Andersens Renovating Series: Organising your home part 1
17 June 2012 | Helpful Tips and Hints, Renovating
Whether it’s before a major reno, after or just because you need to get things in order, organising your home is something everyone needs to do. Most people don’t know where to begin and when they do, they don’t know how to put systems in place to keep things organised once they’ve actually put the time and effort into doing it!
Hopefully these hints and tips can help you on your way!
These are our first 10 tips for you
1. Make a Date with Your Clutter
Your first task is to schedule an appointment with your space.
2. Pick a Target
Look around your home and decide what overwhelms you the most. What frustrates you most often? Pick the area that is most maddening and start there.
3. Visualize the End ResultFirst
When most people decide to get organized, their impulse is to head to the store and buy containers. Hold off on the containers for now and work on your vision.
4. Shed the surplus
Go through your target space and remove everything that doesn’t fit with your current needs, goals, and lifestyle. Don’t keep things that might be useful someday—only things that are useful to you today. Do you use this item? Do you need it? Or do you love it? Those are the only three reasons to keep something.
5. Keep three containers handy
As you work to remove the things you no longer need or want, keep three containers beside you: a laundry basket, a bag for donations, and a garbage/recycling bag. Put things that belong elsewhere in the house into the laundry basket. Donate as much as you can to charities and recycle or trash the rest.
6. gather like things together
If you don’t know where to start, work from left to right in the room, or from top to bottom, sorting things as you go. So, gather all pens and pencils together, pile up all of your pairs of pants together, or place all of your cereals in a group.
7. examine your groups
Now that all of your similar things are in one pile, you can make decisions about them. Do you really need 20 pairs of black pants? Seeing them all together can be eye-opening. Get rid of items that are not being used or that are broken. Then narrow each pile down to your favourites. By the end of this winnowing, you can get a group of 20 items down to a few.
8. create themes for your spaces
Assign a broad yet specific theme to every area of your space. If you are working in your kitchen, dedicate one shelf to breakfast foods, one to canned goods, one to grains and pastas, and one to baking supplies, etc. Make sure that items are at a sensible height so that whoever spends the most time in the kitchen can read the labels.
9. Maximize your space
Brainstorm various ways you can make the most of your space. If your pantry shelves are fixed, buy some stackers. These are fibreboard shelves (easy to find at Bed, Bath & Beyond, IKEA, or Kmart) that can give you more space. Canned goods tend to be short, for example, and so you can create two layers of them with an additional shelf. Things that are used most often should get the prime real estate.
10. get things off the floor
Whenever possible, keep things off the floor. This makes them easier to see and keeps the floor free of chaos. This is especially useful in the garage or the garden shed, where you can hang rakes, garden implements, tools, shovels, sleds, and other things, making them much easier to find.
We hope that these little tips have helped you!
Thanks to http://www.ivillage.com for some great information on organising your home!