Let’s Get Organized! Home Organized Guide
Find easy and simple strategies to get organized and stay organized. Let’s Get Organized gives you organizing tips that will save you time and energy, and help you organize your home.
Click here for full details on how you can get organized with our home organizing guide.
The Essential Guide To Organizing Your Home SALE
Jam Packed With Tips and Techniques!! Get Organized Now!
Due to the tremendous success of this helpful resource, we are running a special sale price for it! Be one of the thousands who are learning how to organize their home using this ebook, The Essential Guide to Organizing Your Home.
Unless you have some magical powers like Mary Poppins, you know that cleaning and organizing your home can be a daunting task. With The Essential Guide To Organizing Your Home, that task will become much easier. Inside you will find practical tips and techniques to rid every room in your house of clutter and keep it that way.
Do you shudder when you think of people coming over to visit unannounced? Do you panic when you get a message on your answering machine that family is coming—and they left 4 hours ago (and it’s a 5 hour trip)? Do you try to “clean” before your cleaning lady comes? Can you not afford a cleaning lady and try to do it yourself, ending up discouraged, frustrated, and thinking it’s just impossible? The Essential Guide To Organizing Your Home is your solution. Now you can dive right in with this easy to follow, room by room guide to a clean and organized home.
The Essential Guide To Organizing Your Home is the ultimate guide to maintaining a clutter free home. Order your copy today and get organized now!
4 Free Clorox Samples
Free Clorox Disinfecting Wipes
Free Sample of CLOROX Anywhere Hard Surface Daily Sanitizing Spray
Free Sample of CLOROX Anywhere Spray
Click here for tons more freebies
Having a family with young kids can be trying when it comes to organizing the home and keeping the home organized. Trying to find storage space can be just as trying.
The number one thing is for the whole family to be involved in helping. Having little children doesn’t mean they can’t help clean up behind themselves. It’s great that the kids help with the chores. It’s important to KEEP cleaning as you go, rather than putting things off. That helps a ton!
For the laundry issue…. every time there is a load of clothes, wash. Get rid of clothes that don’t fit anymore or box them up if they are to be handed down and store them. Towels used for bathing can be hung up to dry and reused. after all after a bath a body is supposed to be clean so the towel used to dry with will be clean.
Having a ton of clothes is really something that’s not necessary. You of course need and want enough to make do with, but having more clothes than you can possibly wear is a waste of closet and drawer space. If you have THAT many clothes, clean out.
Go through things like the clothes, toys, dishes, etc, and clean out what you don’t use or just don’t need. When you make a new purchase, on say sheets for example, throw out the worn out ones or cut them up and use them as dust clothes. When replacing things, get rid of what’s being replaced.
Storage issues can be a real problem for some homes. Get a multi hook rack for bedroom doors for jammies and jackets and such. Get some plastic storage boxes that are made to slide under the beds for extra blankets, freeing up closet space. Get plastic storage containers for the kids toys so they are in one place. Out of season clothes can be stored in these in the closet too, and they stack nicely (but not for the little ones!)
Bills can be organized easily by putting them in a letter stacker or small box, in order of what’s due first or what you intend to pay first and when. When mail comes in, go through it right then and file the bills in the bill paying organizer or toss junk mail.
The main thing is to stress to the entire family that everything has a home, a place it goes. When it’s not being used, it’s put in its proper place, not just put down and let here or there. Clean clothes are kept put up, dirty clothes go in the hamper until there’s a load then washed and dried, then put up. Toys that aren’t being played with are put up. If a mess is made in the bathroom, it’s cleaned up then and there, not left.
The storage issue is one that will usually require spending a few dollars to get some items to store and organize…. storage containers, boxes, chests, drawers, book shelves, CD holders, bill holders, etc.
Once you get into a routine and the family is in a routine, staying organized will become normal and natural.
While some home organization gurus will tell you to start in the kitchen, I’m going to advise beginning in another area. The kitchen will be the third place we attack and this doesn’t make it less important, but I will explain why I’m starting elsewhere.
First, if you look around your home, you probably see lots of clothes. Am I right? You’ve got clothes in closets, you’ve got clothes in piles (meaning to put them away and not having time, eventually just pulling them out of the pile and wearing them), and you’ve got clothes in laundry baskets. You might even have rumpled clothes in the dryer or (heaven forbid!) the washer. If it’s the former, the clothes are only rumpled. If it’s the latter, they’re probably rumpled AND smelly and (potentially) mildew-y. Yuck! Somewhere in this Mt. Vesuvius of laundry, dirty, clean, or otherwise, is your home. And I’m guessing that if you have a laundry room, you keep the door closed, as there are multiple Mt. Vesuvii piling up in there. If you don’t have a laundry room but have a laundry closet (with room for the washer, dryer, and some shelves), I’m betting you haven’t seen the top of your dryer for weeks or even months. It’s covered in rumpled clothes and towels, right?
Have you guessed where we’re starting? That’s right… the laundry area of your home. And here’s why… if you get your laundry room cleaned and organized, you’ll be much more apt to actually DO the laundry that plagues you and helps your home to be disorganized. And because you won’t want to undo the work you’ve done in the laundry room, you’re more likely to fold the laundry when it’s done, and put it away. There’s something that’s a breath of fresh air about a straightened laundry room—sort of like when you walk in to a closet where everything is hanging neatly.
So start with small steps:
1. Can you see the floor? No? Then pick up what’s on the floor and put it in laundry baskets. If you don’t have enough laundry baskets to accomplish this, then just sort the things in to piles outside the laundry room. I make piles of light clothes, whites, darks, and towels/rags.
2. Can you see the top of the dryer? If not, put the excess clothes in the aforementioned piles. Grab one rag to dust and have two plastic grocery bags—one to collect junk, and the other for later. Dust the dryer from the lint-leftovers and use a little window-cleaner if it doesn’t come off readily. Don’t neglect the area where the “start” button is—that can be grimy, too!
3. Can you see the top of the washer? If not, repeat the steps in #2, using the window cleaner if necessary.
Okay - now you’ve got your washer and dryer cleaned off. Congratulations! Let’s continue to take small steps in the laundry room….
4. Now take a critical look at your supply shelf. Do you have empty bottles or boxes lying around from spent detergent and/or fabric softener? Clean those out. Use that grocery bag that you’ve put excess dryer lint in and pitch those empties. Then organize what’s left. If you need to add things to your shopping list, now is the time—now you know what you’ve got and what you need to buy. When you organize your supplies, I recommend putting the detergent and any liquid softener above the (gasp!) washer. Make it easy to reach. Put the dryer sheets over the dryer—why reach more than you have to? If your shelves are higher than you’d like, use the top ledge of your washer & dryer to hold supplies! I’ve never seen a washer and dryer that don’t butt up to a wall for the electrical plugs they need. So use that space to your advantage. Put the detergent box or bottle on the top of the washer, along with whatever other washing supplementals you have. Put the dryer sheets on the top of the dryer so you don’t forget and end up with a load of static cling!
5. If you have wire-shelves above your washer & dryer, you’ve got a built-in place to hang a trash bag. Use that extra grocery-sack and cut one of the handles in half. Then tie those two ends around some of the wire-shelf and use the bag to collect dryer lint and empty containers from your emptied laundry supplies. When it’s full, cut it down and put it in the trash and put up a new one.
6. Now look at your floor. Does it need sweeping? If so, grab a broom and sweep. It won’t take you more than 5 minutes and you’ll feel much better about your room and your work—especially if something you’ve just washed falls on the floor as you’re transferring stuff to the dryer.
Congratulations! You’ve done the preliminary work of organizing your home—you won the battle in your laundry room! Take a 15 minute break and enjoy this victory. Then start the task of doing the excess laundry that you’ve been collecting—one pile at a time. When the first is done, swap it out immediately to your dryer or to hangers, if that’s more appropriate. Take it one pile at a time—in other words, small steps! Soon, you’ll find that it really only takes 5-10 minutes to fold warm clothes from the dryer and put them in laundry baskets, ready to transfer to the appropriate rooms, closets, and drawers. The rewards are huge here.. keep up on it (one load every day) and you’ll win the war against the Mt. Vesuvius of clothes in your home.
