Home Organization Tips For A Fully Organized Home and an Introduction to Minimalist Living

How to Clean the Sink

1. Pour ½ cup of baking soda down the drain
2. Wash it down with ½ cup of vinegar and a spritz of lemon
3. Let that set for a few minutes while it fizzles
4. Rinse with hot water

How to Clean the Mattress

1. Remove all the bedding, bed skirts and covers and put it all into the wash
2. Lift the mattress and the box springs off the bed frame and thoroughly vacuum and dust
3. Optional: Wipe down the wall and floorboards behind the bed
4. Lay the mattress back into place
5. You can use baking soda or prepare a mixture using one cup baking soda, four drops of lavender essential oil
6. Use a kitchen strainer and sprinkle the baking soda or mixture over the mattress and let it sit for an hour or more
7. Vacuum your mattress thoroughly

Tend Your Garden

If you haven’t already, it will soon be time to break out the lawn care tools. Give the lawn mower a tune up. Pull the fertilizer spreader, hedge clippers, aerator and edger.

A well-tended garden is a beautiful thing to enjoy out in your yard - but whether it’s a container garden (which is great for growing herbs and flowers) or a plot in the backyard, there is cleanup involved. Broken clay pots, damaged fencing, and weeds are all fodder for a dumpster rental.

Remember to wear gloves, use knee pads or a mat, and be sure to us the proper tools.

Shannon from Home Made Lovely:

Truly my favorite "hack" is that I firmly believe you can only keep what you have proper space for. When our family downsized to a 950 square foot house for a few years, we had to keep less stuff. It was just a fact. I think sometimes people bemoan the fact that they don't have enough room, when really they have too much stuff!

Making Space - After Decluttering and Cleaning - Organize Your Home

Now comes the most important part and the bulk of this guide, how to organize and maximize space in your home. Once everything’s been dwindled down to just the essentials, it will definitely be easier to organize and find a home for each and every item.

Whether you rent or own, everyone complains about the amount of space available for storage. It’s the bane of home or apartment living. When it comes to saving space, there’s no end of ideas.

Kitchen

A magnetic bar attached to the inside of a cabinet door or inside a pantry is a great place to hold metal spice boxes. Attach small magnets to those same containers and stick them to the side of your refrigerator. Feel free to use them to hold up children’s artwork. A magnetic bar on the wall is a great place to hold your knives and other metal kitchen utensils.

Consider the area under the sink. Bottles, sponges, rags and other items cover the bottom of this space, but what about the area above? Place a wooden bar under the sink to hold the many spray bottles you use every day.

Home office

With more and more people working from home, former bedrooms are getting turned into home offices. That means a computer, printer, phone, fax machine, paper, pens, and a variety of other items.

Computer stations that pull out from small, unused spaces are a great way to save space. And because electronic devices bring electric cord chaos, consider using an empty paper towel roll to stuff the wound cord inside the tame the chaos?

Bedroom (Closets specifically)

Closets are their own special kind of space. No one ever complains about having too much space for clothing. Here’s a quick space saver: Loop a soda can pop tab over the neck of a hanger. Use the bottom loop to hook another hanger. Repeat.

Just like kitchen cabinets, the space immediately behind the door is often wasted. A rod attached to the door is a great place to hang ties and scarves.

Another way to store those items is to hang several shower-curtain rings from the bottom of a hanger. Instant extra storage!

Garage

Garages are generally used for two purposes: Keeping cars out of the elements and dumping stuff that doesn’t fit anywhere else. On a related note, storing stuff in the garage because you have no place to put it is, well, a problem.

With a car tucked safely inside your garage, there is plenty of unused space. Put some shelves on the wall above the hood of your vehicle or along the sides. These are great places to store tools, sports equipment, containers holding out of season clothes, and other materials used only occasionally.

Wall system storage designed specifically for garages helps get bikes, garden tools, recycling/garbage bins, coolers and outdoor toys off the floor.

Basement

Most of us have things to do that we keep putting off — working on the basement may be one of them. But just like a garage, it’s housed a lot of unwanted items over the years but you’re always bound to find things you need, sell, donate or just reminisce about.

Options Hidden in Plain Sight

Depending on the layout of your home, there might be a few storage spaces “hidden” in plain sight. Many staircases have space underneath them. A shelving unit or a piece with a few drawers creates plenty of extra room. In some homes, stairways have landings that offer a prime spot for extra storage.

Don’t forget that space under the bed. There are plenty of containers specially made for all sorts of items that slide neatly under the mattresses.

Melissa from Simple Lion Heart:

My number one home organization tip is having less stuff! When you clear the clutter and have less stuff, it’s so much easier to get your home organized...and keep it that way.

Beyond decluttering and simplifying your home, my next favourite tip is using containers to help divide spaces like drawers, shelves, closets and cupboards and give each item you're keeping an individual home. When you give everything you own a clearly defined home or spot to keep it, it’s becomes a lot easier to find what you’re looking for. And put it away when you’re done so you can find it next time too!

Getting your home organized with containers doesn't have to cost a lot. I love repurposing boxes and containers from other things we buy and use, like electronics and empty food containers. Get creative and try to use what you have to get your home organized, functional and easy to maintain.

Getting your home organized with containers doesn't have to cost a lot. I love repurposing boxes and containers from other things we buy and use, like electronics and empty food containers. Get creative and try to use what you have to get your home organized, functional and easy to maintain.

Successfully Organize Any Room by:

1. Surveying and Categorizing

This is the first step in your cleaning out your room action plan. You need to understand just what you have put away so you know what you are up against. Then, you should begin piling together all of your different possessions according to category. This will make things easier later on.

2. Determine What to Keep and Get Rid Of

Some things in your room can be kept and others can be gotten rid of and you need to decide what. Maybe you have some old items that you no longer use, a set of old items collecting dust or items that haven't been touched since the kid left home. This is the perfect opportunity to decide what you need going forward.

3. Get Organized with Shelves and Hooks

One of the best ways to make the most of precious space in your room and get organized is to think vertically. Shelves and hooks provide extra space and are a great way of organizing the many things you have lying around.

4. Sell or Give Away What You Don’t Need

Lots of things in your room don't have to be destined for a landfill. It just takes a bit of work to find them a new home, like hosting a garage sale or you could even sell some of your metal items to a local scrap metal dealer.

5. Label Everything

An underutilized home organization tip is labeling. In a few months' time, it might be near impossible to find what you are looking for in your newly organized room. So you need to make sure you label all your containers, drawers and more so you know where everything is later. The investment in a good label maker will pay dividends as you keep your home organized for years to come.

Create a New Look

Once you've removed the jumble from your basement, can now view the space properly and come up with constructive decorating ideas. For the budget conscious, a simple coat of paint makes a previously dull, dark basement look brighter and more inviting. A stained or painted concrete floor looks stunning and is easy to keep clean. Divide the room into work and play areas with wood pallet walls or pretty, low-cost curtains — no planning permits required. Be sure to have plenty of lighting; energy-efficient LED lamps are ideal.

An Organized Home Not Enough? Try Minimalist Living

Comedian George Carlin did a hilarious routine about ‘stuff.’ in it, Carlin suggests that your house is a place to keep your stuff….while you go out and get more stuff. For many, these things enrich their lives. For others, they create clutter. For the latter group, the backlash against consumerism has led some to make a 180-degree turn and live a more austere lifestyle. Those seriously opposed to collecting stuff have adopted an approach known as minimalism.

What is Minimalism?

Minimalism organization is about living without: without a lot of clothes, without a lot of furniture, without a lot of well, anything. The belief is that living without material possessions provides one with extra money, time, and freedom. As a society we’ve come to believe that happiness is linked to a bigger television, a better smartphone, newer clothes, another car. Minimalism suggests that none (or almost none) of that is necessary.

True minimalism is not easy to achieve. For most people, decluttering is sufficient.

For minimalists, life is about living with only what you really need. For minimalists, the rule of thumb is “when in doubt, toss it out.” This applies to everything in your home.

How to Get There

For those who spend their entire lives accumulating stuff, living a minimalist organization lifestyle is not easy - it may not even be desirable. If you want to try, though, here are a few steps to get you started.

Like most big projects, minimalism requires motivation and a plan. Start with small goals. Take each room step by step and ask yourself whether an item is something you need or something you want. If it’s something you need, put it back, if it’s something you want, donate, recycle or get rid of it.

Let’s be clear: No one is suggesting you eat off the floor. A table and a few chairs are reasonable and necessary. But how many sets of dishes, silverware and glasses do you need?

Do you need a toaster and a microwave? Do you need a microwave and an oven?

Applied to everyday life, the Pareto Principle suggests that most of us wear 20 percent of our clothes 80 percent of the time. That means the vast majority of tuff in your closet does nothing more than collect dust. The Pareto Principle applies to many aspects of our lives.

But minimalism is more than “If you don’t use it, get rid of it.” Minimalism suggest that even if you do use it, you still might get rid of it.

The minimalist organization lifestyle is not for everyone - in fact, it’s probably not even for most people. There’s no hard and fast line that, once crossed, turns you from an avid organizer to a minimalist. Like many things in life, this is a continuum. And all families need to figure out what approach is best for them.

Need more assistance in adopting a minimalist organization lifestyle? For minimalist and home organization tips, you can't find a better blogging resource than the author of The Minimalist Home: A Room-by-Room Guide to a Decluttered, Refocused Life and The More of Less: Finding he Life You Want Under Everything You Own, Joshua Becker