Living Room

•De-knick-knack

•Arrange your furniture to separate the zones of your home i.e. sofa separates home office from

family room.

•Add a basket where stuff piles up. Watch where things land and make sure your organizational

systems go in those places.

•Instead of a basket, cover a cardboard box with wrapping paper or contact paper. It won’t cost

a thing but still looks nice.

•To hang picture groups layout pictures on butcher paper (or wrong-side wrapping paper). Trace

your frames and then mark where the nail should go. Use removable tape to place template on

the wall. Nail into marked places then tear down the template and hang the pictures.

•Remember art looks best when hung at eye-level.

•Distribute books in every room to encourage reading and spread out book collections.

•Use a basket for library books. Make it functional. It goes with you to and from the library.

•Establish a remote-home that everyone knows about. Train your family to put it back in the

same spot every day.

•Put a basket by the front door. Put old magazines and books in it. Encourage guests to help

themselves when they leave.


Kitchen

•Buy a junk drawer organizer. It’s a beautiful thing.

•Get rid of unwieldy spice racks and save counter space by putting a Velcro or magnetic strip

under the cupboards and attach a strip to each spice bottle, then hang them.

•Don’t store trays and cookie sheets flat. Stand them up.

•Keep kid-stuff low so they can access it. Put dishes and silverware low so they can set the table.

Keep some art supplies or puzzles low – perfect for when you are making dinner and they want

to be with you.

•If cabinet doors don’t close, use Velcro to solve the problem.

•Line top of hard-to-reach areas with wax paper. Instead of scrubbing when they get dirty, just

replace with new paper.

•Can’t tell when dishes in dishwasher are clean? Place a small jar, open-ended on the top of the

shelf of the dishwasher. When the jar is full of water, the dishes are clean. Empty the water

when unloading the dishes and replace.

•Use empty toilet paper rolls to store loose cords. Use with appliances, phone and computer

chords.

 

Kids Rooms

•Color-code your family. Every member knows what color they are – each one gets towels,

toothbrushes etc. in their color.

•Organize toy containers with pictures so even young children can put away their own toys.

•Involve your children. If they are not on board, your system is not going to work.

•Establish traditional de-junking with them. One family has their children set out presents every

Christmas Eve that they want Santa to take to another family.

•Color-code the laundry containers in each room so your children can sort their own laundry.

When it’s time to do laundry, you’ll simply need to gather the jeans from the blue container.

•Keep children’s dressers in laundry room – establish the laundry room is the place where they

should always dress and undress. You’ll be amazed at how clean their rooms will stay.

•When your child can negotiate hangers, insert a tension rod in the closet. Adjust the height as

she grows.

•Photograph kid’s 3-D creations, save the picture instead of the creation. Create a special photo

album for those projects.


Bedroom

•Store extra blankets between mattress and box springs.

•Fold fitted, flat sheets and pillowcases in sets. You won’t have to go through three stacks when

you change your sheets. Store sheets in the room with the bed so you don’t get sizes confused

and free up more room in the linen closet.

•Get a couple of cloth place mats that match your color scheme. Cut one in half vertically and

hot-glue or sew the half onto another whole one so that you have a pocket with a long flap. You

can tuck the flap between the mattress and the box spring. Now you’ve got a place for personal

stuff.

•Make a bookshelf out of a book and mount it to the wall to horizontally stack other books on.

•Drawer organizers = happiness.


Closet

•Start each season by arranging clothes hangers so the hooks face out, toward the room. When

you wear something, turn the hanger in. At the end of the season, get rid of anything that

hasn’t been turned.

•Bring order to scarves and belts with an “accessory ladder,” a chain of shower curtain rings

trailing down from the top of a hanger.

•Be creative. Use other things in your house to organize in your closet. Put your shoes on a

bookshelf in the closet.

•Use the back of your closet door to hang handbags, shoes, or robes.

•Think vertically. Find a way to utilize un-used space above top shelf.

•Store shoes in shoe boxes with a picture of them on the outside.

•Once you are organized, remove the closet doors and make the closet an extension of your room.

This works great for kids closets. You can replace the doors with curtains to add fun and

decoration.


Bathroom

•Use a shower curtain ring to hold pony-tail holders.

•Use a cutlery tray to keep cosmetics organized in a drawer.

•Put a different color toilet paper than usual behind your stash of regular rolls. When a colored

roll ends up on the spool, it’s time to buy more.

•If you fold the matching washcloths inside the hand towels, your closet will look organized and

you’ll have both when you need them.

•Use stackable drawers under the sink. Put a hand towel on top of the drawers so you can put

away your hot curling iron when you’re done using it.

•Keep a basket of cleaning supplies in each bathroom