Household organization

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I figure I will highlight a few rooms and then some random areas.  It is nothing too fancy but it is what works for our space and is relatively cheap to organize all of this stuff.

Living Room:

Our living room and kitchen are the central hub for our family, therefore there are always toys and sippy cups and shoes and random junk everywhere and I pick up these areas at least twice daily (naptime and bedtime). The pick up is quick and easy mainly because everything has its place.

• Shoes go in the basket.  When the basket is full I just take it upstairs to the bedrooms and put them where they go.  
• Remotes which seem to be a fun toy go in our nifty rotating remote organizer.  I kind of love this thing and it is easy to move all the remotes away from tiny hands when necessary.  I also keep charging cords in it.
• Toys are the nemesis to every families life because they are bulky, noisy  and everywhere all the time. I purchased these square organizers for the play room, kids rooms and obviously the living room. Eyan has two drawers in the living room and Emmi has two.  They share the open spaces and each get a few large toys to keep out, as long as they fit in our designated toy area.I have found that ALMOST all of our toys can fit into these box organizers with a few exceptions.  Those larger few exceptions will either go on top of the organizer, or a shelf or in the play room (which by the way is super clean and organized too).   

Kitchen:

I wrote about how I clean my kitchen quickly here and I am working on a deep cleaning series as well, but I figure a few people wonder what is going on in my cabinets.  So here you go.

• Utensils: Little baskets in all our drawers are my favorite.  Keeps everything easy to locate and makes me so happy. 
• Pots and Pans: I remember seeing somewhere (probably Pinterest) about how to store your pot and pan lids and saw that someone used a wire filing rack to hold their lids.  Yeah that totally didn’t work for me, so then I saw someone use hooks and I was game.  I attached hooks to the inside of my cabinet and so far I am in love with this.  I used dollar store sticky hooks and they work decent.  I have had a few fall off, but nothing major. Oh and BONUS, those filing racks actually fit my pans really nicely, so I can stop putting paper towels in between them to avoid scuffing and scratching.
• Mail organization:  Jason is terrible about bringing in the mail and putting it all over the kitchen, so I am immensely thankful for the fact that we have a built in mail/office area.  I sort mail immediately; trash the junk mail, bills and important papers in the top shelf and coupons in the bottom shelf. Once a month I pull all the bills and important papers and pay them and then file them in our filing cabinet. 

Laundry Room:

I am gearing up to redo this room in a yellow and Tiffany blue and am so so so excited, but until then this is my lame ol’ country laundry room.  I would say about 95% of the time my laundry room is clean.  I know in many peoples house there are piles of laundry either clean or dirty and it ends up as kind of a dungeon.  I feel like the biggest reason my laundry room is always clean is that we have the laundry room on the same floor as our bedrooms AND, I only have 3 laundry baskets.  The 3 laundry baskets makes it very difficult for me to leave a load of laundry when I need to do more laundry.  Having the bedrooms and laundry  room on the same floor is crucial for me.  When we lived in our little apartment the laundry room was downstairs and I would almost never put the laundry away, it just sat in baskets forever.  Now I have no reason not to walk 12 steps to the nearest closet and hang up clothes.

• Storage: Behind our laundry room door is a little storage space.  I keep larger cleaning items that I use throughout the upstairs as well as the pre-treating and laundry detergents.  It is all organized according to where it is used as well as what it is used for.  The top shelf if general random cleaning supplies, the middle shelf is ironing and floors, below that are pre-treating and dusting supplies and then detergent. 
• Trash: I keep a LARGE trash can in here to empty the small cans in the bedrooms and bathrooms into as well as the lint trap.  That way on trash day the hubby usually has to grab the diaper pail and the large trash can. (Diaper pail is also in the laundry room)
• Vacuum: We have a vacuum upstairs and downstairs which also helps motivate me to clean because I do not have to lug a vacuum up an down these darn stairs. 
• Swimwear: Lastly I keep a tote full of CLEAN swimming stuff.  Suits, towels, floaties are all kept here.  That way all I have to do is throw it all in the wash and then no one cares if your suit is wrinkled so I just toss it in the tote.   

Random household areas:

Coat closet, outdoor toys, bathroom storage and shoes are all things that if not stayed on top of they can easily get out of hand.  My house is no real exception.  About every 3 months or less I have to go through these areas and reorganize.

• Coat closet: We are lucky that our coat closet is so large.  I keep our travel luggage in here as well as all our coats.  The coats are organized by person.  We each have our own section so we know where to look.  I also have a basket on the shelf with hats and gloves (matching gloves are inside the hat which makes it easy to grab and go).  The large recyclable blue bag that you see hanging holds all of Jason and Eyan’s baseball caps.  I also keep a vacuum in here. 
• Kids area:  We have an area of our kitchen that is designated for our kids.  They have their separate dish cabinet, their outdoor toys and their craft drawers.  I just reorganized the outdoor toy section and put all the bubbles in a old shoe box, then put the kites, water toys and ball all together.  I love having these toys separate from the other toys for easy access for some quick fun.  Eyan and Emberlynn have their separate craft drawers that are age appropriate and are great for quiet time in our house. 
• Bedroom closets:  I should have taken a picture of more then just shoes.  I have shoe organizers in almost everyone’s rooms (baby girl does not need one yet for those tiny shoes).  I love them and they are wonderful.  I also organize ALL our closets by clothing type (jeans, t-shirts, long sleeve t-shirts, business clothes, shorts, etc) and when I have time or am feeling slightly neurotic, I may organize them by color too.  
• Bathroom Cabinets:  I wrote about how I quickly pick up our bathrooms here.  However, I never addressed the cabinet areas.  Almost every bathroom cabinet in our entire house has the following under it: toilet paper, toilet bowl cleaner, disinfecting wipes, paper towels and extra hand towels.  However, our master bath is slightly different because we have more space.  Jason has his side and I have mine. There is nothing too special about these.  I have little baskets under mine and Jason’s for the smaller items like colognes, razors and make up.  I also have these great little wire things to hold my blow dryer and straightener!  LOVE THEM!

If you are just starting to get more organized and make your life simpler, the key is to start small.  Start with the smallest room in your house and organize it.  It may just be a closet.  Choose a new area to organize each week and work your way to the bigger scarier areas in your house.  Make sure to keep your previously organized areas clean to ease your stress. I will tell you that it gets easier the more and more you do and you learn to live with so much less.  My rule is that if you have not used it in 6 months you donate or trash it.  It really does work!

Let me know if you have any questions in the comment section below.  Have a great day!

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