11 Tips to Help You Organize Your Home that Really Work
Sometimes, organizing your home can seem like a never-ending job. No matter how much you clean, you probably feel that things are messy again in no time and that your home is always disorganized.
There’s really no single strategy to organize your home, as everything depends on personality. However, some tips are key to all and applying them can help you organize your home.
Before you organize your home
The first thing to do is to identify the areas of your home that annoy you the most. Analyze them carefully and then think of the possible solutions. Don’t try to organize your entire house at once. Dedicate some time to each place. Tackle them one by one, even if it takes you several days.
Also, it’s important that you and your family persist in the decisions you make so you don’t fall into the same mistake of having a disorganized home. With these considerations in mind, you can apply the following tips to organize your home.
1. Don’t store things you don’t use.
Surely you have countless things you no longer use stored in a closet or boxes. This is often because you hope you’re going to use them again or because they bring back good memories. Books, ornaments, documents, old clothes, or even records you no longer listen to because we often only listen to music on your cell phone nowadays.
All these things you no longer use but store somewhere are occupying space that you can use for something else or that you can clear out. If something is in a box or closet, it’ll probably stay there for a long time, taking up space. You’ll only see it every time you try to organize your home and you’ll just store it again for months or years. Thus, it’s best for you to just throw it away.
If someone gives you gifts or you buy something new for yourself, get rid of someone old immediately. Donate it, give it away, or throw it out if it no longer works. Don’t keep it “just in case”.
This article may interest you: How to Make an Organizing Board for Your Kitchen
2. Put things in the same place to organize your home.
A lot of objects make their way into your home each day, from keys and wallets to purchases, mail, or briefcases. Find an appropriate place for everything, no matter if your family takes it with them when they leave. For example, put a key holder next to the door or a shelf for mail and a magazine rack for magazines. Don’t let everything pile up on a table or chair.
“For every minute spent organizing, an hour is earned.” -Benjamin Franklin
3. Store things according to their frequency of use.
Organize your closets and drawers intelligently. Make sure that what you use every day is handy. You can store what you rarely use on the shelf of the closet that you can only reach with a chair. If you store the things you rarely use with the things you use frequently, you’ll likely have to take them all out when you need something.
4. Divide your drawers and shelves to organize your home.
Don’t store all your things together in drawers and shelves. Use divisions to separate them. This will allow you to make better use of the space and not pile things up.
“All the drawers in your house should have divisions.” -Christopher Lower
5. Don’t pile things up on tables.
One of the most frequent temptations is to put everything on a table. Although the intention is to do it temporarily, in the end, the table will always be cluttered. Make it a rule that this can’t happen. If this doesn’t work, block your tables somehow.
Julie Isaac, the author of the blog Our Uncluttered Home, recommends putting flowers or small decorations on your tables or even to always keep your dinner table set with plates and silverware to make sure you can’t pile things on it.
6. Don’t buy storage boxes until you throw everything you don’t need away.
Before buying a box or a piece of furniture for storage, make sure you’ve already gotten rid of everything you don’t need. This is because, if you have more storage space than you actually need, you’ll probably accumulate a lot of unnecessary things. Consequently, you’ll create another organizational problem.
7. Assign tasks to organize your home.
If your family doesn’t already help you out with the chores, assign cleaning tasks to each member. Thus, someone should pick up the dishes from the table, another should wash them, and another should put them away. One cleans the bathrooms, while another the kitchen. Also, everyone should be responsible for cleaning their own rooms and making their own beds.
This rule must be strictly enforced. If one family member doesn’t follow it, the others may find an excuse to not do their part.
This article may interest you: Make Your Own Clothes Organizers with These Basic Elements
8. Pick up things after using them.
A comfortable but bad habit is to leave things for later. The problem is that “later” never comes. Therefore, you should have your children pick up their toys after they finish playing. Don’t allow them to leave the dishes on the table after they finish eating, and wash your cookware and utensils right after you finish cooking.
The tasks that you assign to each family member should be done right away, not later.
9. Don’t accumulate clothes hangers.
Every time you bring home clothes from the laundromat or buy new clothes, you often bring a hanger to hang it. Thus, without even realizing it, you end up with more hangers than clothes and your closet gets tighter by the day. Return the hangers to the laundromat or leave them at recycling sites.
10. Don’t use the garage or attic to store everything.
If you live in a house with a garage or attic, it’s common for you to think that you’ll always have space in these areas to store the things you don’t use. With that thought, you’ll end up congesting them and turning them into disorganized spaces you don’t want to have.
Simply get rid of the old things as we explained above. Your garage and attic are also part of your house. Thus, don’t turn them into warehouses.
11. Dedicate one day a year to organizing.
Even if you apply the best strategies to organize your home, it’s inevitable for messes to reappear. It doesn’t matter if you feel that your home is finally as organized as you dreamed. That’s why you should use one day a year to check and make sure that you haven’t accumulated unnecessary things, that your shelves and drawers are organized, and that everything is in its place.
Now it’s time to start organizing your home! Check every space and decide where to begin. You’ll thank yourself later!