Best Organizing ideas in your home for 3 main areas

Organizing ideas in the house

Welcome back to the second installment of my residential cleaning adventures. I think that you will find this somewhat informative, but mostly ludicrous! What can I say, being ridiculous is one of the things that I do best. Another thing I do very well is cleaning.

When I really commit to it, I can turn my slop trough of a home into a sparkling haven that smells of fresh linen and citrusy accents. A picture-perfect image that lasts maaaaaybeee half of a day after I finish cleaning it. One of my not so strong suits is keeping things clean. When it comes to this, Organization is the name of the game.

So instead of cleaning tips, today I thought it would be better to explore some fantastic organizing ideas to help me from keeping my house from looking like a funhouse image of the upside-down.

If you think that your home is pristine and that you have nothing to gain from reading this then I’ve got one word for you!

I mean most of us guys already have this figured out.

But this organizational method only works for the single man who lives alone without the constant shift of personal belongings that can only be induced by the presence of a better half. In other words, your girlfriend comes over and moves all your crap around. So maybe it’s time to find some new organizing ideas to help yourself cope with the change and avoid a lot of nagging. 

Preferably, I would have liked to have read Organize it 2: Engage with Zorp, in order to gain some truly stupendous (and reasonable) organizing ideas… BUUUUUT it turns out the book isn’t actually real which is rather disappointing to me and the rest of my fellow Parks and Rec fans. I suppose some google searches and good housekeeping will have to do. 

https://www.goodhousekeeping.com/home/tips/g2610/best-organizing-tips/?slide=1

There’s a lot of good organizing ideas with this link but today I am going to focus on three areas in the house: the bedroom closet, the bathroom, and the kitchen.  

The key aspects of Organization are to declutter, cut the fat, organize like items, and create PERMANENT homes for all your belongings. These next articles will give some insight on how to better go about this painstaking journey in these three areas of your home: The bedroom closet, the bathroom, and the kitchen.

I know it is far from perfect but if we can start with these three areas it will go along way into keeping a clean and organized a home for once in your life.

I know you’re wondering why I chose a bedroom closet instead of just a bedroom as a whole. For one it’s less work for me to do right now and I’m feeling particularly lazy at the moment. And also, because it is the lifeblood of your room! Think about it if you can organize your closet and maximize the utilized space you won’t need to have your crap strewn about in an attempt to cover every inch of floor space.  Let’s start, this may take some time so you may want to practice some self-discipline, turn off the tv and put on some sweet tunes. I’ll give you a step by step

1. Declutter your closet, arrange things by like items and start that goodwill pile (goodwill is nice and all but drive the extra couple of miles to a homeless shelter where you’re stuff will be put to good use.)
2. Empty and clean your closet for a fresh start!
3. Design your new and improved closet space. Remember you’re maximizing storage here. Splurge at the dollar store and buy as many cubbies and hangers as your heart desires! Take note of your shelf space and think about how to best organize your own belongings. Come on! I can’t do all the work here! Here are some organizing ideas that I stole from other people on the internet, they may help!

1. Store clothes by category (Work shirts, Workout clothes, Pajamas, etc.)
2. Start with hanging all your fancy and sturdy clothes (Coats, suits, dresses, skirts)
3. Color Code
4. Maximize vertical space. Find an empty area where you can create DIY shelving to maximize your space available.
5. This one is more for the ladies: Use drawer dividers for undergarments.
6. If you have a lot of scarves use hangers to store them where they will stay unwrinkled
7. Roll clothes like cotton shirts, leggings, and shorts. Fold in half and roll and they fit well in shoe boxes or other similar storage bins. 
8. Save drawer and hanging space by stacking thick clothing such as sweaters and jeans.
9. Another for the ladies: Jewelry. If you have wall space use hooks or nails to hang your jewelry in an orderly fashion. Make a hanger out of a rake end, there are many organizing ideas in the realm of jewelry storage. If you aren’t that picky just use one of those dollar store bins and stuff them all in there where they are at least all in one area.
10. One in, one out rule. This is probably the most important tip here! When you take something out, but the other one back in! This applies to shoes, coats, sweaters, jewelry and the like. Don’t put used clothes like underwear or socks back though, that’s just nasty.

Next Stop, your disgusting bathroom. Riddled with germs and fecal matter, it’s time to spruce this place up a bit. If you’re a guy it pays to have a clean and organized bathroom for your lady friend. If you’re a girl, well chances are you have a lot of hygiene products that need a permanent home other than the kitchen counter. I’ve scrounged up some organizing ideas to help you on this journey, that is if you have even bothered to put up with me this far. If you’re still reading, great! Let’s do this.

As always, the first step is to DECLUTTER! I can’t stress this enough, especially if you’re sharing a bathroom with a roommate clutter is how all our nightmares begin! The first rule of a clean and organized bathroom is to keep the counters clutter-free! Use only 1/3 of the back of your counter for storage. Here are some more organizing ideas to help you maintain your bathroom.

1. Use drawer dividers to keep items from becoming a jumbled mess.
2. Maximize storage space by using the backs of cabinet doors. (use sticky back storage or hanging storage to add more cubby space.
3. If multiple people use the bathroom to create a caddie for each person and have a designated spot for each. 
4. Add a Laundry Bin: This one is very important and if you don’t have space for it on the ground you could use the back of the door. Keep the ground from becoming ‘lava’. I mean it’s a fun game when you’re a child or drunk, but not in the early hours of the morning when you’re already mad at the world just because you had to wake up.
5. Use hooks to hang towels: I mean really you could hang like four towels on hooks to just one on a towel bar.
6. Labels: For your idiot friends and guests who do not have the power of deduction and reasoning to figure out where things go and what they are.

The last area I want to go over is the Kitchen! It can be a real hassle trying to cook anything when there is no semblance of organization. You can read my last blog post to get a better idea of my lack of sanity as well as how to clean a kitchen. Here are some of the organizing ideas that I found most helpful in regards to the kitchen. 

1. Hang pots and pans: If your kitchen looks like mine then you have a heap of pots and pans tucked away in a cupboard taking up a lot of valuable storage and are a pain to get to because you have to dig them out every time you need one. Install a DIY pot and pan hanger or simply use command hooks on available wall space.
2. Spice Rack: A simple solution but I’ve been too cheap to buy one and too lazy to make one.
3. Store it where you need it: This one seems obvious but can be difficult to pull off. Take some time to think about what you use the most and where you can store it to make it most accessible.
4. Drawer Dividers and trays: If your spoons, forks, and knives aren’t separated you’re doing it wrong.
5. Labels: Cause you’re too dumb to remember where everything is.
6. Use sides of Cabinets: What a waste of space, throw some hooks up there and hang your larger utensils that cause a lot of clutter in drawers (serving spoons, spatulas, Graters, Tongs, etc.)
7. Use specific containers for certain foods: Pasta, flour, sugar, rice and anything similar can be stored in containers reducing the amount of cabinet space used. Simply continue to refill these containers!
8. Curtain rods: Create dividers in cabinets by using tension rods.

I may not be a miser, but I am certainly guilty of being a bit of a hoarder at times. It only makes sense that my house has one of these, as I’m sure most households have one, so it seems like a nice and easy place to start with my fantastic organizing ideas.

I am, of course, referring to the Junk Drawer. More than half the time you try to open it and it gets jammed and when you finally do open it you would swear Hermione Granger cast an undetectable extension charm on it because surely the contents of it would never have fit in there without a little bit of magic.

My advice for this drawer is to take a little time to sort out everything and to use Ziplock bags, bowls or containers to manage the clutter a little. Easier said than done but maybe next time you need a paperclip it will be neatly tucked in your junk drawer in a Ziplock baggy full of different shapes and sizes of them rather than underneath your dresser!

The organization is one hell of a beast and there is certainly no one perfect way to conquer it. It can be very overwhelming and the hardest part knowing where to start. I found this article very helpful in calming my pre-cleaning and organizing anxiety. 

https://www.containerstore.com/organization-projects/general/tip/top-12-organization-tips

Well, that’s all of the organizing ideas I have for you today. It was much more confusing than I thought and I’m not sure that it was of any help to you at all! But if there’s one thing you should take away from this article it is the One in, one out rule.

Having everything organized and put away in a proper home is only half the battle if you’re not disciplining yourself to maintain the organization you worked so hard to put together. Good luck to all my fellow scatterbrained messes out there, and I hope to continue to climb out of our abyss of unorganized bad habits together!