Organizing and Some Tips

I haven't talked much on here about organizing. But it is one of my passions! Organizing and decor go hand in hand (in my opinion). They have the ability to compliment each other, which is why I love them both.

Yesterday, I was feeling sluggish and thought that if I organized one of my closets it would get me motivated to clean the house. I didn't get much cleaning done but did do some organizing.

Now, I'm a very organized person. I routinely organize my home and I can tell you what is in every cabinet, drawer and closet in my home. And I can tell you where about 97% of our stuff can be found. I'm not saying this to brag, just to tell you how I am.

I love to organize, I love the order of items, I love knowing there is a home for everything. For me to feel calm and peaceful in my home I need this order.

There are times that certain areas get messed up and need some reorganization, or areas that I've worked on before but it just isn't working. During the winter/Christmas time a few areas in our home get hit: the garage, the office closet and my china/decorating closet.

The garage gets messed up because it's cold out there in the winter and we don't always put stuff back or we've ended up with some large items that need to be dealt with and they live in the garage till spring.

The office closet gets messed up because at Christmas time we pull the box holding all the wrapping supplies out of the shed and it goes in the office closet. We are very fortunate that the closets in our home are large and this one is about 5ft x 5ft. It also ends up the catch all when I need all the rooms to be picked up and clean. Unfortunately this closet is at the very corner of our home and not really insulated very well. So it ends up like the garage and we mostly stay out of it during the winter months.

My china/decor closet. I have a linen closet in our home that I turned into a place to store all my pretty stuff. This gets hit due to the holidays as well.

SO, anyway back to what I did!

I knew there were a few things I wanted to get rid of out of my china closet, so it got freshened up. After gettting it looking great I was still motivated to organize so I decided to talk the office closet.

Thankfully it was warm enough out that it wasn't freezing in the closet! Since David and I share the closet I could only work on my side (he'll have to do his side later). I have my older scrapbooks in there, office supplies, wrapping supplies and kids crafting supplies in there oh and my reference books too.



My side re-organized.

 I purged some books, and wrapping supplies and it made a huge difference! I moved some stuff around to make it look better too. I had a nice sized Goodwill pile when I was done! I always feel so good when I have a pile of stuff for Goodwill. It makes me feel lighter.

Last night we did some work on the garage. Mostly just putting some stuff back, sweeping and moving stuff around. We did a huge organizing on it last summer and it's working great for us so far.

I wanted to share a couple of tips if you are in need of some help.

First, you can't organize junk. There's no way around it, you have to start by purging. Ask yourself these questions: Do you use it? Do you love it? If it's a no, then it needs to go. If it's sentimental then start a memory box and store those items in there.

Second, you have to organize in a way that works for you and your family. Example, if you always come in the house through your garage and the coat closet it across the house and all the coats end up on the dinning room chairs then that doesn't work for you. Don't fight that the coats don't end up in the closet work with it. Hang hooks by the garage door, or whatever works in your home.

About a year ago I was helping my best friends work on their dinning room and since the garage door dumped them into the dinning room and kitchen all the mail, coats, purses, bags and misc ended up on the dinning room table and floor. And it was hard to walk in there without tripping on all the bags. So I suggested they get some baskets to go under a built in desk in the dinning room. They could have his and hers baskets (hers also got the diaper bag). They would contain any thing that needed to go to work the next day, and all bags and be neatly pushed under the desk.

This system worked great for them and it's now one of their favorite things! There was no sense in making everyone feel guilty because they didn't put the bags and such "where they are supposed to go". We just worked with how they live. We now use baskets in most of their organization in their home. It works great for them!

We are getting ready to tackle their kitchen, so I'll do my best to get some before and afters to show off.

If you need any help leave me a comment, I'd love help you!