 year old say,

"Mom, look at how well I organized my toys!" 

"Only YOUR kids would ever say something like that!"  Michelle said.

Having an organized home helps you have a clean home quicker.  And it helps you maintain your clean home.

I have been asked to help out in the homes of dozens of people who have needed some organizing help and there are a few things that all of these people have in common.

This post will give you several quick and easy organizing ideas and tools to use in your home, garage, closet and life so you can be more organized and be able to maintain a cleaner, free-er living space and life!

My kids know how much I love to throw things away!

If you are at the beginning stages of trying to organize your home, I have one word for you...

PURGE!!!

The Golden Rule: If you haven't used it in 2 year's time, then you don't need it!  I've helped dozens of people organize their homes and lives and one things I've noticed is that people buy a lot of stuff.  There does come a point when you've got too much and it's OK to go through and clean up your life.

You really DON'T need 10 fancy, white cake plates (unless you are a professional caterer) and your child really doesn't need 10 pairs of shoes. 

Every time you are tempted to buy something at the store ask yourself, "Is this a REAL need?  Or will it just add to my clutter?  Am I replacing something that broke that I have used a lot or am I just adding another gadget to my drawer?"

Save money and cleaning time by not buying excessively. 

Take this poll to honestly assess how much excess you are in the habit of buying:

Life does take living and that requires food, essentials, and fun stuff too.  Let me teach you how to keep your stuff up off the floor and organized so your life doesn't get too messy.  And so that when it does get messy, as it always does, you can clean it up quick and get onto something more fun than cleaning!

We have a lot of beds in our home since we are a 7 person family.  There is a lot of good, usable, floor space underneath those beds!  Bins are a great way of using that space.  We love to store toys, purses, dress up clothes, wrapping supplies and extra bedding and blankets under our beds.

But don't go out and buy a lot of baskets and bins in order to start getting organized.  Look around and see what you have that you can use. If you need them, buy them when they are on sale or pick them up for free when someone you know is giving them away.

Avoid spending a lot of money on organizing your home by using what you already have and making it work!

See my other article if you want more in-depth ideas and lots of pictures on how using baskets and bins take things from messy, to clean in a matter of seconds!

Besides having baskets and bins in every room, I also have hooks of all different sorts in every room and on practically every door.  It's much easier--especially for children--to keep things hung up and put away if they can quickly hang it on a hook.

A hook rack for backpacks and bags-it's a lifesaver if you have kids in school!

Hooks for coats; I found a great antique hook rack that holds all our coats.

Over-the-door-hooks that hold anything from towels to robes

Hooks for hanging towels--I like the plastic kind that attach with a strong adhesive

Kitchen hooks for towels and oven mitts

Hooks for baseball hats, scarfs, umbrellas, belts, etc.

A hook in every closet and on every door will really help keep things picked up!

Amazon.com offers some really cool and inexpensive hooks:

Even if it takes you a day or two to make out the charts, they will be very helpful in keeping you organized and on task with keeping your home and life clean and clear.

I have charts for:

1. Our Dinner Menu--it's a 2 month chart that tells me what I'm cooking each night of the week.  That way I know in advance and save money by not eating out a lot.  And I save time by having to think about what to make for dinner.

2. What housekeeping items to do each day--It's a 2 week chart that repeats itself all year.  I have assigned the regular housekeeping and cleaning jobs to different days of the week over a two week span.  That way the cleaning doesn't get put off for other things.  And I don't end up needing 8 hours one day just to get my home looking clean again.  You can assign Mondays as your de-clutter day, Tuesdays as your vacuum floors day, Wednesdays as your clean bathrooms day and so on.

3. What tasks my children need to do each day--This chart helps the kids stay organized and know what they need to do before they can play with friends or watch TV or play games.  It always includes their homework, housework and instrument practice and any other major project they have coming due.

4. Housework assignments for my children--This chart tells the children what their housework assignment is for each day of the week.

Start in one room and just go room by room.  That's not hard, is it?  Just do it one room at a time. Have a friend or two come over and give you their opinion about things you could de-clutter or ways you could arrange or organize your room better.   A fresh pair of eyes always helps.  We get so attached to our "stuff."  But a lot of it is excess and only creates clutter.

I had quite a messy vanity area in our new home and it took me about a month to stare at it each day until I finally realized how I could clean up and organize the mess.  It went from:

It just took a few days of me staring at the mess and then a quick browse on the internet to figure out what I needed to clean up my space. 

It's good to browse the internet and visit the organizing sections of the stores you visit like Target, Walmart, Bed, Bath and Beyond to get organizing tools and ideas for how to organize the space that is bugging you.

I got the great organizing caddies on Amazon.com for a really great price:

All my children have a "sock bag" in their drawer.  It is a small, Ziploc baggie that holds their mismatched socks.   That way, eventually, all their socks find a match or else get thrown away.  When socks come out of the wash without a match they go in the sock bag and at the end of the week I go through the sock bag and match up the socks in it.  If a sock stays in the bag for a month or two then it gets thrown away because obviously the match is lost.

One thing that creates a lot of clutter in my home is all the papers that come home from school.  My children will paint something or cut out a snowflake or write their name and think that paper has to be saved forever.  You can't keep things forever.  So I bought a large cork/pin board and put it up on the wall in our toy room:

They each get a space and when it's filled and they come home with a "must keep" they have to remove something of theirs and make room for the new thing.  The things that are milestones or are really, really special I keep and save in their memory bag after they've removed it from the cork board.

I love these bags!  They really do save so much space and help you use all that floor space under beds.  They keep blankets, pillows, clothes, stuffed animals, towels and linens of all sorts clean and ready to use, but organized and out of the way until you need to use them.  They are really easy to fill and after closing them you attach your vacuum and remove the air and they shrink to half or more of their usual size! 

Also great for storing things in the garage or for using when traveling.  Fill, vacuum the air out, put in suitcase and get three times the space you had!

An organizers dream!

Sometimes, life is just too busy to keep things clean and organized and put away. 

That's why I have one catch-all basket called our junk basket.  It's mostly full of mail I need to sort, old homework I need to go through, coupons I need to file, receipts I need to file, and miscellaneous toys that get left out.  It makes for a really quick clean up when I need to clear the table quickly.  I just scoop up all the crayons, markers, papers, tape, etc. and dump it in the basket.

Later, about once a week, when I have more time, I go through it.  But at least my room doesn't look messy all over--it's a clean room with a full "junk basket."

I actually have two.  My second one is called my "junk toy basket." 

It's a large Tupperware bin that sits on my counter in the corner and whenever toys get left out I scoop them up and put them in the bin.  Every Saturday I have my kids go through it and tell them that whatever they don't take and put away in it's place is going in the garbage.  So all the Lego pieces, Barbie accessories, Polly Pockets and board game pieces don't clutter my house.  They have a place to go until they can be returned to their real place, or else they go in the garbage can.

Everything has a place...or it's place is the garbage can!

Don't buy excessively and you won't have clutter!

Every space can be organized!

Happiness is a clean and orderly home.  Happy homemaking!