If your New Year’s resolution is to get your home organized, you’re not alone! In 2010, a study showed that over 60% of Americans wanted to get their homes organized. Here are some easy tips to get you started in each room of your home.
Living Room
In the living room, the most important places to keep organized are the media center and the coffee or end tables. The hardest part to tackle has to be the media center. CD’s, DVD’s, video games, consoles, and wires can end up making your media center a mess! Start with the movies and music. If you’re still hanging on to VHS tapes, but you have a DVD player, get rid of them already. You’re not going to watch them. The same goes for CD’s. Have you listened to them lately, or do you just pop your iPod into the dock? The best part is, you can clear out clutter and make a few bucks if you take your music and movies to a resale shop.
If you have video game systems, invest in some smart storage solutions to eliminate clutter. Baskets, cloth bins, or stylish boxes can hold controllers, accessories and spare batteries. Keeping things together in a basket will prevent you from losing any important pieces and keeps them out of view.
As for the coffee and end tables, don’t let things pile up! Cups, mail, magazines and books are all things that can make a permanent residence on your coffee table. A good solution is to purchase a tray that you can keep a couple books or magazines on. Don’t let the tray fill up. If you need space, simply move the tray and you’ll have a clean table.
Kitchen
The kitchen usually looks nice and neat until you start opening drawers, cupboards and pantries. That’s where the real messes are. A good strategy is to start one cupboard at a time and toss anything that’s expired, stale, or unusable. Once you’ve eliminated some of the grocery items, implement some new storage solutions. Cupboard shelves, tiered sliding organizers, and lazy susans all help you make good use of storage space while allowing easy access to places that may be hard to reach.
The kitchen is most always home to the “junk drawer.” At my house, it’s overflowing with pens, coupons, packs of tissues, tape, measuring tape, and other random things that I can’t figure out what to do with and yet I can never find what I need! This year I’m cleaning it out. Drawer organizers can help keep everything from coupons to pens to batteries in neat, easy to find places.
Office
Keep your home office neat and functional by organizing your papers, mail and supplies. Magazine files hold folders and binders while keeping them easily accessible. Wall organizers are great tools that allow you to keep your files organized while keeping your desk clear. Another tool that is necessary for a home office is a file cabinet for important documents. If you’re already using one, make sure you clear out anything you won’t need every couple years to make room for new things.
Bedroom
The major organizational hurdle in the bedroom is the closet. Especially after the holidays, you usually have new clothes to hang and no place to put them! The best thing you can do is to get rid of everything that doesn’t fit. That includes the things that you want to fit into but can’t…Bag it all up and send it over to Good Will. Once you have more room, start by sorting your clothing into seasonal wear. Put your shorts and flip flops into an under-the-bed storage bin and slip it out of sight. This way you have more room and less clutter. Hanging compartment bags, over the door shoe bags and storage bins give help maximize space and keep everything looking nice and clean.
This article was written by Erie Construction. For more tips on home improvement, follow Erie Construction on Twitter.
