Ten Tips to Mastering Home Organization

Dave Kushner • December 23, 2020

If your home more closely resembles an episode of Hoarders than Tidying Up with Marie Kondo, you are not alone. It’s easy to become consumed by clutter if you’re not careful. While maintaining an organized home is not always an easy task – especially if you have kids – with a little effort you can corral the clutter and establish order in your abode.

Your home will look picture perfect and ready to grace the pages of a home décor magazine if you follow these ten tips to mastering home organization:

Edit Efficiently
Get in the Zone
Become a Basket Case
Family Affair
Create a Command Center
Storage Strategies
Bottle Service
Out of the Box
File Folders
Fit to Print

This is a carefully curated list of original ideas and storage suggestions that go beyond the typical tips commonly recommended by organizational professionals. Keep reading for expert advice and creative solutions on how to master home organization.

Edit Efficiently

The best place to start is with a full-scale purge, or “edit” as the dynamic duo behind The Home Edit like to say. They suggest you begin by completely emptying everything from the space you want to organize. Then sort your items into groupings, putting like pieces together. This is also the time to decide what should stay and what should go, either into the trash or to be donated. Once you have sorted all of your stuff, and decided what you want/need to keep, you can then figure out the best way to organize and store your salvaged goods.

Get in the Zone

“A place for everything and everything in its place” is a great mantra to live by when it comes to mastering home organization. Whether you are organizing your home office, bedroom closet, or kids’ playroom, the trick of the trade is to create specific zones. Every space should have a purpose and every item should have a home (place where it belongs). This way there is no confusion as to where to put things when it’s time to clean-up.

If your kids have a lot of Legos, for instance, you might utilize a set of plastic storage drawers to store the blocks by size or color. This way, when playtime is over, your children can quickly sort and put away their Legos until next time.

The same theory holds true for your closet. If you live in a warm climate, you don’t need to take up prime real estate with your winter clothes and accessories. So, why not store them in a basket or bin on the top shelf of your closet? When the temperatures drop, or you plan a trip up north, simply take the basket down to access your sweaters, gloves, hats, and scarves.When you get home, wash them and then put them away so they are ready for your next trip or winter cold snap.

Become a Basket Case

Speaking of baskets, the professional organizers at Neatnik say a family basket system is a great way to control clutter. They recommend giving each member of the family their own basket or bin. When stuff is left around the house, it can be placed into the person’s basket. Each family member is responsible for periodically sorting their basket, throwing out what they don’t need or want and putting the rest away in its proper place. Not only does this system help to declutter the common areas of a home, but it also teaches children the importance of responsibility and taking care of their possessions.

Family Affair

Home organization should be a family affair. If everyone pitches in, tidying up is a snap. Better yet, why not make a game out of getting organized? Set a timer for ten minutes and have everyone in the family help clean up, put away, and declutter a specific space. It’s amazing how much you can accomplish in just ten minutes. If you make this part of your family’s regular routine, you will master home organization in no time at all.

Create a Command Center

It’s important to organize your life, not just your stuff. A family command center will keep everyone on task by keeping track of important information and events. You don’t need a dedicated desk space; the inside of a kitchen cabinet will do just fine as a command center. Simply hang up a calendar and add a cork board to tack up invitations and appointment cards, and you’re all set. A plastic hanging container is ideal for organizing paperwork such as school newsletters or bills that need to be paid.

Storage Strategies

The key to mastering home organization is to utilize smart storage solutions. Professional organizer Kathy Jenkins from Better Homes & Gardens touts the SIMPLE method. The acronym stands for:

S - Sort
I - Identify
M - Make a home
P - Put into containers
L - Label
E - Establish your own routine

Simply stated, you want to maintain order by getting rid of what you don’t want or need and organizing the stuff you’re keeping. Last but not least, you want to continually review your process to sustain your home organization master plan.

Bottle Service

Thanks to the popularity of television shows like Tidying Up with Marie Kondo, professional organizers are eager to share their tricks of the trade. Blogger Abby Lawson revealed her secret to sorting and storing awkward water bottles. She places them on their sides in a plastic wine rack on a shelf. This way your water bottles are easy to grab and you don’t need to deal with them continually falling over when standing upright on a shelf.

Out of the Box

Matching clear containers is a great way to organize your kitchen pantry. By unboxing your cereal, cookies, crackers, and other dry goods, you can save space and create a clean and clutter-free space. Organizational experts including Just a Girl and Her Blog recommend adding labels so that you know exactly what is in each container. It could be a baking disaster if you were to mix up baking soda and baking powder. Another top tip is to store leftover spices in old Tic Tac mint containers. They take up a lot less room than spice bottles and it’s a great way to upcycle trash.

File Folders

Marie Kondo wowed the world with her KonMari Method of file folding clothes and organizing dresser drawers. That same system can easily be translated to your linen closet. Simply file fold your tablecloths, table runners, placemats, and cloth napkins. Not only will this help you maximize the space in your drawers or cabinets, but it will also make finding things much simpler. Thanks to file folding, you can quickly locate grandma’s prized tablecloth when you are getting ready to set the holiday table.

Fit to Print

If you have kids, then you likely have piles of original artwork. There’s simply not enough wall space to proudly display it all. But you can’t bear to part with any of these lovingly created masterpieces. Here’s an ingenious idea. Why not take pictures of your favorite pieces – or all of them – and create a custom art book featuring the work of your favorite young artist? You could make one book for each school grade. It’s super simple and you can do it right from your phone using a photo book app.

Conclusion

Maintaining an organized home is not as easy as it seems. Clutter happens even to the best housekeepers. Fortunately, by following these ten tips you can master home organization and establish some practical family routines at the same time.