You’ve heard the saying before: “A place for everything and everything in its place.”
Now, as you can clearly see from my house, I’m not a perfect homemaker. I have three young children and I’m not always as self-disciplined as I’d like to be. However, I do make a concerted effort to keep my home clutter-free and organized.
Here are five things which help me:
1) Ongoing Garage Sale Boxes
I have a designated spot in our home for garage sale boxes. In our current home, this is under the stairs. As I find things we no longer need or use, I start filling up a box. When one box is full, I fill up another. And so on.
Instead of moving an item around from one room to the next when we aren’t using it anymore, I pitch it in the garage sale boxes and it’s out of our way. This method makes preparing for a garage sale quite simple since I already have a huge head start on collecting stuff to sell.
Thinking of having a garage sale? Check out my 10 tips for having a successful garage sale.
2) Annual Clutter Elimination
Once or twice a year, I go through my home from top to bottom and am ruthless about eliminating clutter. Every nook and cranny is cleaned out and every item is evaluated. By doing this on a regular basis, no area of our home ever becomes unmanageable. Rooms or closets might be messy or unkempt at times, but they never get so overwhelming that I can’t deal with them.
3) The No-Pile Rule
Except for my husband’s dresser and our laundry basket, we try to strictly adhere to a no-pile rule. I’ve found that a small pile quickly grows–without any effort. So if you don’t start a pile in the first place, you can avoid a lot of disorganization.
4) In the Door, In Its Place
Instead of piles of paper around from place to place until you have time to deal with them, take care of them immediately. When the mail or other papers come into our home, I go through it right then and there and throw out everything that we don’t have to keep.
Bills go on my husband’s dresser, magazines go in my top dresser drawer to await the next doctor’s appointment, freebies go in the household product stockpile closet, coupons go in my coupon box, and junk mail goes in the trash. Within just a few minutes, the mail is completely dealt with
5) Avoid Clutter-Collecting Furniture
I’m a minimalist, if there ever was one, and I’ve found my utilitarian nature helps avoid heaps of clutter. How? Because we don’t have furniture which tends to be clutter hot-spots for others. This might come as a shock, but even though I have a home business, I don’t have a computer desk. I have a top dresser drawer that I keep a few business-related items in and we have a small filing cabinet–and that’s it.
I’ve found that when there’s no place to collect piles, you are much less apt to make them.
What about you? What are some ways you cut down on clutter in your home?
photo credit: *Ann Gordon