Occasionally, we like to recall some of our top tips for how to organise your home. The simple ones are usually the best, and an organised home is a happier and more functional place. Organising can be a superpower in a complex world.
Tips for an organised home
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Have a plan of attack.
Don’t try to declutter your whole house in a week—you’ll exhaust and overwhelm yourself. Declutter in bite-size chunks for 30 minutes to a couple of hours. Decide which are the most problematic areas when thinking about how to organise your home, and tackle them in sequence so that they don’t look too overwhelming at any given time. With the ‘one-touch’ rule, everything you touch should only be touched once, to immediately be put away in its own designated place. Focus on contained spaces such as a drawer, cupboard, or shelf. Arm yourself with paper and a pen to make notes of ‘actions’ and designate rubbish, recycling, and donation bags.
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Start with ‘storage’ areas.
Lofts, basements, and garages are prime locations to stash something quickly and avoid dealing with it. If you’re serious about learning to how to organise your home and clearing your clutter, start with these areas first, and then you’ll have enough space to store your needed things. Be ruthless. If you haven’t used something for a long time, say 6 months, donate it or bin it, you will be glad of the extra space.
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Make a decision
In my industry, we say that clutter is often a result of decision delay. Deciding what to do with some items can be challenging, and it seems easier to pass them by. But pushing through that challenge and learning how to organise your home is how you will see actual results.
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Have a place for everything.
This is one of the best tips for an organised home. Assign a permanent ‘resting place’ to every possession, especially for items that tend to accumulate in ‘clutter hotspots’. Kitchens are notorious dumping grounds for things, as it is usually the first room you go into when you get home. There are beautiful storage boxes and baskets available where you can place things to ensure your work surfaces remain clutter free. For example, if school stuff accumulates on the kitchen table, create a ‘homework’ box on a shelf for each child.
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Don’t walk empty-handed.
Things are constantly being used and moved in a modern home, so you must put things back in their ‘homes consistently’. The easiest way to do this is to tidy up as you move through your home. It negates the need for a big, overwhelming tidy-up, and your house will stay in order.
Deciding to organise your home can be a daunting thought, but the advantages of an orderly home are many and varied.
Firstly, an organised home can be psychologically calming. Rather than being thrown into a stressful milieu in which almost everything is unordered and disorganised, you will find yourself in a more ordered and predictable atmosphere where you know where everything is stored, reducing the chaotic stress that comes with searching fruitlessly for something in a cluttered, unorganised environment.
A Tidy Mind covers the Yorkshire, London, West Midlands and Cheshire areas. We offer free consultations, so why not get in touch? Take a look at the different packages available.