8 Simple Steps to an Organized Home

Before you begin, it’s essential to have a home organization checklist. This will give you an overview of the entire project, while allowing you to break down the process into more manageable chunks. It’s basically top-down planning with a bottom-up approach to completion. Keep in mind that an organized home takes time so be gracious with yourself during each stage of the process.

Having a plan from the start is useful for two main reasons. First, you know exactly what you are trying to achieve. And second, checking off smaller tasks as you go provides a sense of accomplishment and encouragement to keep going. You can create your own or save our FREE Home Organization Checklist below.

Creating an organized home that is stylish and well-functioning may feel overwhelming, especially in the initial stages, but when you break it down into manageable steps, it will become much more achievable. It may take several sessions to clean up certain areas of the house (looking at you, playroom), but as more areas are cleared out, there’s a satisfaction in seeing these spaces come to life again.

There’s an old proverb that goes, how do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time. The general idea is simply, if you have a big undertaking, take it one small step at a time, and ultimately, you will reach your goal.

Some people find setting goal dates useful. If that is you, try to be realistic about what you can accomplish in a given timeframe. You can set the date by room or by task. While a specific date adds priority to the project, don’t forget to add some flexibility in there too. If something comes up that throws you off course, make sure you can easily update your home organization plan if needed.

If setting goal dates is not for you, that is ok. Unless you are focused on creating an organized home to put it on the market, there is no reason to have a hard and fast deadline. Go through your plan, room by room, task by task, and you will get there.

For most of us, the process of creating an organized home involves cleaning out and disposing of stuff – our stuff. Stuff that we’ve accumulated over the years. Stuff that has meaning or value to us. Stuff that we thought was worth buying at some point in time. Be it our clothes, gadgets, tools, or toys, many of us have a serious problem buying things we don’t actually need.

This is a good time to add that it is ok to spend your hard-earned money on things that you want, even if you don’t need it. But if you’ve found that the accumulation of items is bringing on stress instead of satisfaction, it’s time to make a change.

There are two aspects to being prepared, the physical side and the mental side, with the latter being the more difficult for many of us. Physically, you’re going to need some trash bags or boxes on hand to separate the items. Some people like to use black trash bags (out of sight, out of mind), but whatever you have on hand is fine.

Being emotionally prepared can be a little more difficult, but this is a crucial step in organizing your space. You have to take a stand and say, enough is enough. It’s time to take a hard look at what changes need to be made to bring joy back into your home. There is freedom on the other side.

Now the really hard part begins. When you start going through your things, be ruthless about what gets to stay and what needs to be passed on or disposed of. I don’t believe that every item in your home has to spark joy, but it should at least serve a purpose (whether it’s functional, sentimental, or just something you like to look at).

When deciding whether or not to get rid of something, one thing that I always like to ask myself is, “Would I want to take this with us if we were moving?” If you have ever moved, you know what an overwhelming task it is to box up all of your belongings and physically move everything you own to a new location. Every time we move, I always ask that question and then wonder why we held onto some things for as long as we did.

For the designated area that you are working on, here are some key strategies when organizing sections in your home.

⊹ Pull out everything (and I mean everything) that you’re organizing. This is the reason “Garage” is not usually considered a manageable one-day section.

⊹ Divide the items into (3 or 4) piles: Keep, Donate, and Discard. There are some items that you may not be ready to decide on just yet. That is fine. Create a “Decide Later” pile to go through at the end of that day’s organizing.

⊹ Dispose of items properly. Be very careful with what goes into the donate box, rather than discard bag. For almost every product in your home, there is a non-profit organization that would accept it, but that doesn’t mean every item should be donated. If you have items that are clearly overused, over worn, or in poor shape, without the ability of being repaired, these items most likely need to be disposed of.

Once you have gone through all of the things in the section you are working on, it’s time to bring functionality and style to your space. Having a place for everything is a key step in an organized home. Being able to find something when you need it, without having to dig through piles of stuff, will assist in keeping your home clean, organized, and efficient.

Hopefully, as not-needed items begin to leave your home, you will have additional space to properly store the objects that you’ve decided to keep. Similar items should be stored together in a way that is meaningful to you and your family. If you still need a “junk drawer” in the kitchen or office for all those odds-and-ends, consider getting a multi-drawer organizer.

Make sure each section is organized to your liking before moving on to a different space. It’s better to fully complete a small section than to have several larger sections half-finished.

Before you start filling up your Amazon shopping cart with new organizational products, take inventory regarding what you already have and what you actually need to make the space work better for you. Don’t purchase things on a whim. Have a plan for what will work best in your space and go from there. Use what you have, but if you find something that can do the job better than by all means, get it.

Here are some items that have been helpful during the completion of our checklist to an organized home.

⊹ Baskets – We use baskets to contain a wide assortment of things. Some are strictly functional while others are also decorative. In the playroom, it’s a great catchall for toys and stuffed animals. In the mud area, a large basket is the official kid’s shoe collector. We have one hiding behind a lounge chair with dog toys in it and one on the fireplace with throw blankets. There really are so many uses for a good basket.

Creating an organized home is a worthwhile endeavor. It may take you the entire year (or longer), but don’t give up. Continue to work on it one room at a time, one section at a time, one drawer at a time, and you will fall in love with your home again.