Declutter Your Crib with these easy home-organizing ideas. Here is our month-long plan to reduce your stress levels and improve your quality of life by getting rid of unnecessary clutter.
Have you ever stood in the middle of a messy room and felt paralyzed by the clutter? In this article, we share some easy home-organizing ideas on how to tidy your crib.
What is “clutter” and why should I care?
By clutter, we mean the piles of laundry in the bathroom, the cluttered kitchen counters, the packed fridge, the manic closets, and any area of chaos in your home.
As bottles and potions tumble from your bathroom cabinet, clothes litter the bedroom floor, and your garage looks more like a dumping ground, don’t despair! Most of us have experienced this situation and there are now plenty of resources to help you these days.
A disorderly crib can be a contributor to stress and lead to feelings of anxiety and helplessness. When we feel anxious or depressed, it can be almost impossible to focus on organizing our living space. It’s important to make a plan and take the process one step at a time!
It’s much easier to keep your home clean on a daily basis than leaving it for weeks or even months.
Sherry Benton, Ph.D., psychologist & chief science officer at TAO Connect said “If our home, car, or office space feels messy and disorganized, we tend to feel overwhelmed as if we don’t even know where to start. Every task, from eating breakfast to driving to work can feel complicated by the mess we are contending with.”
Easy home organizing ideas for a tidy home
One of the best ways to approach this issue is to take one room at a time. You may be able to organize your home on a weekend but if your place is chaotic, it might be better to deal with one room each week.
Before you start, you should choose a collection point for your clutter. Designate a place where you can put everything that will be removed. Don’t think about what will happen to the clutter items at this stage as this could trigger feelings of attachment!
Take one room at a time
Decluttering your bedroom
Just imagine going to sleep and waking up in a clean, uncluttered bedroom. In our opinion, the bedroom is the most important room in your house to keep clutter-free.
Tackle the closet
Usually, the worst clutter offender in a bedroom is the closet. Closets are often packed to the ceiling with clutter. This can be anything from clothes you no longer wear to Christmas decorations.
You should always take an extra 10 seconds to hang your clothes up. This a simple tip and very effective in keeping a clutter-free environment.
Stinky clothes live in a laundry basket
The biggest tip to organize your bedroom is to have a nice-looking laundry basket. The majority of bedroom clutter is dirty clothes so getting those smelly socks in the basket is a priority!
Bedrooms also tend to collect a lot of small items such as watches, glasses, money, and keys. Place a few trays or bowls around your bedroom to keep smaller everyday items.
The health risks of a cluttered sleeping space
Lots of sleep is essential to maintain good health. When you don’t get enough sleep, it can lead to depression and anxiety. And an unorganized bedroom isn’t giving you the chilled atmosphere that you need to sleep soundly.
Decluttering your laundry room
Whether your laundry room is a corner of the kitchen or a multi-functional space that acts as a wet room, there is always a need to keep the laundry area organized.
Laundry chores will take twice as long in a cluttered room. By following a couple of organizational tips, you will be able to get your laundry room under control and then keep the space manageable.
Take out the garbage
Take a look around your washer/dryer for anything that should have been thrown away.
Be ruthless and throw away (or recycle) broken coat hangers, empty detergent bottles, crusty old laundry products, and that damaged laundry basket.
It goes without saying that every laundry room should have a trash can for dryer lint and general garbage.
Organizing the Space
Why are there school bags and toys on top of the washing machine?
It is important to keep the laundry area clear of all items that do not have to be there.
A disorganized laundry area can lead to clothes being dirtied. It can also lead to an increased risk of objects falling into the washer/dryer causing unnecessary damage.
Streamline your laundry products
How many kinds of washing products are really necessary? Decide on one laundry detergent that works well for every kind of fabric instead of multiple detergents.
A good way to make the area feel cleaner and more organized is to transfer detergents and stain removers to specific containers.
Create order with shelving
If you don’t have cabinets in your laundry room, it’s a great idea to install some storage shelves.
This is a good way of keeping dangerous chemicals out of the reach of your kids, pets, or elderly relatives.
Storage can also be provided by wall baskets or a rolling cart storage bin for other laundry-related items.
Decluttering your kitchen
The kitchen is one of the most important rooms in most homes. It’s a lot more than an area for making food. It’s a place where you spend time with the family, chat with friends, and share meals.
When you’re clearing out the clutter from a messy home, the kitchen is a great place to start.
The way a kitchen is set up can strongly influence your food choices. It’s worth spending a little time getting this area uncluttered and temptation-free!
As you organize your kitchen, you should ask yourself “Do I need this food item in plain view?”
Limit the size of your tableware
Do you have a whole set of tableware cluttering your kitchen? You only need enough plates, bowls, cups, and glasses, to use today.
Many folks feel the urge to leave enough crockery for a party. These superfluous items should be stored away until you decide to have that party!
You can stack away unused plates and utensils into a plastic storage box, label them, and keep it in a closet or your designated storage space.
How many pots and pans do I need?
The number of pots and pans you need depends on your culinary skills and how many people you regularly cook for.
Only keep medium-sized pots on display. Small pots look cool but do nothing medium-sized pots can’t do. The same applies to frying pans. If you are in doubt, buy a bigger pot or frying pan as it will give you greater versatility.
Go easy on the ornamental items
Many products that are sold for kitchens are only decorative. To get an uncluttered kitchen, you should only include practical items.
Although a big tray of plastic fruit can look nice, it will just add to the clutter and should be banished to your storage space.
You can still include fun items, but limit them to cool fridge magnets or wall decorations.
Choose gadgets with multi-functions
Many common kitchen gadgets perform many functions. For example; if you have a hand mixer, you probably don’t also need an electric whisk.
Many folks don’t consider that their cooking dishes are both oven and fridge-safe so your extra plastic containers or boxes are often not needed.
Decluttering methods
1 – Totally clearing the room
- If you are fit and healthy, move everything out of the room. Put the clutter in your yard or a spare room.
- When the room is cleared, give it a good clean and only replace the essentials. Relegate all the other items to your collection point.
- When there is more space in the room, rearrange your furniture and repeat the process until the whole house is clutter-free.
- It is possible that after the clean-up campaign is over, there may be uses for some leftover items in other rooms. Don’t decide if you need them yet as you’ll get a chance to reassess them later.
2 – Make a list
- If method 1 is impractical for your situation or you don’t have a spare room to put your clutter, you can buy a large notebook and divide your page into two columns labeled “Essential” and “Non-Essential” items”. You should go around the room, putting every single item into one column or another. When you have finished your list, move the offending items to your designated collection point
After the decluttering process
Test out your new streamlined pad
The next step is to live in your new organized home for a week or two as a kind of “trial period”. Then you can reassess your “essentials list”. If you’ve made a mistake, simply retrieve the item from your clutter pile/collection point. Please take note that you cannot retrieve items because you miss them!
Review your clutter pile
Try not to look at your collection point clutter until the house is in order. If you can wait a few weeks, you will feel less attached to the items and it will be easier not to put things back where they came from.
It is not a good idea to think of how much the items originally cost. If it’s complicating your life, it’s not valuable. It could, however, be valuable to someone else so you can think about selling the offending items.
Then organize the rest of your life in 30 days!
Week 1
- Look around your cluttered home. Make a plan to tackle a room a week. You should also observe where clutter is collected, and place a storage container there.
- Place a basket near the front door. You can fill the basket with the things that should be taken with you next time you leave the house.
- Hide those ugly power cords. There’s nothing like an ugly cord to mess up an otherwise uncluttered abode.
Week 2
- This is a good time to organize your wallet. Take a bit of time to go through your wallet and dispose of all those old receipts and out-of-date shopping vouchers.
- Learn how to organize your things onto shelves. You can store lots of knick-knacks on a shelf and even have room for some photos or a vase of flowers.
- It’s time to get your car organized. Use some silicone cupcake liners in the cup holders, add a trash bin, and get all your documents in one spot.
- Take a day or two to organize your digital clutter. Tidy your desktop, delete old messages/emails, and back up important files.
Week 3
- Organize your CDs/DVDs/Games by putting them into a disc wallet.
- Look into keeping a daily clutter planner.
- Organize your phone. Delete unused apps and back up important phone numbers. Run good anti-virus software to make sure your smartphone is just as clutter-free as the rest of your home.
- At this point, you should be about halfway through tidying each of your rooms.
Week 4
- Grab a new keychain. Throw away old unused keys, and add a small flashlight/multi-tool to your keychain.
- Get your paperwork in order. There’s stress in losing important documents so keep passports, receipts, and legal documents safe and organized.
For more easy home organizing ideas, you can check out our article How to furnish an apartment cheaply.
The image at top of this page is – Teen’s messy room Flickr photo by woodleywonderworks shared under a Creative Commons (BY) license
