Whole House Organizing: Where to Start
Whole house organizing is tough. It’s overwhelming, trying to look at your whole home as one project. In fact, we believe it’s impossible and results in you giving up without making any strides. We encourage our clients to focus on areas that cause them stress or overwhelm. Organizing small spaces at first – a junk drawer or kitchen pantry – can help give you confidence and motivate you to continue. But to help prioritize getting organized, these five areas can be the most troublesome: the mudroom, the kitchen, the living room, the closet, and the bathroom. Here are some tips to get started in each of these areas.
Organizing the Entryway or Mudroom
If you’re thinking about whole house organizing, one of the best places to start is the entryway or mudroom. This is often the first space you and your guests see when entering the home, and it can quickly become cluttered with shoes, coats, and other items. Having a designated spot for everything can make the area look more inviting and prevent tripping hazards.
Organizing the Kitchen
The kitchen is the heart of the home. We gather here not just for cooking meals but for talking, doing homework, celebrating moments, and enjoying a quiet cup of coffee. It can quickly become messy with dishes, appliances, and food items. Keeping countertops clear, creating designated spaces for appliances, and organizing food storage can help you stay on top of kitchen clutter.
Whole House Organizing and Your Closets
Our closets hide the messy-ness of our lives behind closed doors. Whether we’re talking about bedroom closets, coat closets, the linen closet, or even a closet in the laundry room, the benefit of these spaces is that we can shut them away. Out of sight, out of mind, right? At least until you need something! Then, the stress can be really overwhelming. So organizing closets can be one of the top ways to feel like your whole house is more organized.
Organizing Your Living Room
This is the space where you likely spend the most time with family and friends, so keeping it organized can help create a calming atmosphere. Utilizing storage ottomans, bookshelves, and end tables with drawers can help keep clutter at bay. Organizing a living room can create a more comfortable and inviting space for relaxing and entertaining. But this is also an area where you have to learn that perfection isn’t the goal of organizing. Having a place for the things you own – and being able to let go of things you no longer need – often becomes really challenging when you start thinking about your living room. You might still have your granny’s old tea cup collection or you dad’s old mantle clock. Not only do these items sometimes take up space, but the constant requirement to dust and clean them – and around them – can be really stressful.
Organizing the Bathroom
Bathrooms require organizing, but they also require regular maintenance to stay that way. Bathrooms can quickly become disorganized with toiletries, towels, and cleaning supplies. Creating designated spaces for each item, utilizing storage containers, and keeping countertops clear can help make your bathroom a more relaxing space. But don’t think this is a one-and-done project – every time your kids go into the bathroom, it becomes an organizing project all over again.
A Healthy Approach to Whole House Organizing
Instead of thinking about organizing your whole home, consider developing habits that can help you keep your spaces more organizing while still recognizing that living a home means it’s not always going to be perfectly clean and organized – and that’s ok. These tips can help:
Do the dishes every day. When dishes pile up, it can make the whole kitchen seem like a disaster. Do the dishes – or load the dishwasher and run it – every day.
Make your beds. Making the bed can cut the feel of clutter in any bedroom in half.
Designate a laundry day. If you struggle to keep up with laundry or get it done, designate one day when you’ll run a couple of loads of laundry and get everything put away.
Get rid of stuff. Whether it’s stuff you don’t need, clothes you don’t wear, or toys your kids no longer play with, one of the best ways to make it feel like your home is more organized is to declutter.
Forgive yourself. We can all be awfully hard on ourselves when things don’t go the way we want them too – but it’s ok to make strides toward whole house organizing while still simply enjoying time with friends and family and letting the mess wait.
Happy Organizing!