Donnette

Dont you just hate wasting hours each week trying to find stuff in your home? Its hard not to let at least part of your house get unorganized and a bit cluttered. Thats why it is important to take some time each year or even every couple of months to sort through everything and rearrange. Here are some great home organizing tips for you.

Start With A Plan

Dont just jump in there and try to organize your home. Instead walk through it room by room with a notepad and a pen. Make note of what room needs extra storage areas, what may need to be rearranged and what rooms need the most help. Then make a plan of what room to start with, what plastic bins or shelves you may need to purchase, and where you may want to rearrange furniture.

Tackle One Room At A Time

Dont even think about re-organizing several rooms or even the entire house at once. Tackle one room at a time and finish re-organizing it before moving on to the next. The worst thing you can do is pull out everything in every single cabinet or closet and then trying to reorganize it all at once. Its just too overwhelming and youre likely to just give up and shove everything back where it was.

The Three-Pile System

As you reorganize each room, create three piles. The first one is for things you are going to throw away; the second is for items you will give away (to charity for example), the third pile is for thing you will keep. When you are done sorting, take the throwaway pile out to the trash can, and store the give-away pile in the garage or in the back of your car and take it to your favorite charity as soon as possible. If you leave these items just sitting around the house, youll be tempted to sneak in there to grab a few things back out.

Minimize The Clutter

One of the main culprits of chaos at home is all the clutter we accumulate over the years. As you are going through each room, try to get rid of as much of this clutter as possible. If an item doesnt perform a crucial function or is an important memento, it may be time to toss it. Sometimes it helps to get a spouse or friend in there with you to point all the clutter out to you. We get so used to some of the things we surround ourselves with, making it hard to determine whats really important to us and whats just clutter.

Use Storage Solutions

We already touched on storage solutions in the planning stage. Take a few hours to browse through your local home improvement store or superstores like Wal-Mart and Target. You can find some neat storage solutions for any room. These may include shelves, bins, closet organizers; boxes and bins that fit under beds or even super large zipable plastic bags. It is almost impossible these days not to find a storage solution that will work for you and your room.

Color Code And Label

After you reorganize all your stuff in the new storage solutions, including boxes, bins and bags, take a moment to label each container. It makes finding something specific much easier because you wont have to open each box and bin. Color-coding is a great system for your kids. Even preschoolers can grasp the concept that cars go in the blue bin and blocks go in the yellow one.

Keep It Up

Now that you have everything organized and labeled, all you have to do is keep it up each week to keep your entire house well organized. Set aside some time each week to walk through the house to make sure everything is still in place. Return items where they belong. Get the rest of the family involved as well. Make sure they are aware of where everything belongs and get them to return items where they came from. If everyone puts in just a little bit of effort to keep the house organized, it will stay that way from here on out.

For more home organization ideas, visit http://www.kinderinfo.com/justformom/organization