Organizing Your Home
by
Kim Tilley I am not a super-organized person. I've tried, and I do maintain a certain level of organization, but I am no Martha Stewart! But when things really start bothering me, I do launch a massive campaign to get things put where they are supposed to be. These are the systems I use.
They are easy to maintain and they work very well (and are mostly other people's ideas!) My advice on organizing is very basic: group by type; if in doubt, throw it out; label everything because you will forget what's in there; and organize things so you can see them all at a glance.
Speed Cleaning by Jeff Campbell and the Clean Team- "Speed Cleaning" is a wonderful book/system and has really helped me cut down on my cleaning time. I learned a lot about how to organize my cleaning supplies and work faster. The basic idea is to have the right tools, organize it, and keep it near you when you clean. They use a cleaning apron, which holds most of your supplies and a tote to carry the rest. They also show you how to clean from top to bottom, room to room, very efficiently. Jeff Campbell owns a professional cleaning business and has several books out on the subject. "Clutter Control" is a great look at organizing your stuff, "Good As New" shows you how to maintain your stuff, and "Spring Cleaning" helps you with just that!
Clothing System from Tightwad Gazette-Amy Daczycyn showed how to organize kids' clothes in one of the Tightwad Gazette books and it has helped me to keep hand me downs, garage sale clothes, and outgrown clothing for 3 boys pretty organized. I also use the same system for my own clothes (organized by season, not size). You use cardboard boxes (or you can get the plastic ones) to store your child's clothing by size, gender and season. For instance, Beau is now growing out of size 6 clothing. When I need to get the size 7 stuff out for summer, I have a box labeled "7 summer". I keep these boxes in one place and they are stacked so I can see everything at a glance. When I get out the summer clothing, I put away most of the winter size 6 stuff he was wearing, label the box and save it for my youngest child, Connor, who is in size 3. I also buy things cheaply for my oldest son Sean and store them for the day he can fit into them. He is in a size 8 now, and I have boxes of 10s 12s and 14 for him. I can inventory the boxes easily to see what I need to buy them, though it is usually the same thing- jeans, undies and socks! I get around these with great sales, rebates, and the Sears kidvantage program, since my kids are constantly ripping out their pants.
Setting up a Pantry-Even if you don't have a big kitchen, you can still have a pantry! Reclaim some space from your garage, basement or a closet and use it! I do a lot of bulk buying, so I had to have a place to put it all. My cabinets were just over flowing! I could not use my garage and did not have free closet space, but I do have a long and unusual laundry room/bathroom. I put some shelves in there and store a lot of my bulk buys and canning supplies, as well as those unusual "only use it once a year" types of pans and cooking items. This has been a great solution for me since the space was just being wasted. Now I can find things quickly without digging through and rearranging my cabinets!
Craft Room- Everything in my craft room is beyond second hand. Some of it is trash-picked! It's not the most gorgeous room in the house, but it gets the job done. I like to use file cabinets for patterns, old dressers for sewing patterns and fabric, and jars and baskets for supplies. Try to get into the habit of organizing craft and hobby supplies so you can see everything at a glance and do not have to dig around.
Kitchen- Grouping like items is just good common sense, and really works. I have a baking center with all of my baking supplies, mixing bowls and measurers, a spice center above the stove, where I can also reach my pots and pans, and storage areas for dishes and Tupperware-type stuff near my sink and dishwasher. I also have a cutting area with my knives and cutting boards. The old "kitchen triangle" idea is an oldie but a goodie too-your refrigerator, sink and stove should be arranged in a triangle for easier access and use of all three. All of these things combine to make cooking and clean up much easier.
Freezer- I like to "file" things in my freezer, again the idea is to see stuff at a glance. This is not always easy in a chest freezer, and I sometimes have to dig around, but I try to keep items in the same place and stack them vertically. We bulk buy our meat bigtime and get beef from my mother in law's farm, so we have a lot of meat that has to be organized. On the bottom, I store these meats from left to right: chickens, fish and pork, turkeys and hams, steaks and roasts, hamburger. These are all stacked as well as I can. Other items are then stored in the top baskets, or on top of the basic meats. I still have to dig sometimes, but I usually know where to look.
Kids' toys- I have found the Rubbermaid boxes that stack to be a great tool in organizing the kids' toys. I divided the toys into categories, such as western, space, cars, army, dress-up, puppets, and food toys. They can also stack the closed boxes to make things and they can use the boxes as levels or tables to put other toys. Old diaper wipe boxes are fantastic for organizing smaller toys, like action figures. Kellie (from the "M" word) found pictures of toys on the internet, printed them out and glued them to diaper wipe boxed so her smallest kids would know what went into the boxes. These small boxes also fit well on shelves and some of them look like Lego's- the kids can build with them! We love that! As far as actually keeping the kids' stuff organized, it's a battle. I try to make my kids put things away in the right places. Sometimes I am successful, but sometimes I am not! I think the basic thing to remember about kids and their toys is that if you are the one picking it up and organizing it, the kids are never going to learn how to do it, and they will never want to! So it may be a pain, but push them to keep things picked up.
Garage-Those wall holders are worth the money in my opinion. I hate to trip over snow shovels and other dangerous items, and I certainly don't want my kids to wind up in the emergency room from hurting themselves on a rake or something. The peg boards with the hooks are also very nice. I think there are enough dangerous things that need to be kept up high and organized, that these systems are worth their weight in gold. Even the most vigilant moms cannot watch their kids every minute of the day, and we don't want any trips to the garage for a bicycle to end up in disaster! So get those tools and things up, organized and away from kids and pets!
Web Resources Check out these great websites for more information on getting organized:
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Organizing Your HomeMonday, 12 January 2009 Organizing Your Home by Kim Tilley I am not a super-organized person. I've tried, and I do maintain a certain level of organization, but I...
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