Clean Up Your Life: Home Edition
January is here and it’s the time I like to encourage clients to purge and organize their homes. After the holidays is the perfect time to start the year feeling right and in order. Our world is chaotic enough and with everyone's schedules being jam-packed we all frequently feel overwhelmed. Your home should be your sanctuary and a place of refuge from the craziness of the day. I'm not sure about you all but having a neat and organized home just makes me feel so much more calm, confident and ready to face all of life's other challenges that get thrown my way.
General Organizing Tips + Tricks
Research the organizations you want to donate your unwanted items to. Everyone loves the convenience of Goodwill however, when it comes to specific items I like to find organizations who could really use those items such as Habitat or ABCCM etc..
If you have a large job rent a dumpster. I love renting a dumpster if you are really going to be purging the whole house. Most companies will rent you a dumpster for one week at a reasonable rate. It feels so good to toss those items into the dumpster.
Learn how to handle sentimental items. This one is one of the hardest things I've had to work with clients on. I understand everyone loves their great grand-mothers punch bowl (if you have never used it we are donating it or I'm going to show you how to use it in your kitchen as a fruit bowl), kids artwork and those little figurines you bought in Spain 15 years ago on vacation, but if they aren't being displayed or use what's the point in having them??? As far as kids art I always like to tell parents to pull those beloved items out and toss the rest. I like to direct clients to use a service like Plum Print to turn the old artwork into a beautiful book that they can have forever.
Kitchens
I like to tell clients to keep your items close to where they use them. An example would be keeping coffee mugs near the coffee maker instead of across the kitchen. I tend to also have a lot of clients that love to entertain and therefore they have a million serving dishes, pitchers, disposable party items etc... For these items they don't use daily but need to pull out throughout the year I try to find a pantry or closest nearby where we can organize all those items together where they are easy to pull out and see what they have. Next, I have them label everything with either a label maker or with my favorite sharpie pins.
The other thing is to take food and items out of the cardboard packaging. This helps you be able to see what you really have and a takes up a lot less room. I like having protein bars, granola bars and items like that placed in clear trays in a pull out drawer for easy and quick access. These clear trays are great for organizing teas and other packets.
Closets
Keeping a clean organized closet will assist you in saving time while getting ready in the morning. The less thought and energy you have to put into finding items and deciding what to wear the more energy you will have to spend on other important decisions during the day.
Get the right organizing tools - This makes all the difference. I recommend throwing out all those ugly wire hangers and any other hangers that don't match each other. Try purchasing hangers that disappear like these acrylic ones from . Nothing feels better than looking into a matching organized closet.
Group like items together- by color, length/sleeve type or by clothing types helps in the process of making clothing selections when you're in a hurry.
Drawers
Recently I've learned and adapted the KonMari Method of keeping a house tidy. My favorite one of her methods was learning how to fold clothes and other items. Her folding method not only helps take up less space in the drawers but you can quickly and easily see what you have in the drawer.
Check out Kon Mari's book to learn more about her life-changing methods or schedule time with Tick Tock and we can you started.
Miscellaneous Items
Keeping a clean fridge is high on my priority list. Having items placed and organized in bins help keep things in order and makes it easy to see what you have and what's going bad.
Placing items in containers (stand items up and don't lay them flat so you can see everything) is the trick to seeing what you have so you're not continually making the same purchases over and over. Fabric bins from the container store or Target happen to be my favorite to use almost anywhere except for medicine and refrigerators.
I hope these simple tips make a difference in your life. Remember you don't have to change everything at once. Making small changes add up. If you would like Tick Tock to come and assist with purging and organizing click here.
Cheers,
KEC