Did you know that when your space is messy, it can lead to stress in your everyday life? Several studies have linked clutter to a variety of stressful responses, including lack of focus, decreased productivity, impacted physical health, and even poorer sleep quality. On the other hand, organizing your home can lead to a number of benefits, including a 40 percent decrease in housework! Having a tidy home is an incredible way to set yourself up for success and improve your mood.
However, just because having an organized home leads to amazing benefits, that doesn’t mean it’s easy to achieve. Decluttering your home is a big job, and it can be incredibly overwhelming to think of everything you have to accomplish at once. The best way to start organizing your home is to do it in stages. Focus on one room—or even one section of a room—at a time, completing each project fully before moving on to another space.
Keep reading for a full guide to creating an idyllic space throughout your home, focusing on three of your most used rooms: the bathroom, bedroom, and closet.
First, Develop a Plan for Sorting
Before you dive into organizing your home, be sure to define a desired timeline and how you plan to sort the items you’d like to keep, donate, and throw away. For example, you could set aside bins or create piles for each of the following purposes:
- Keep: Items that need to be put back where they belong
- Donate: Unwanted items that are in good condition and you’d like to give to a friend, family member, or charitable organization who would get more use out of it
- Trash: Items to throw away (i.e., those that are broken and cannot be fixed or donated)
- Fix: Items that need to be fixed before they’re put away or donated
Once you’ve decided how to sort your belongings, create a plan of action for which areas you’ll organize first and last. Consider starting in a more manageable room that only has a small amount of clutter. You’ll find yourself inspired and confident, ready to tackle the more overwhelming spaces.
The Bathroom
Regardless of your bathroom’s size, organizing the space can help you make the most of what you have. Here are a few tips to get you started.
Organize Your Cabinets First
If you have a medicine cabinet, start there. Make it your go-to space for all the things you need and use often, removing any expired medicines or products and minimizing items to your core needs. Then, move excess products to your cabinets under the sink, keeping similar items in storage bins or specified locations. Every piece of storage should be active and intentional, so be sure to consider what you’ll likely use most and use that to inform your choices.
Use Compartments for Hair and Makeup Products
It’s easy to make drawers and cabinets catchalls for every product you own—especially when it comes to hair and makeup. Instead of tossing products in cosmetic bags or under the sink, consider using different-sized compartments to help organize lipstick, eye shadow palettes, and hair tools like blow dryers and curling irons. Using storage will help you find exactly what you need without scrambling through mismatched products.
Take Advantage of Awkward Space
In small bathrooms, every foot matters. Luckily, there are a lot of decorative items you can use to utilize all the space you have. For example, storage ladders above the toilet can provide more opportunities to store your items, and small carts work perfectly in bathrooms with limited cabinets or shelves. Shower caddies can also help provide that much-needed storage space!
The Bedroom
Before decluttering your bedroom, be sure to clean up, making your bed and putting anything away that needs to be sorted, such as clothes, pens and paper, or electronics. It’s hard to focus on organization when there are other things that need to be done! Here are more tips for decluttering your bedroom space.
Start with Your Nightstands
First, remove anything on your nightstands that doesn’t belong there and sort them throughout your bins. Throw away anything you no longer use, and don’t forget to look through any drawers or behind your nightstand for stragglers.
Take Everything Out
As you sort through your bedroom, take everything out of your drawers, from beneath your bed, and out of your desk. That way, you’ll be able to see everything you own and thoughtfully consider each item before organizing it.
Save Your Closet for After Your Room
Before taking all of your clothing out of your dresser AND closet, consider starting with the clothing in your bedroom first. Not only will this help keep things less overwhelming, but it will also help you make better decisions about which clothing you’d like to keep.
The Closet
Your closet can be one of the most time-consuming and challenging parts of organizing your home depending on how much clothing you own. Here are a few tips that can make tidying less overwhelming.
Empty Your Closet of All Items
First, give yourself a clean slate by removing everything from your closet—even hangers, baskets, and bins. You may even find a few belongings that you forgot about as you empty the space! Don’t forget to also clean the space before reorganizing your clothing. Wipe down the shelves, walls, and baseboards, as well as baskets or bins.
Filter Your Clothes Based on 3 Questions
It can be too easy to forget about the clothing we have in our closet. Many of us hold onto things because they remind us of happy memories, may be needed one day, or used to be in style. The best advice for getting rid of unnecessary items? Ask yourself these three questions:
- Do I love it?
- Do I wear it?
- Does it project the appearance I want to portray?
If you answer yes to all of these questions, it will be easy to confidently keep that item. But if you find yourself having a harder time deciding, don’t feel guilty about creating a “maybe” pile that you can revisit later.
Build a Custom Closet
If buying and matching a bunch of new bins and organizers sounds overwhelming to you, building your own custom closet could be a great alternative. With poor or no design, it can be easy for your closet to become an everyday source of clutter again, leading to a resurgence of stress and anxiety. With a design service that specializes in closet organization, you can achieve the closet of your dreams without exceeding your budget or settling for mismatched organizational aspects.
Now that you have a foundation for organizing three of the most used areas of your house, you’re ready to get started on creating your dream home! With this guide, you’ll be closer to the tidiness you desire.