Top 3 Organized Home Hacks

Hey everyone!!  I'm so excited about the upcoming Get Organized HQ Virtual event we have coming up!  It's a week-long online conference where I and 100 (yes, literally one hundred) other experts are sharing our best advice for living a happy, organized life.  It is absolutely FREE to attend, so be sure to click this link to get your free ticket while you can.

For now I'm going to share my top three organization tips, so you can click the link to watch the video, or read on!  Be sure to check out the full playlist of the other organization experts because we are all sharing our top 3 home hacks!

What Creates an Organized Home?

There are so many different interpretations of what it means to have an “organized home,” and if you watch YouTube or see posts on Facebook or Instagram, they all look different.  We all want our homes to be free of stress, full of peace, and to be a haven for ourselves, our families, and our guests.

For me, there are two things that create an organized home:

• Every item has a home, and all the people using those items must know where that home is– basically, no one is running around looking for things they can't find!
• It also must make you (the person using it!) smile!  It has to make you happy!!!

Here are my top 3 hacks to create an organized home:

Have an inbox.

EVERY room or every storage space must have an inbox or a bin where you can dump new things you don't have time to deal with at the moment.  You can spend hours, days, weeks, getting your home perfectly organized, but what happens when new stuff comes in (as it ALWAYS does)?

We may not have time to put things away immediately, and the inbox gives us a tidy spot to stash these items until we can put them in their permanent homes.  You need to go through all your inboxes regularly– whether that means daily, weekly, monthly, or just when they start to get full, but you have to have a plan to deal with the new items coming in.

Have an outbox.

Just like the inbox, we're going to have stuff we need to declutter or get rid of.  If you make this easy, you will actually do it!  I've found that I need an outbox on each floor of my house.  I will walk from one room to another to declutter something, but most people will not go up and down stairs to do this– LOL!  If you make the process as convenient as possible, you are much more likely to actually complete the task, so make getting rid of the clutter as easy as keeping it.

I have a large dresser drawer in my bedroom where I stash things to get rid of, and when it gets full, it goes straight into my car to donate.  I also keep a small bin in my closet and in my kids' closets because often I'll decide clothing doesn't fit, or I don't like it, and my kids outgrow things so quickly.  Make putting it in the donate bin easier than hanging it back up in your closet!

Match all the organizing bins in your home.

If you're just starting out and buying new organization systems, do yourself the biggest favor, and keep them the same throughout your house.  Organization needs will change over time, or you might move.  If all your bins match, then you can easily move them from one room to another or change up your systems without going out and buying new matching bins all the time.  I even buy matching neutral bins for my kids' brightly-colored rooms so that I can move them, or they will fit new colors or themes when the rooms change as they grow.

And a bonus hack because I can't keep it to just three:

Try to fit your new organization system into whatever is already happening in your home.  If your family piles papers on your kitchen island, try putting a paper bin/inbox on the island where they're already dumping everything.  If you put the bin in the living room, it's not likely that your family's papers will make it all the way over there when it's not a habit for them.  You may want to move it later, but if you keep your new systems as close as possible to what you're already doing, then it's far more likely to succeed!  If your kids dump their dirty clothes all over the bathroom floor, try putting their hamper in the bathroom instead of their bedrooms…in short, think about ways you can make organization and tidiness as easy for them as being unorganized and messy!

Don't forget to go here to sign up to attend the Get Organized HQ Virtual event for FREE!  I'd love for you to geek out with me on all the great organization tips coming your way.  We have some fantastic people participating this year.  The sessions are sure to get you motivated and pumped to finally get your house organized the way you've always hoped it would be!