How To Organize Your Home

An organized and tidy home doesn’t necessarily mean the owner is a neat freak.

The reality is, most of us who aren’t organized and tidy often envy those who are.  But it’s not necessarily a personality type, but rather the process a person uses that helps keep their home looking so neat and clean.

In the cleaning business, we’ve learned some pretty simple tips on how to organize your home. It’s a matter of making a plan and staying focused. Yes, there’s a little work involved but it’s not like bearing the weight of the world on your shoulders.

Once you’ve learned how to organize your home, it’s much easier to keep it that way.

Easy Home Organizing Tips

Simple clutter is one of the biggest factors in the appearance of organization. If you rent, the clutter problem is somewhat reduced because renters don’t usually purchase products for the home with the intention of permanency.

For instance, homeowners often make multiple investments in lawn care products, garden tools, home appliances, small tools, etc., that accumulate adding to an overabundance of junk. Tip for homeowners: think like a renter and travel light.

Be creative with storage space. If you live in a small home, look for efficient ways to store essentials so that they are out of the way but still accessible.

Teach your children to 1) take care of their belongings, 2) put things away, 3) donate useable toys and clothing they’ve outgrown to needy organizations.

Review Your Storage Needs

1. Be impartial. Walk through your home looking at organizing your closets, pantries, shelves and other potential storage spaces, including the backs of closet doors. Start a list of where you can make improvements.
2. Use a sticky note, writing potential items that you can store in the space, and stick the label in easy view.
3. Make a shopping list of additional storage helps you might need, such as shoe bags for behind closet doors, plastic boxes that slip under beds, additional shelving that fit over your washer and dryer in the laundry room for laundry supplies or in your child’s bedroom for toys and books. Keep your options open and don’t feel like you must make the purchases all at once. When shopping, take note of what other storage containers or systems are available.
4. As you overcome each storage problem, cross the item off your list. That way, you can glance at that “to-do” list and see it evaporating right before your eyes. What a good feeling.
5. After you’ve stored everything that can be put away, then clean counters, throw away trash, recycle generously, and clean the floors.
6. Don’t try to be a one-man (or one-woman) show. If there are other occupants in your home, enlist them to help – especially in cleaning up after themselves.

The first time through your house will be the hardest, but if you get the whole family involved on that one day a week, you’ll see how easy it is to organize your home and keep it that way.

Get a Planner and Set a Schedule:

Using a day planner, write in all appointments including school projects, church meetings, sports activities, etc., for everyone in the house.

Call a specific family meeting time. This used to be when families all sat down at the dinner table together.

Few families do that anymore so you’ll have to be strict about getting everyone together at the same time. Have each person write appointments and activities on the day planner.

After evaluating which appointments are absolutely necessary and which are flexible, try to come to an agreement on a specific day where you can all pitch in and help with household duties. If that isn’t possible, assign jobs and tasks with specific time that the job needs to be done, and by whom.

Someone will have to be responsible for seeing to it that this program is carried out – it might as well be you. In the overall scheme of things, you all benefit from being organized.