I was never an organized person until I got married and combined two people’s different belongings into one space. Even then, I wasn’t the most organized person. It wasn’t until we moved 3 times in 3 years that I learned the importance and beauty of having an organized home. I have found so much peace in organization so I decided to explain my process of how to organize your home.
This is my 4 step technique to decluttering and organizing your life. Remember, it doesn’t matter if you are naturally an organized person. All that is required is time and dedication to making organization in your home a reality.
Let’s organize your home!
Plan
This is an important step. Make a list of all the areas that you want organized. It can range from your bathroom medicine cabinet to your garage. It doesn’t matter how small or large the space is, as long as you map out where you want to organize and declutter your home.
From here, you can map out a plan of action. Decide where you want to begin and do some research. One of the best ways to organize and STAY organized is to purchase organizing tools. These don’t have to be extremely fancy items. While The Container Store has beautiful products (and some of the best), Amazon offers some great and very affordable organizing tools.
These items will help you organize all of your belongings and give them a home. Many times we become unorganized because we put things away but not into a specific spot. Having a specified spot or bin for something helps you and everyone you live with know where everything goes. This is key to knowing where something is and knowing where to put it back once you are done. Having a specific home for each item is very helpful in keeping your organized areas organized and tidy.
Start Somewhere Small
You have to start somewhere but it is important to start somewhere small. If you start with the daunting catch-all closet space that drives you insane, it could also cause you to become overwhelmed and end up quitting before you make any progress. I would start with a bathroom cabinet or junk drawer. Just one small area.
Start by taking everything out. Look through all that you have out on the table and decide what can stay and what needs to go. Starting in a small space allows you to look at everything and make small decisions of what stays and what goes in small amounts.
The key to starting small is to have small wins. Organizing a bathroom cabinet will show you that you can actually do this. Cleaning out and organizing your junk drawer can help you feel accomplished. This is important to move forward to the larger areas. Start small, prove to yourself that you can do this and then move on the the bigger, messier areas with confidence!
Throw away unnecessary items
One of my favorite parts of the organizing process is cleaning out all of the old and unnecessary items that I find. It’s amazing what can build up over time and the multiple bottles of Advil you’ll find with 10 capsules each. When you have everything out in front of you, this is your time to choose what stays and what you can throw away.
If you are organizing your bathroom cabinet or medicine cabinet, see if there is anything that can be combined. Earlier I said how I will find multiple bottles of the same thing but all of them are half empty. If you can, combine the contents to consolidate to one container. When cleaning out the pantry, see what is expired and can be thrown away. This helps reduce the amount of items you will need to organize.
Once you have consolidated, see if there is anything that you do not use. Many women receive product samples or purchase little items that build up over time. If there is something you haven’t used in 6 months or a year, that is a good indication to throw it away.
When you graduate to a closet, garage or the attic, it is important to evaluate what you haven’t used in a long time. Not because you haven’t needed it, but things that you just never use anymore or have lost an interest in. One of the reasons these areas get so cluttered is because they become a “catch all” for things we don’t want to put away or just don’t have the space or need for.
Really invest in this step when organizing your larger spaces. It will help you feel refreshed and give you a clear understanding of what you will need to organize and make space for. Make a donation pile, storage pile, and throw away piles. Once you have everything cleaned out, you can visualize everything that you will need to organize back into the space you just cleaned out. Give everything a nice clean and dusting before you begin to put it back in. Next, ORGANIZATION!
Organize
Now that you have cleaned, consolidated and removed everything you don’t need anymore, it’s time to put it all back in an organized fashion! THIS IS THE FUN PART! Here is where you get to decide where everything goes and how you want to store your belongings. Grab your organizing tools and storage bins and let’s get to work!
Start by pairing things with similar items. When organizing my medicine cabinet, I like to separate it into different categories. I have bins for pain medication such as Tylenol, Advil, BandAids, etc. and illness related medication such as allergy medicines, cold and flu medicines, etc. I also have a bin for nail products, sunscreen and tanning products. Separating all of these into their own bins makes it easy to organize and locate later on. This is also a good time to see if you are running low on anything in particular you didn’t know about before.
If you are organizing a larger area like your pantry, you can use the same process as above but on a larger scale. I recommend getting clear containers to hold all of your dry goods. Again, this can be costly but it can be an incredible investment. However, if it is not attainable right now, I recommend getting storage baskets for better organization.
When organizing things into specific containers, I always recommend clear bins. This helps you recognize what you are running low on such as flour, sugar, pasta, and other dry goods. It is also easy for kids and guests to easily locate snacks, specific ingredients, crafts, or even medicine. The best containers are the Oxo storage containers. These are air tight which helps preserve the freshness of your food and keeps bugs out.
If you choose to use baskets, I recommend unboxing whatever you can such as granola bars, snack size bags of chips, bags of popcorn, etc. This allows you to pack them in the baskets and they are easy to grab for snacks or packing lunches. For the boxes that you can’t unload the contents of, you can easily pack the boxes in an organized manner. The important thing to remember is to organize how it makes sense for you and your daily life.
Label
Finally, once you have everything in place, something that you can do is label everything. This is an extra step that isn’t necessary but it can help you easily locate everything later down the road. It doesn’t have to be fancy at all or you can pull out the label maker and go crazy. Label things to help know what goes where. Labeling will help members of your family know where things go when they are putting things away. Labeling helps you STAY organized.
Hopefully you find this helpful! I want to reiterate that you don’t have to be good at organizing to be an organized person. Like every habit, the key is to keep going even when you feel like you don’t know what the heck you are doing. Start small and work your way up to the larger areas. Embrace the small wins and work your way to an organized home!