Getting Organized
What areas are you tolerating? Well, it’s time to clean it up and clear it out! I stopped trying to tackle entire rooms. I just don’t usually have the time to accomplish all of that in one sitting. I now break areas down into managable chunks of time. Choose one area and completely tackle that until it is finished.
Here’s my list of areas to organize in order of most usage / most importance:
Bill box / drawer
Front door / back door area
Master bedroom closet
Master bedroom drawers
Kids closets
Kids drawers (socks, underwear, etc.)
Kitchen pantry (where food items are held)
Under bathroom sink (personal care items)
Books (break down by major area – my room, kids room, living room, garage, etc)
Magazines (thin ruthlessly – store in an underbed box)
Kids toys
Overflow closet / area (when this gets full, it’s time to donate/sell it all)
Recipes (takes more than one sitting for me usually) Use an accordion file separated into categories to organize them in.
Filing cabinet
Under the kitchen sink (cleaning products)
Kitchen drawers (utensils, etc.)
Kitchen cupboards
Garage
Outside storage building / area
Sheets / bed linens / towels
A very good friend of mine, who is a born natural at organizing, told me something a few years ago about organizing super cluttered spaces like under your sinks or in your pantries. Her idea is consolidation. Consolidate like items together.
Here are the main points of her theory on consolidation:
1. Think of clearing ”micro clutter” instead of huge clutter. This is the tiny minutae that adds up to overwhelming amounts of stuff. This really was a huge concept for me. Coming from a family that pretty much kept everything because we would use it eventually, it took me awhile to get the hang of it. For instance, throw out old half-full bottles of this and that when you know you aren’t really going to use it. That brass cleaner you bought for the one brass item you no longer use? Out it goes. Stop saving all of those paper and /or plastic bags. It’s not like you’re not going to get more the next time you go to the store! Can you clean out just some of the items from that shelf or drawer?
2. Group it all together. All similar items go to one area. This is a really great step to start with if you need to do baby steps for organizing everything. All pens in the entire house go in one place. All scissors go in one place. All blank paper goes in one place. All soup cans go in one place. All batteries in one place. Ditto for flashlights, magazines you’re holding on to, etc.. This one really kills the time it takes you to hunt down lost items. Everything now starts to have a home and before long everyone will know where that home is. No more junk drawers!
3. Consolidate liquids and powders. Two open bottles of Windex? Pour it all into one of the bottles. It doesn’t all fit? Then the bottle with the least amount in it gets to sit right up front so it can be used up first. I usually put the other one way in the back (or in a seperate area where we keep our extra supplies) so that I or my hubby don’t mistakenly pull out the wrong one. The whole point is to use up the small amount first and then get rid of that extra bottle. Same for tub cleaners, potting soil, open bottles of the same brand of lotion, etc., etc.. As before, if it’s old, just toss it. I was really amazed at how much space I reclaimed in my house just from following through with this. NOTE: Rule number 2 has to happen before this one or this method will not work!
4. Everything has to have a home. If you keep setting your mail on the counter and it just piles up there for a whole week, it doesn’t have a home. Ditto for everything else. Shoes, bookbags, dirty clothes, craft projects, etc.. Find it a permanent home that it will fit into even once you have built up a small (but manageable) pile again. If the new home is too small for the allocated items, you’ll just frustrate yourself!
5. You need empty space to grow. This step was also a huge jump for me. I always seemed to clear out just enough to make things look nice and neat. Then, two months later when new things came into the house I was back where I started! Fix this problem at the beginning. When you clear out an area, clear out a little extra. Too many towels to fit where they need to go? Thin out the ones with a hole, rip, or bleach spot or stain first. Then if they still won’t all fit, start thinning the ugly ones. 
Get to a point where they will all fit neatly and you actually have room to put a few new ones in the coming year.
6. Thin enough to last you for awhile. My mother would thin things every season. I just don’t have time for that. It seems that my house is so busy that I just can’t stop every month or so and keep thinning the same areas. When I thin out kids clothes/shoes, I take out what is already too small and also what is going to be too small very soon (next month or so). Bookshelves for current reading gets the same treatment. If it’s been on that shelf for more than 2 – 3 months, I must not be excited enough to read it right now. It goes out to the garage with longer term storgage books. The same thinning principle goes for everything else in the house.
7. You don’t have to have every single thing around you at all times. You can really get used to having it all around you all the time but therein lies the problem. You’re used to having it all around you all of the time so you quit even looking at it! Things you use really often should be accessible. Everything else is storable in a not so convienient space. Hoard your convienient space with your life. Save it for what you and your family really need to get to.
In the end, I figured out the following principle:
8. I don’t need more space or storage, I need less stuff. They say that when you leave a job or someone, that you take your problems with you. This also applies to your clutter /organizing habits. If you can’t keep a moderate handle or organizing 1500 square feet, what in the world makes you think you’ll be able to do it in a 3000 square foot home? Now, everytime I find myself tripping over the same items or getting frustrated at what it around me and out of habit I say, “I need more room!”, I just stop myself and say, “nope, I just need less stuff.” I know it’s time to organize, clear out, or thin whatever it is and I write that task on my to-do list, even if only in my mind.
