How to Organize without Breaking the Bank

I love seeing beautifully organized spaces with beautiful matching bins and fancy labels, but sometimes that can be rather pricey. The Container Store is definitely one of my favorite stores, but it’s not known for being very budget friendly. So what should we do when our dream organizing isn’t within our budget? It’s not the time to give up on getting organized or on make organizing systems look pretty. It’s time to get creative with your organizing solutions! I'd love to show you how to organize on a budget.

How to get organized on a budget PLUS a free monthly budget printable!

Here’s my best advice for getting organized without breaking the bank:

  • The most important organizing step is completely free! Fortunately, purging and decluttering is the most impactful thing you can do to get organized, and it’s completely free. Hooray! Getting rid of unused items can immediately transform a cluttered space into a neat looking space. If you need help deciding what to keep and what to toss, read my post about how to take control of your clutter.
  • Think outside the box to repurpose items for storage containers. Often, getting creative about what you use for storage containers can provide you with perfect storage absolutely free! Repurpose items like shoeboxes, gift bags, coffee canisters, Mason jars, Cool Whip containers, glass spaghetti sauce jars, etc for storage. Often, you can even collect several matching containers this way, if it’s an item you use a lot.
  • Decorate and unify the look of miscellaneous containers by decorating them with spray paint, fabric, or wrapping paper. In the ideal world, we’d all be able to afford to go out and buy matching containers for every project, but we can still make our systems look nice even on a tiny budget. You can spray paint almost anything! You can get a bunch of miscellaneous baskets at Goodwill super cheap and then spray paint them the same color to unify them. I’ve also seen lots of items covered in fabric, wrapping paper, duct tape, or washi tape. The sky is the limit. Follow my DIY-Smaller Projects board on Pinterest to see the ideas I’ve collected. Here’s just one spray painting idea:

Unify your plastic bins by spray painting them!

  • Unify the look of mis matched containers by using matching labels. Just adding matching labels to random containers can really help to unify the look and take the overall organized feel of the space up a notch. Buying a few labels is much cheaper than purchasing new containers or bins. For example, here I organized my unfinished laundry area without spending a dime by using the containers I already had with matching labels:

Storage Room Organization

  • A word of caution: Just because you DIY it, doesn’t mean it saves money. I feel like a word of caution is needed here. Often, adding your own DIY touch to something is both fun, rewarding, and budget friendly. However, just because you do something yourself doesn’t autotmatically make it cheaper. Honestly, some DIY projects do nothing but cost you a lot of extra time without any money savings. The key is to DIY strategically where it really saves you money. If a project requires you to purchase special tools or expensive materials, it may not even save money! The best way to really save money is to use what you already have on hand.
  • Shop at the Dollar Tree, Goodwill, garage sales, and Craigslist. There really are a lot of places to find organizing supplies that don’t cost a fortune. Places like Goodwill or garage sales are excellent for finding really cheap containers and bins. Kind of like with exercise equipment, people often have great intentions, buy a bunch of supplies but never use them. The other place that has amazing brand new organizing bins is the Dollar Tree. They have some amazing items for just a dollar! I share all my favorite organizing items from the Dollar Tree here.
  • Wisely consider where it may be worth it to splurge. If you do have some extra room in your budget, there’s nothing wrong with splurging on some organizing supplies. The important thing is to choose wisely, and splurge in the places where it will have the most impact. For example, I would splurge if I found the ideal way to organize something that I use every single day. However, I probably wouldn’t do the same for something I access only once a month.

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Hope my ideas were helpful to you and good luck organizing without breaking the bank! What are your favorite budget organizing ideas and strategies?

Posted Under: Organizing