Organizing your home is an ongoing process. No matter how many weekends you spend “spring cleaning”, your day-to-day life can sabotage all your hard work. So it’s important to make sustainable choices in your space that will suit your real life. These organizing tips may seem simple, but they can fundamentally improve the “status quo” in your home and office.
Avoid Lids for High-Traffic Items
I absolutely love the look of decorative boxes for storage, with their pretty patterns, label holders, and how they hide away clutter. They’re great for holding items like old photos and memorabilia. But these boxes are not good for storing items that you will use every day. If you put something away in its “spot” and it’s hard to get to on a regular basis, you will be much more likely to never put it back in that spot again. Either that, or you’ll end up taking the lid off the box and never putting it back on. So when it came to finding a storage space for my craft supplies, for example, I opted for a basket instead. Still cute, but much more easily accessible. And you’ll be much more likely to put things back when you’re done!
Store Items Where You’ll Use Them
On the surface, organizing objects by category seems to make the most sense. Books go on the bookshelf, toiletries go in the bathroom, and so on. But do you find that you always paint your nails in front of the TV, and end up leaving your nail polishes all over the house because you forget to put them away? Or perhaps you make your to-do lists in the kitchen, and never remember to put your stationery back in your office? It’s important to recognize your own habits and lifestyle, and be honest with yourself about them. Maybe it’s most logical to store your hairbrush near the front hall mirror, because you never remember to brush your hair until you’re running out the door.
If you store things where you use them, you’ll be more likely to put it all away when you’re done. You do you.
Organize With Your Laziest Self in Mind
Wow, what a beautiful desktop organizational paradigm! Everything is lined up perfectly!
And then, ten minutes later:
Saw that coming.
The most important organizing tip is to be realistic with yourself. Are you really going to line up your pencils in order of length every single time you use them? Or are you going to neatly stack your folders to line up perfectly with the edge of the table? No, you’re not. (And if you are, then you probably don’t need to be reading organizing tips because your house is already immaculate.)
Don’t worry, there is hope! There’s a middle ground between perfection and chaos. Here are some examples:
- Use an old mug or a mason jar to hold your pens.
- Use a utensil drawer insert to organize your office drawers (and your kitchen drawers, of course).
- Stand up your papers or books between two heavy objects, so that you can access any one of them without having to dismantle the pile you had before.
Only use the kinds of storage solutions that you would still use if you were exhausted, stressed, distracted, or just plain lazy. That’s the only way to attain sustainable organization.
The moral of the story is: be honest about how you live your life, and organize your stuff to suit that life.
What are your best organizing tips?
