Lifestyle Changes for an Organized Home

Keeping your home organized can seem like an insurmountable task. Most people acquire junk piles all over the house, all while feeling like they didn’t do anything to make it happen. There are a few ways to get your home organized, but keeping it that way is the trick. Use these simple organization tips and hints on how to keep the home organized to get control of your life.

Create drawer organization systems that work for what you need. Do you have a junk drawer in your dresser or kitchen? Most people do. Quick clean-up jobs can quickly turn your pot holder and dish towel drawer into a place for anything and everything. Reclaim it by using small boxes or drawer organizer that only allows you to put what goes in the drawer in there. Try to get rid of the junk that ends up in the junk drawer. If you notice that some things really do need a place to go, then make sure that they have a place. Otherwise, they’ll constantly end up being raked into a drawer last minute.

Use wall space to organize your computer desk. Desks are notoriously messy, holding everything from your lunch dishes to your cough lozenges. Utilize the wall space around you and make a place for all of these little things. There’s more to working at a desk than pencils, books and paper. You will probably notice that certain things always end up on your desk. Make spaces for the things that you use while you’re working. You may need space for toothpicks, lip balm, your cell phone, or your fingernail file.

Getting the kids’ rooms organized is another big problem. You can spend hours in there rearranging and organizing toys, only to see it destroyed again an hour later. You may have to put this one in your children’s hands. It can be nearly impossible to keep things straight, so you need a plan. Offer rewards for cleaning. Add five minutes of picking things up and putting them away to your child’s bedtime routine. Tell them that five minutes can earn them fifteen minutes of video game time. If you notice that they did a really good job, give them a double reward, like thirty minutes of extra time. This can be extremely motivating, much more so than threatening to take away privileges if they don’t clean up.

Getting your laundry under control can save you from many days of battling the laundry mountain. Most families can make a load of laundry every day, even if it might be a small load. Make it part of your daily routine to spend a few minutes loading and unloading the wash. Getting your closets in order can help you to keep up with the laundry without wearing yourself out.

It may help to install a hanging bar near the washer and dryer. You can take clothes straight from the dryer and put them directly on hangers. You can use a wood hanger, like a coat hanger, for hanging heavier objects, or clothing that needs to be hang dried. Take the clothes hangers to the closets in one trip every day or two.

Getting your home in order and adjusting your lifestyle can help you stay organized forever!

About the Author: Joe Granville is on the staff of Only Hangers, a leading online resource for wood hangers, coat hangers and all types of clothes hangers which is recognized for the excellent quality and value of its wood hanger and coat hanger offerings. For more information, please visit http://www.onlyhangers.com.

Gain Control with Home Organization

Keeping your home in order can be like a full-time job. However, you can get it done over time by spending only a few minutes each day organizing and cleaning. Set goals for yourself and schedule out times that you will spend tackling one project at a time. Following this strategy can help you to seamlessly transition from a cluttered messy house to an organized, manageable home.

Scheduling things helps you to gain control, mentally and physically, of the tasks that need completing. If you constantly feel overwhelmed by the sheer volume of things that must be accomplished, then this system will help you. You should only have to worry about the very next thing on your list, not a house full of chores that you never seem to have time to tackle. The mental load is lifted and things seem much more manageable.

Start by figuring out what you really have to do daily. This is usually something like laundry and dishes. You have to eat, and you have to have clothes to wear. So, put these down as your first priority. You may also want to add in other things that need to be done around your home, like get the kids’ backpacks ready for school, fix lunches, or other things that occur daily. Set certain times to do these things each day.

Example: Fold clothes and put them away at 7:45AM. Move wet clothes to the dryer and start the next load washing. Leave for work, 8:00AM.

Scheduling in this way will help you realize how little time it actually takes to accomplish the task. Don’t worry about the laundry mountain that you haven’t conquered yet, do the one load that you have scheduled and move on. You can schedule another fifteen minutes before bed if you feel behind. Don’t try to do it all at once, or you’ll get exhausted and feel pressured to finish. If you’re really motivated, go ahead. But, it will eventually get caught up and your daily routine will get easier and easier to manage.

The next thing to put on your list is your long-term goals. Is there an area of your home that just constantly gets cluttered? You may want to put it as a top priority. People usually have a flat surface, like a table, desk or countertop that just constantly piles up. Papers, mail, magazines, school work, keys, cell phones, wallets, and more can be piled in one place daily by your family. Come up with an organization system for these things so that they have somewhere specific to go.

Further down your list will come monthly chores. Organizing your closet is a great thing to put here. The first time you do it, you will probably want to schedule a full hour. Then, schedule a quick five to ten minute straighten-up session once a month after that.

Start by getting some good clothes hangers, like a wood hanger or coat hanger that is sturdy enough to hold your heaviest clothes. Specialty hangers can help you save space and keep the closet more organized. Buckets and bins can be used for smaller items, and don’t forget to use the space on the back of the closet door. Making a place for everything will make your monthly organization task simple.

About the Author: Joe Granville is on the staff of Only Hangers, a leading online resource for wood hangers, coat hangers and all types of clothes hangers which is recognized for the excellent quality and value of its wood hanger and coat hanger offerings. For more information, please visit http://www.onlyhangers.com.

How to Organize in a Jiffy

Getting your home organized can be a quick and easy process if you follow these simple steps. Learn how to take care of problem areas, get an easy to follow system going, and keep your home organized. People that are notoriously organized usually do a little bit at a time on a regular basis.

1) Set an easy goal. Give yourself five or ten minutes to work on a problem area and see how much you can get done. Start with five minutes on the kitchen counter, then the entrance to your house, the bathroom counters, and your table tops. Next, move on to making the beds, doing one load of laundry, straightening your living room, and so on. You’ll be surprised how much you can get done in five minutes and what a difference it will make in your home and in your view of housekeeping.

2) As you go, plan on getting rid of excess junk. Carry a bag with you around the house and throw away whatever you can for ten minutes. If you do this once a week, your home will stay less cluttered and the things that you need to keep will be easier to keep up with.

3) Go to problem areas and organize them one at a time. One day you can tackle your computer desk. The next day, go for the entertainment center. Work your way around the house spending just a few minutes in each area. Designate a time or a spot each day that you will get organized. Go ahead and spend more time if you’re motivated. Otherwise, set a timer and only do the designated item for that set amount of time.

4) As you go, you’ll determine what areas are problems and ways to figure them out. You may decide to make a monthly or daily schedule for yourself so that you can keep up with the things that need to be done regularly without getting that overwhelming feeling that everything needs to be done.

5) Getting the daily tasks in order will help you stay on top of things. Laundry is a big one. If you can wash, dry, fold and put away one load of laundry each night as part of your bedtime routine, it will seem easy and like less of a hassle than normal. If you dread this job, time it and see how long it actually takes. Most people can fold a load of laundry in five to ten minutes. When you see how quickly it can be done, it seems like less of a chore.

6) Getting your closets organized will make the task of putting laundry away a lot easier. You can even use a hanging bar and hangers in the laundry area for drying and hanging clothes as they come out of the dryer. Use some sturdy clothes hangers, like a good wood hanger or coat hanger, for drying items that may be heavy as they come out. Getting your house in order will get easier and easier as you follow your schedule.

About the Author: Joe Granville is on the staff of Only Hangers, a leading online resource for wood hangers, coat hangers and all types of clothes hangers which is recognized for the excellent quality and value of its wood hanger and coat hanger offerings. For more information, please visit http://www.onlyhangers.com.

DIY Kid Friendly Home Solutions

Keeping your home in order can be especially difficult once children enter the picture. Whether you have babies or school-aged children, it translates into needing more storage, and needing to stay more organized. Keeping track of all your kids’ things is essential if you are to keep up with their lives and yours.

Start by assessing your everyday problems. Do they come home from school and immediately destroy your house with school work, coats, shoes, socks, back packs and hats? Finding ways to easily organize your kids’ things can help you to keep your house straight, cut down on frustrations and avoid losing things that you need as they’re running out the door in the morning.

Building lockers for the kids’ things can be extremely helpful. You can encourage them to use them by making them easy to access. Put them right inside the front door or mudroom, where ever they normally enter the house. Think of clever ways to make it work. For example, you can put a bench seat there for them to sit and remove their shoes. Shoe cubbies are great for drying out wet shoes and keeping them in a good place for morning.

Coat hooks, or hanging bars are essential for keeping your home decluttered. Once they throw those coats on the chair, it becomes a logical place for them to throw everything else. Encourage them to hang their coats on the hook or hanger as soon as they enter the house.

You will need another hook or large cubby for backpacks. You may decide to put another shelf there for important things like extra pens and pencils, other school supplies, their lunch money, lunch boxes, or other items that you don’t want them to forget in the morning. This little step will reduce clutter on your countertops, coffee table, end tables, and other flat surfaces in the home. Plus, it will make school mornings easier to manage and everything will have a place.

In the summer, you can use the cubbies to keep pool toys, towels, sunscreen, sports equipment, and other summer fun items organized. You are sure to find a plethora of uses for your cubby locker system.

If you have a baby in the home, having a locker system can help you keep all of those necessities organized. Extra diapers, wipes, blankets, changing pads, and clothes can be kept right by the door. Baskets can help you to disguise these items so that they don’t make the room look tacky. Diaper bags can be kept by the door so that you can grab them at a moment’s notice.

Make sure that everything coming into your house has a place. Wastebaskets, camera chargers, key hooks, and a coat closet with plenty of clothes hangers or coat hangers can help you stay organized. Make a point of having a place for everything and your life and the lives of your children will surely run more smoothly.

About the Author: Joe Granville is on the staff of Only Hangers, a leading online resource for wood hangers, coat hangers and all types of clothes hangers which is recognized for the excellent quality and value of its wood hanger and coat hanger offerings. For more information, please visit http://www.onlyhangers.com.

Home Wardrobes and Other Closet Solutions

There are many closet designs for walk-in closets and reach-in closets. But sometimes it’s just not enough. A home wardrobe or “closet outside of the closet” can help you to create extra storage and give you the versatility that you need.

Keeping your closet organized becomes a lot easier if you don’t have to switch out summer and winter wardrobes. Using a stand-alone or built-in wardrobe closet can help you to do that. You can keep summer clothes in one and winter clothes in the other. Never having to move anything around eliminates your need to rearrange the closet every few months.

Changing out wardrobes for the season rarely goes as smoothly as it sounds. You will usually need to get out your winter clothes in the fall when you start needing jackets and long-sleeved shirts at night. Then you’re back to your summer clothes during the day. What this does, is it creates a need to have both wardrobes available for a few weeks. The closet gets crammed and disorganized pretty quickly.

More and more people are turning to exterior home wardrobes to take care of this problem. You can alternate between the wardrobe and your closet from season to season, like we mentioned above, or you can use the wardrobe to store your out of season clothing. By using a wardrobe instead of boxes, you keep the clothes neatly hung and folded. So, when those in-between seasons like spring and fall sneak up on you, you can simply go to the wardrobe and get what you need.

Not having boxes to deal with not only frees up storage space in your home, but also eliminates the need to wash, iron and hang everything that comes out of storage. Sometimes clothes in storage will get a musty smell. That is actually mold that you are smelling. Even if you can’t see it yet, it’s there. You can help to eliminate mold and mildew in stored clothing by using cedar sachets or other cedar products.

In a wardrobe, your clothes won’t get as musty and wrinkled. However, if the wardrobe will be closed for an entire season, you will want to use cedar products anyway, just to be safe. You can hang the clothes inside on cedar hangers to eliminate odors, protect the clothes from pests, and to eliminate moisture.

Your clothes hangers can help you to keep things from getting wrinkled and they can also help you to make the most of the space in the wardrobe or in your closet. A good wood hanger or coat hanger can help coats and suits keep their shape. Then, you can use slim hangers that are designed to save space for the rest of your clothing.

Selecting the right hangers and storage space for you is essential in keeping a closet organized. If it holds the things that you need it to hold, it can be one of your greatest assets.

About the Author: Joe Granville is on the staff of Only Hangers, a leading online resource for wood hangers, coat hangers and all types of clothes hangers which is recognized for the excellent quality and value of its wood hanger and coat hanger offerings. For more information, please visit http://www.onlyhangers.com.