Organizing a home can be completely overwhelming. Here are five tips anyone can do to get you started on your journey, plus some items to make your home kept and chic.

By Lynn Norusis

• Make it easier to put things away or store them out of the way by having baskets in each room as a catchall. Make sure the basket is sized appropriately for the space and that it fits into the design of the room so no one will know it is a “junk” catcher.
• Purge monthly. Either pick a room or type of item, i.e. magazines or books, to go through throughout the month and collect items to get rid of. This makes the task less arduous and something that can be really thought about each day. Schedule a pick up or at the end of the month drop items off at your favorite charity. For clothes, store a discard bag in your closet so when you try something on and take it off because you don’t like it, you can put it in the donate bag immediately.
• Don’t buy storage items until you know what is going in them. Sometimes organizing a house is exciting when you think you get to buy new items for storage, maybe we think this will make the task easier? Don’t. Do. It. Purge before you store so you know exactly what you need for the items you are keeping. If you buy the storage pieces first, you will fill them. If you don’t buy enough, items will sit in piles for a while.
• Do a 10-minute cleanse daily. Set a timer for 10 minutes and clean as much as you can. Do this each morning, and if you’re feeling empowered, each night too. Make it a game. And win.
• Create a drop zone. Sounds counterintuitive but we all have crazy lives and sometimes need to run in, drop stuff and run back out. Allow for this in one area of the house so dropped items don’t show up all over. Then, clean up that space each day or two.

THE STUFF

 

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