When you start to feel like you’re spending all of your time cleaning up clutter, it’s time to do something about your home organization. It’s common to think of cleaning as an inevitability – and it is – but there’s no reason that it should monopolize your time. Your home should be functional enough to stay organized without monopolizing all your time. Implementing the right home organization systems can help you maintain your home the way you want.
Here are some of the ways you can upgrade your storage spaces to make tidiness simpler:
- Organize Your Entryway
- Declutter and Arrange Your Closets
- Bring Order to Kids’ Toys
Take a look at how you can conquer common clutter in many places around the home.
Organize Your Entryway
You may have noticed that a lot of your clutter problem starts as soon as people walk in the door. Your kids immediately kick off their shoes and peel off their socks. Your partner drops their bag or briefcase on the floor and the mail on the nearest table or shelf, where it gets forgotten about. Jackets end up draped on the couch or the backs of chairs. Housekeys could end up anywhere, causing people to be late the next morning when they can’t find them on their way out the door.
What you need is a mudroom. This home organization system goes in the entryway of the home or, in some cases, in the garage. This is a great way to put a stop to the clutter that accumulates as your family walks in the door. Hooks and racks can hold bags, backpacks, coats, and keys. Add a shelf for mail. Cubbies are great for putting shoes away. Perhaps include a hamper for discarded socks and soiled outerwear. A bin or basket can hold umbrellas and other outdoor accessories. When your family has places to put things as soon as they get home, those things won’t spread all over the house.
Declutter and Arrange Your Closets
Closet organization is an important component of an organized home. When closets are cluttered and overstuffed, it’s difficult for the things you store in them to stay where they belong. Things fall on the floor, get dragged out of the closet into the room the closet is in, then eventually wind up in other places in the house. When you install organizers and closet features to expand your storage space, you end up with much better home organization overall.
When customizing your closets to make more space, you should also declutter them by taking everything out and going through it. Chances are that there are things that you don’t need to keep that have just been hiding in the back or being replaced in the closet out of habit. These items can be sold, donated, or just thrown away. Getting rid of them gives you more space and more room for organization.
Sometimes it’s difficult to decide what to keep and what to get rid of, but A Cultivated Nest gives you some guidelines to go by: keep the item if you use it at least once a week, if it still works and serves a function, or if it has sentimental value. If it doesn’t fit in any of those categories, you probably don’t need it.
Bring Order to Kids’ Toys
f you have kids, you probably know that it’s their belongings – often their toys – that really clutter up the house. This can be more difficult to deal with than your own clutter, because kids may scatter toys indiscriminately. They may even dig out toys they don’t want to get to toys they do want. There are ways you can help them clean up their act.
For one thing, get rid of large toy bins. Bins are hard to find things in, so your child is likely to dump the bin out to find toys hidden at the bottom. Instead, consider using smaller containers with lids. Pick clear ones so that your child can see what’s in them or use a color-coding system, then put like toys with like – stuffed animals in one bin, blocks in another, and action figures or dolls in a third. This way, your child doesn’t need to go through every type of toy they own to find the one they want.
These bins can be stacked in the closet along with other toy organization products. You may also want to consider organizing frequently-used toys into cubbies and storing toys you don’t want them to have immediate access to all the time, like a finger painting set, on high shelves where your child can’t get to them.
Conclusion
Home organization systems can be used in the home’s most challenging spaces to bring order to your home as a whole. Some of those spaces include entryways, closets, and children’s toy storage spaces.