Posts Tagged ‘organize’

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Organizing the Bathroom

Friday, August 20th, 2010

organizing-the-bathroom

Bathroom items that need to be organized include cleaning supplies, brushes and combs, make-up, deodorant, toothbrushes and toothpaste, clippers, medicine, towels, bathtub toys, extra toilet paper rolls, and maybe even reading materials. How do you maximize such a small space to include these items?

Bathrooms should have a plastic carrier for cleaning supplies to put under the sink so that all your supplies are in one place. Your top drawer can have dividers for deodorant, brushes, make-up, clippers, toothpaste, etc. You can make the dividers yourself by getting checkbook boxes or other small boxes, and covering them completely with dark contact paper. The contact paper makes them easier to wipe out periodically.

Medicine can be put in a clear bin or shoe box, and once again, you can make it look nicer by covering the box with contact paper. Once a year, go through your medicine bottles and throw out anything that has expired. Then put the box in a high cupboard that cannot be reached by children. Or if you have a mirror that opens, you can keep your child-proof medicines in there, along with your mouthwash and moisturizer.

Towels are usually stored in a cupboard or in drawers. But if you have limited cupboard space, roll up your towels and display them somewhere visible, especially if the towels match the bathroom decor. Baskets can be used for this purpose.

Bathtub toys can be stored in a drawer, a plastic bin inside a cupboard, or in a net attached to the bathtub wall. For several years, we had tubes and connectors to play with in the bathtub, and we stored that in a separate drawer so that they would be easy to find. Also, instead of having so many bath toys, you could get rid of old toys whenever you acquire new ones.

You can easily add a cupboard to the wall above the toilet without using up any floor space. This cupboard would be perfect for medicines or extra toilet paper rolls. Consider doing this if you have no drawers and no cupboards at all.

In a basket on the back of the toilet, you can have some comic books or other reading material. There are other types of racks that you can put up on the wall. For example, you can have a set of twelve essential oils mounted up on the wall on a wooden shelf-like picture. (These are kind of like shadow boxes.) As you can see, organizing the bathroom isn’t so hard after all.

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Organizing Your Living Room

Thursday, August 19th, 2010

organizing-the-living-room

Living rooms aren’t very hard to organize, since most people only have couches, a coffee table, a TV on a stand, and maybe a few bookshelves or plants. So what can I possibly have to say about living rooms?

First off, you need somewhere to store videos or DVD’s. You can find drawers designed specifically for videos, and they can be out of sight. Or you can put them in regular drawers, if you have any under your television. You might even store them in a closet or in another room on a bookshelf, to keep the living room looking relaxing and luxurious. Wii games have lots of parts. You might store those in a clear bin before putting them in a cupboard. That way, they don’t tumble out of the cupboard and get stepped on every time someone plays Wii.

Baskets can be used in your living room for rolled up throw blankets for when you watch television. I have a small basket for reading materials for one of my sons who does silent reading for an hour after lunch. You could also put devotional items in a nice basket wherever you like to spend time with God. Baskets are fabulous for containing all kinds of things, like sewing, that you might want to do while watching TV.

rolled-blankets

Bookshelves are the correct storage place for books. Consider getting taller bookshelves that go all the way to the ceiling to free up more floor space. A taller bookshelf takes up only half the floor space as two shorter bookshelves. If you have too many books, either get rid of some of them, or get more bookshelves.

You can also store items on hanging shelves on the wall. In my living room, I have a beautiful assortment of medieval items that I bought at yard sales when I lived in England. I love looking at those items every day, grouped together with a few plants to add a relaxing atmosphere. No floor space has been taken up by the hanging shelves. These are also useful in children’s bedrooms. The children’s toys can decorate the rooms as they are stored on the wall. Always remember that you can find storage spaces in corners, above your head, on the wall, or underneath furniture, and your visual floor space will be freed up to make your home look more organized.

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Organizing Your Kitchen

Wednesday, August 18th, 2010

organizing-the-kitchen

If you have a dishwasher, there is never a reason to stack dishes in the sink. Train everyone to rinse the dish and put it in the dishwasher as soon as they set it down. Then your kitchen sink will always be ready for washing hands or cooking, and it will look relaxing to the eye.

The kitchen is one area that tends to get messed up quickly. People set things down on kitchen counters, and pretty soon you have a pile of stuff that is an eyesore. Designate one time during the day (or you can do it throughout the day) to grab one thing and put it away, and grab another thing, and put it away. If you tidy up while dinner is cooking, you can have a restful environment after dinner.

As far as drawer space is concerned, use drawer dividers to help you find utensils more quickly, or group them in a container on the counter. I’m not talking about just the silverware. The more dividers you have in your drawers for your bigger utensils, the easier it will be for you to find each item. You can also hang utensils on the wall on a utensil holder that has hooks for each utensil. Keep cooking utensils near the stove where you need them, and get rid of any duplicate utensils (except for spatulas and wooden spoons; have two of those.)

Put away appliances that you don’t use every day, such as food processors or blenders. The fewer items you have on your counters, the more restful you will feel when you enter the kitchen, and you have a place to prepare food.

kitchen-drawer

Spices can be stored on a spice rack on the wall to free up cupboard space and enable you to find spices more quickly. You could also use a tiered shelf in your cupboard so that you can see all your spices at one time and not get an avalanche when you open your cupboard door. Also, if you have two containers of cinnamon, dump the one in the uglier container into the one with the prettier container. When a couple gets married, often they will have two of every kind of spice. Another way to sort it is by throwing away the older ones.

Containers for the refrigerator should be stackable and clear so that you can see what’s in them. Place the container in the freezer if you don’t plan to eat it during the next couple of days. You can label them with a Sharpie marker on masking tape. This keeps the fridge from having spoiled food.

If you would like more tips on organizing your kitchen, or if you would like to have a tour of my kitchen, check out my class, Organizing for a Fun Homeschool. The kitchen section is only about 10 minutes, but it helps to picture what I’m saying.

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Organizing the Bedroom

Tuesday, August 17th, 2010

organizing-the-bedroom

The key to keeping your house organized is to get rid of everything except what you use all the time and what you love. If you can do this one thing, your house will be simpler to organize. When you have fewer things, your cupboards aren’t crowded, and you don’t have to crush your clothes and wrinkle them by pushing them down to close the drawer. You can’t even see what’s in your closet if the clothes are smashed against each other. Get rid of everything you can, and the extra space will bring you tranquility of mind.

Since I mentioned the bedroom, let’s start there. Open your closet and dump all of your hanging clothes onto your bed. Now grab the items that you use all the time and that you love. Get rid of all the rest. Do the same with your drawers. Dump them out, and put back only what you love and use all the time. Put the rest in a bag for Goodwill. Do the same for shoes, scarves, and anything else in your bedroom. Clear bins are good for storing scarves, snow boots, or other things that aren’t used every day, but that you want to keep. Stack the bins on shelves, or get flat containers to be stored under the bed.

Necklaces can be hung on a wooden rack, with short pegs coming out of a decorated slab of wood. This way your necklaces will not be tangled when you want them, and they are all visible to see what matches your outfit.

The closets in the children’s bedrooms should be rearranged depending on what you have to store. You can lower the bar and add more shelves if your child is small. The shelves can hold bins that are labeled with toys that are similar, like cars and trucks in one bin, and legos in another bin. You might even want to cut out a picture from the original packaging of a toy, and stick it with packing tape onto the bin so a child knows what is in each bin, and how to clean up after playing.

organized-drawer

You should regularly go through your children’s clothing to see if they have outgrown some of their clothes, especially if they’ve just had a birthday. Also, get rid of toys that only keep the attention of your child for five minutes. Open-ended toys are better, and they can even be stored in a pantry, laundry room, or a garage, as long as they are in bins. They can be rotated so that toys are always interesting.

If you would like a virtual tour of my home and how I organize it, check out my workshop Organizing for a Fun Homeschool.

We were named a top organizing and decluttering expert by Redfin. Check out the article we were featured in: 30 Organizing Tips to Maintain a Tidy Home

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