Organizing your home can be a daunting task when the piles are overflowing, the laundry is scattered, and the office is flooded in papers. Fortunately, there are systems and tools that you can use to organize every room in your house. Here are a few tips to get you started.
Everything has a home.
To keep your life organized and sane, you must assign a home for all of the objects in your house. Have a specific place for your keys, pens, pencils, incoming papers, and mail.
You can do this with a variety of organizing tools, including drawer organizers, shoe racks, magazine racks, filing cabinets, drawers, and shelving units.
You should never just toss stuff in a drawer. Instead, make sure that everything has a proper holding spot. Whenever an item has been removed from its assigned home, make sure that it is immediately returned to its homes when no longer in use.
Everyone needs a filing system.
A filing cabinet is one of the best organizing tools. They help keep all of your important paperwork organized. File away all of your manuals, your tax information, finance information, school report cards, family documents, etc.
Of course, if you want your filing system to be of any use, you must also label all of your folders based on the items they hold.
Pick up as you go.
One of the keys to keeping an organized home is to pick up as you go. Don’t let the piles of toys, dishes, and paperwork take over. Instead, clean up everything as you go along.
Do a quick wipe up of the shower each day. Pick up a few things as you’re walking through the house. Spend 15 minutes each day organizing your office. You’ll be surprised at what a huge difference these daily habits can make.
Organize your drawers.
Drawers can become a home of havoc. Although everything might look nice and tidy on the outside, a peek behind the closet or inside the drawers often reveals the truth.
Fortunately, there are simple steps to organizing your drawers.
The first thing you must do is to empty everything out of the drawer. The best way to clean something out is to start with a clean slate. Next, remove all of the unneeded junk from the pile and throw it in the trash. This alone is a big accomplishment.
Simply clearing out the junk will make things look a lot tidier.
Once you have finished removing all of the junk, go through the remaining items and sort them into 3 piles: stuff you want to keep, stuff you’d like to give away, and stuff that needs to be put somewhere else. One of the best ways to organize these piles is to use large boxes or bags and label them “Keep“, “Move“, “Trash“, and “Donate“.
Now put everything that you want to keep back in the drawer. You should now have a much smaller pile. To keep everything nice and organized, I would recommend getting a drawer organizer. A drawer organizer can be especially useful for organizing office items such as pens, paper, tape, scissors, staples, and paper clips.
This general procedure can be used in almost any part of the house: empty everything out, toss out all junk, create 3-4 piles, and only put back the essentials. Use this 4-step method to clear out the closet, organize your bookshelf, and transform your garage.
Purge
One of my favorite organizing tips is to dump it! Anything that you haven’t used in the past year probably needs to be thrown away. Throw out those clothes that you never wear. Get rid of the shoes that are 10 years outdated. Give away the books you’ll never read. Do you have kitchen appliances gathering dust? Give it away to Goodwill and gain some valuable counter space. Getting rid of your junk will greatly help organize your home and give you more space.
Keeping your home organized is an ongoing process. However, with the proper systems in place, your home will soon be the talk of the town.
So, what are your best organizing tips? I’d love to hear about them in the comments.
Kim Roach is a productivity junkie who blogs regularly at The Optimized Life. Read her articles on 50 Essential GTD Resources, How to Have a 46 Hour Day, Do You Need a Braindump, What They Don’t Teach You in School, and Free Yourself From the Inbox.
A tip to keep a drawer more organized without using a ‘drawer-organizer’ is the re-use of small boxes, such as the package of a mobile phone or a MP3-player. Putting the tiny things in my junk-drawer into these boxes keeps eveything more in one place, and prevents ‘shifting of the junk’, so to speak, when opening and closing the drawer.
[...] How to Organize Your Home – LifeHack [...]
Each day I get emails from the FlyLady at yahoo groups. She gives little 15 minute cleaning, purging, or organizing assignments that, in the long run, really do make a difference.
[...] “如何整理家” [...]
This is a good way to organize your drawers. It starts with a test.
Is your drawer up to the test? Let’s see:
Take everything out of your utensil or gadget drawer and put these items in a box.
Leave this box on your countertop or on a shelf.
Everytime you use one of the items, put it back in the drawer. Do this for two to four weeks.
The items that are left in the box are either duplicate items (you couldn’t find it previously, so you bought it again) or items you don’t need. In other words, what’s left is probably the “junk” that was in your junk drawer.
[...] or the ceiling is too low, try out these tricks that will help you make the most of any space. 57. How to Organize Your Home: This guide from Lifehack.org offers simple but effective tips like “everything has a home” and [...]
[...] or the ceiling is too low, try out these tricks that will help you make the most of any space. 57. How to Organize Your Home: This guide from Lifehack.org offers simple but effective tips like “everything has a [...]
[...] http://www.lifehack.org/articles/lifestyle/how-to-organize-your-home.html Bookmark It Hide Sites [...]
[...] http://www.lifehack.org/articles/lifestyle/how-to-organize-your-home.html [...]
In my house, my picture frames, vases, figurines, Magazines,EVERYTHING in each room has to be set in a certain spot and angled a certain way, and in place EVERY DAY, or I get irritated. If someone moves anything, that irritates the hell out of me and I have to place my stuff exactly the way it was. I get irritated when toys are EVERY WHERE when my neices & nephews come over to visit my 7 year-old daughter. I am glad that she keeps her room organized & puts toys back in her toy box when she is finished & makes sure that her clothes & accesories or organized as well. My son is the OPPOSITE & that irritates the heck out of me! Shoes off & coats hung up, hands washed or sanitized when entering my house.
MANDATORY!CLUTTER CAN MESS YOUR LIFE UP! STAY CLUTTER FREE IT WILL CHANGE YOUR LIFE! GET ORGANIZED & YOU WILL FEEL SO MUCH BETTER! :-)
how can i get the flylady emails as well? i know this is an old post so im wondering if they still do it