Tips to Organize your Home

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Tips to Organize your Home

Keeping your home organized can be a tough thing to do, especially when you are not the only one living in the home. Everyone focuses on spring cleaning, but many more people find the motivation in the fall. Any time of the year is a good time to organize a cluttered house. One of the best ways to organize clutter is to use the three pile system: Keep, Discard & Don't Know. Don't try and do this all at once, pick a small area to start, it will be easier to take on the next area once you see the benefit of a completed area. Go through and put everything in one of the three piles. When you have gone through everything, immediately take the discard pile to the trash with a box. Everything that is garbage should go into the trash everything that could be still useful goes into the box that you will donate or sell at a garage sale.

Back to the area that you are focusing on. Do you need additional storage? Everything in that space should have a home from the keep pile. It is okay to put items into the Don't Know pile, you may just realize that item doesn't belong in this space. Feel free to review the Don't Know Once you put everything away. Now take the Don't Know pile and place it next to the box you have of items to donate or sell. Get it out of the area that you have just organized. Take the time to do a through cleaning of the area and make it sparkle. This area will be your inspiration to take on the next area.

Move on to the next area of your home until you have gone through and removed all the unnecessary items, put things where they belong and removed the excess to an area that you can deal with later. Difficult areas for people to organize include closets and the kitchen. When it comes to closets, you should at least once a year physically look at each item. Have you worn it in the last 6 months? If not, put it in the don't know pile. The kitchen can become the repository for everything and can be difficult to keep clear of clutter. Try putting everything that doesn't belong in the kitchen at the end of the day in your Don't Know pile that you have in the Garage/Basement. It is amazing how much "stuff" is really not needed.

Once you are ready to deal with that Don't Know pile, decide if you are going to donate the excess and get a receipt for a tax write off or if you are going to have a garage sale. Although garage sales are more popular in the spring and summer, many folks have them in the fall too! Don't let the time of year stop you from having one. Anything left over from the garage sale? Donate it!