Top Tips For An Organized Home

Decluttering anything from a busy family home to a small apartment or dorm can all require effort, but the benefits are worth it to maximize the usability and size of all spaces. By following these simple tips, you can be one step closer to creating a clean, more manageable, and stress-free space for your own enjoyment, hosting visitors and even your growing family to all thrive in.

• Assess Your Space and Set your Goals

• Decluttering the Living and Gathering Rooms

• Streamlining the Kitchen and Dining Area

• Creating Productive Home Office and Workspaces

• Establishing Daily and Weekly Routines

Asses Your Space and Set Your Goals

Always, always start with a plan and goal setting session! If you need assistance in building that plan, I am more than happy to walk you through each step. Otherwise, let’s dive in here to build out those steps in order for you to get your home or working space into the best possible surrounding for your mundane day-to-day. How our space flows and functions can dictate how clear our mind can work and produce goal achieving!

Bring out the pen and paper to include all family members or other people that might occupy the home as well, and we will find the best solutions that work for everyone! The very first step will be to establish your motivation and overall goals, so together identify each of the rooms or corners of your space and define the purpose that it serves (or that you would like it to serve as). There are so many different types of spaces in a home and each can have extremely differing functions. Now that you have more clarity on your specific home, it should be easy to find what your home needs in each of those areas or functions. If there needs to be significant reduction of items or rearranging, please take note of it here so that the task at mind can stay on track throughout the whole process - side note: it can be very easy to get overwhelmed or distracted from your main goal. Another initial step that is important is to eep in mind the feel of your home that you would like to maintain, so ask yourself questions that can bring clarity of the flow or style of you and your family. Inquire with me if you need help defining what those questions might be for finding those organizational tactics… yes, thats right, we all have unique organizing styles similarly to decorating and architectural styles that work for us.

Decluttering The Living and Gathering Rooms

*Let’s start with the highest traffic areas first*

Gather and analyze the entirety of the room and where you keep items in this space. Often times, the living room is the center for fellowship and bringing together both the family members and outside guests. So, let’s make sure that we are making our spaces allow for the best environments for those instances and are easy to maintain and/or keep clean. So, let’s start here by listing all the big items and storage, shelving or closet spaces that are in each category. Treat this almost as an inventory spreadsheet here. Lastly, we are going to summarize the ultimate goals and design styles we hope to see here at the end of the day! Once we have analyzed the space and our specific goals, we will begin to find the stuff that does not fit for you and be able to approach the rooms with a clear idea and knowledge of what just might not fit there anymore.

Now, the living room might quickly become overwhelming, because in a space that is shared by numerous people or families with children… this space can often become the default accumulation and stuffing spot for many miscellaneous items. Even if you live on your own, this space can quickly become a cluttered collection. After making your overall goal sheet and inventory spreadsheet, if you still feel a bit overwhelmed, let’s focus on a small step of the process and re-set all the items that might not belong in that space and place it in a bin in the room you think it might belong at this time.

Once we can clearly see all of the items that we want to keep in this space [you have accomplished the decluttering and editing stage of the process] I like to give everything nice clean so that we are removing dust or the hidden dirt before putting our furniture and storage for our items back in place! Remember to keep the end goal and vision in mind. A good tip for someone who is trying to accomplish and easy-to-manage home is to try and keep as many things off of the floor and have specific spots where they live, if you find yourself having too many books to fit on your bookshelf, for example, it may be time to invest in something larger or adding a nice floating shelf on the walls. I love a good corner shelf if you have the space for it *check out other recommended shelving here.*

Streamlining the Kitchen and Dining Area

On to the next… and one of my favorites to declutter! Something inside of me just jumps for joy when I get to open a kitchen cabinet that is easy to quickly scan or have just a common sense element to it when sifting through what can often times be a maddening task… we are all guilty of buying new spices from the store that we thought we were out of, then finding the original one as soon as you get home:/ Well, there is hope for you and we are going to dive into my most recommended steps and tips to hopefully achieving your dream kitchen and dining room!

I highly recommend beginning first with a declutter and deep clean of you fridge and then the pantry or “dry foods” storage. Purchasing useful storage items are going to help you immensely! If you have tall shelf spaces, then make sure you are using up as much space as possible in heightened storage bins that make reaching or restocking easy. I personally like to use clear glass storage jars for things like grains, and baking essentials with labels that are easy to read and keep sorted.

Once all the food areas are organized, I would then move on to organizing and decluttering the everyday items… this refers to serveware, glasses, silverware and any other commonly reached for things in the kitchen. It is important that these remain easy-to-reach and to be located in those simple reach locations. Afterwards, your last step should be to reset all of the less common or miscalaneous items. I like to make sure that bakeware and things that vary in size are positioned on their side so that digging and clacking is prevented as much as possible, it also makes it easier to see where things are. Remember, it is key to maintain a calming and clean environment where we spend a lot of time and prepare food items for our nourishment.

Creating Productive Home Office and Workspaces

Who doesn’t love a clean and collected work or creative workspace!? And even more importantly than loving the space, we also want to perform to the best of our abilities and succeed for our highest potential!

Why Prioritize the Long-Term Perspective

At the end of the day our homes are truly the resting space and set the stage for each and every day.

Establishing Daily and Weekly Routines

Last, but not leat, our sustainability of functionality and maintaining our home spaces and ensuring the stabilized and increased value, is by setting obtainable and realistic routines for your busy-self to easily hold on to and rely on day in and day out! Some routines best suit people when approached with weekly routines, and for others, it is easier to do smaller task each day. So experiment with your own schedule and ability and see what might be best for you and/or your family. Remember, it is important that these routines are never something that result in overwhelm, shame or increase pressure to perform… because that can often turn those actionable tasks into much more difficult and straining activities. If you want to develop a better approach to maintaining your home, book a consultation for more recourses or read my routines blueprint.