Please welcome my guest today, Certified Professional Organizer, Amber Kostelny-Cussen from Amber’s Organizing!
Ditch Clutter in Every Room of the House!
Kitchens:
Unload all the spices onto the kitchen table. Unscrew every lid. If you can’t smell a nice aroma or any aroma for that fact, pitch it. Once it looses its odor, all you’re left with is clutter, not a useful spice.
Closets:
Pull out anything you didn’t wear last season. If you didn’t wear it, there’s a good chance you won’t wear it next season. Don’t forget about your shoes. Get up close and personal with them. Inspect the soles and toes of the shoes. If they are really worn down and really scuffed up, it’s time for a new pair.
Basement:
For some odd reason, empty boxes and packaging from old internet orders or appliances end up in a pile in the basement. What an easy fix to such a big waste of space! Go garbage hunting in your basement looking for anything broken, useless, and obviously garbage.
Garage:
The garage is a bad idea for storing anything that needs climate control. Keep paper, books, photos and any precious memorabilia out of the garage. A good rule of thumb is if you wouldn’t leave it outside, don’t leave it in the garage.
Bedroom:
Clear off the surface of one dresser. Keep a garbage bin nearby and a mug for loose change. When you get down to the wood get the Pledge out and dust. Next week, do another dresser surface.
Laundry Room:
Get all clothes, up off the floor. Clean, dirty, and dry clean only clothes easily get mixed up lying all over the floor. Instead, use clearly labeled laundry baskets, rolling carts or hampers.
Home Office:
Open all mail each and every day. Yes, that’s right. That is really the fastest way to keep your office or kitchen countertops from filling up with paper. Recycle all fillers, advertisements, junk mail, and envelopes. Only keep contents, such as the actual bill, bank statement or correspondence letter. At least eighty percent will be tossed, if you do this meticulously.
Family/Living Room:
Before going to bed each evening, look around the family room. Put away anything that is lying out and about where it shouldn’t be on coffee tables, the floor and end tables.
Dining Room:
Kids always end up doing projects on the dining room table. It’s a great place to spread out and create a poster board display or art board. However, there’s no reason the dining room has to be a classroom or art room year round. Once the school project is over, clear off the crafting supplies, crayons, paper and markers and put a centerpiece back on the table.
Bathroom:
In my opinion, under sink space is most often underutilized and wasted. Spend the extra time to measure the space and find an organizing product that fits well. Stacking drawers or slide out baskets on tracks are my two favorite solutions.
Amber Kostelny-Cussen is a Certified Professional Organizer in Chicago, IL. She started Amber’s Organizing, LLC (www.ambersorganizing.com) in 2004, through which she provides hands-on home organizing services. In her free time, Amber loves to blog and post on Facebook (http://www.facebook.com/ambersorganizingllc) about anything related to organizing.
Becca says
These are some wonderful tips! I must make a start on my wardrobe, especially.
Susie's Homemade says
I am happy to say that I do ALL of this:-)
holly says
I do most of the above already yet still have sooo much clutter. This advice didn’t answer most of my problems
Samantha says
Good tips, I especially like the spice one.
Gretchen Bjornson says
What about my nightmare closets? I really need help there.
Ramblings of a Woman says
I have just been working onmy closets, feels great to unload 2+ bags of stuff! I still need to do the shoes, and then on to my jewelry collection!
I like the tip about spices! Oh, and my daughter, who was born in 1993, found an old jar of honey in the back of the cabinet ( we don’t use honey much and had several old jars) but she found a jar dated 1993! LOL! She threw that one out right away!
Bernicehttp://bernicewood.wordpress.com/2010/10/07/how-to-finally-eat-the-elephant/
Jillian says
Aack! Honey NEVER goes bad. It crystallizes, but doesn’t go bad. They’ve found honey in Egyptian tombs that was still good. You can just heat it and it liquefies again. I hope that the honey is close enough to the top of your heap that you can give it to someone who would use this sweetener.
JDaniel4's Mom says
This is a wonderful list. I need to do some recluttering.
Mari says
I can attest to the usefulness of going through the mail immediately.
Also, I wish I had enough clothes TO throw some out. LOL I am not a clothes or shoe horse. I own two pairs of shoes (good tennis shoes and crocs). Enough clothes to make it through the week without having to wash anything plus two pairs of dress pants and 4 dress blouses that I swap around for church/meetings/etc. When something wears out, I replace it. I have surprisingly little closet/dresser drawer clutter.
Sharon says
Great ideas!
I need to do the spice one. (& maybe my cooking will taste better, lol)
We tackeld the garage 2 weeks ago, and what a HUGE difference. Good Will gained about 3 bags from us, too.
Kristin @ Simplify Your Life says
Great tips! I’m working on organizing my bathroom right now. I really like the tip about the spices though. I’ll have to check mine this weekend!
Sharisse says
Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! I had a day off from work yesterday with no DH and kids in the house all day yet I accomplished very little 🙁 I was having an off day but feel like I am ready to tackle all areas mentioned above, in my house starting this evening. My main issue is the kids room, 8yo daughter and 15yo son. They clean it but not as good as I would like *sigh*. I praise them for their efforts and always try to give them tips to help keep it clean but it’s a never ending battle.
Joanna says
I love it! And I need to do it… 🙂
Sheila Gregoire says
My favourite is definitely #1! I often feel so guilty about throwing out “food” that I never weed my spices!
Here’s another thing I’ve found with #10: when you clean out under your sink, you discover all kinds of stuff–old bottles of half filled shampoo, old bottles of moisturizers, cleansers, etc. Here’s a challenge: take two bottles, combine them into one, throw out the extra, and use what you have! I’ll be if we all just used what we had under our sink, we’d spend a lot less at the drug store this month!
Sheila from To Love, Honor and Vacuum!
screwdestiny says
Such simple, great tips! I need to do something with the space under my bathroom sink for sure…I mean, I do use it for a lot of stuff, but it could definitely be better organized, and with a shelf or something, I could fit more.
Kristy says
Love the spice tip. I never knew that, we have tonnes of spices in our cupboard that I bet are all like this, Maybe a weekend project coming up…Also the mail one. I always open my mail (I don’t know, I just love mail, quite sad really when I work with it ALL day) but my hubby NEVER opens his mail, I have bought a nice box to keep our filing in that I have “trained” him to put his unopened mail in, about once a month, I go through it and file it all away (this is my organising fetish filing!!!)
Danielle says
I weeded through my spices about 2 months ago! I couldn’t believe how many duplicated I had!
Whew… thanks for the laundry room tip. I thought my LR only have dirty clothes on the floor. (and a lot) Sometimes I don’t get to all the laundry, so it sits there, and I just close the door! (out of sight out of mind!)
Danielle says
I should mention last weekend I went trough the space under the kitchen sink. UGH… somethings have been under there for 8+ yrs since we built our home.
Oklahoma Homemaker says
I haven’t gone through my spices in probably a couple years!! I will have to do that today. 🙂
Faith says
Ok, I need tom do this. One question… Can you come help? I will feed you well and give you unlimited sweet tea ( a southern thang). Deal or no deal? Teehee.
Faith says
Oops! To do this- not Tom. Eesh!
Crystal & Co says
Excellent tips! I am sharing this with my Facebook readers!
Jen says
Regarding the closets tip – I definitely agree that if a piece of clothing or pair of shoes hasn’t been worn in the past year, it’s not likely to be worn again (formal wear is the only exception really). But I disagree about shoes in disrepair. If the soles are worn down a bit or scuffed, or the heel tips (for high heels) are worn, that can be repaired, often pretty cheaply. You can get a pair of shoes resoled for less than $20 really, much cheaper than a new pair of shoes and it takes less time than shopping for a new pair, although it’s decidedly less fun 😉
Nonnahs Driskill says
What a great, concise list!
Texas shredding says
Getting things organized at home or even at work shows how much you value time and energy for you do not want to waste them in constantly searching for the paper documents or other items that you need.