Category: Home Organizing

It’s that time of year when I start my spring cleaning. It’s really the only time of year I do a thorough cleaning of the whole house. It’s also the time of year I focus on organizing things and getting rid of stuff I never use.

Sometimes I like to watch home organization videos on the Internet, but honestly, I rarely use the ideas I see. I might take an idea or method here or there, but I find if I try to have everything in the house perfectly organized all the time it backfires. Before very long, instead of being the paragon of neatness and order, I turn into the queen of messy mounds and greasy grim.

My organization system has to be simple and easy to use. Here are my three principle of home organizing.

Keep like things together.

Socks go in the sock drawer. Hang pants in one part of the closet, skirts in another. It’s a simple idea and generally easy to maintain.

The difficulty comes when you don’t have enough space in the sock drawer for all your socks. Maybe the solution is to use a different drawer. Maybe it is to get rid of some socks. But the solution isn’t to have an overflow sock area somewhere else. When I do that, I forget they are there and go buy more socks that just add to the overflow.

Keep things easily accessible in the place you use them.

I like to do crafts. I usually do them in my living room, but I was storing them in my bedroom because that’s where the storage space was. With a little creative rearrangement, my crafts are now beautifully and efficiently stored in the room where I use them. Current projects are easily accessible in baskets. Future projects are tucked away in a nearby trunk.

Keep things beautiful.

I like things to be beautiful. Plastics do not please my eyes. No matter how efficient plastic storage systems are for organizing, they have no place in my house unless shoved under a bed.

Maybe your artistic sensibilities are different. Don’t sacrifice them for the sake of efficiency unless pure efficiency is beautiful to you.

Efficiency is beautiful. I just love it all the more when I can make it go hand and hand with the aesthetically pleasing.

What works for you?

Do you organize your house? If so, what principles do you use to organize it?

Would you be happier if your house was better organized? If so, what is stopping you from organizing it today?