How to Organize Your Home: A Place for Every Item Part 2
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As I explained in Part 1 of How to Organize Your Home: A Place for Every Item; every single item in your home needs a resting place. Without a home within your home for your items clutter will start to gather and become overwhelming and home organization will be harder to maintain. Of course some of that clutter may need to go before you get started organizing. For suggestions on how to declutter and purge the unnecessary items in your home check out the 8 week garbage bag decluttering challenge or 12 items you should purge before you move. If you’re ready to start organizing, keep reading!
Blanket Organization
So I counted once. If you combined comforters, bedspreads, blankets, and throws we have 33 total. We are a 4 person family; I can admit 33 is probably a few too many. Some of them are currently folded and sitting in a chair in our TV room for when we want to cuddle up and watch a movie. I have a light weight and heavy weight one for each bed with the off-season ones stored in the linen closets. Plus we have about 10 that go in our 5th wheel trailer. I’m going to need a place to store them all in our dream home. Currently I’m considering different organization options including: linen closets, trunks, cabinets, and dressers. A nice decorative basket or blanket ladder might work well in the right setting such as a guest bedroom or living room.
Here are a few DIY ideas:
I love this painted cabinet from Fred and Bessie’s
The DIY blanket storage chest below is perfect for a guest room from A Touch of Beautiful
For smaller spaces or budgets try this DIY blanket ladder from Remodelaholic instead
If you are less of a DIY and more of an online shopper. Check out these options from Amazon:
Simple storage baskets can give a homey and decorative touch while also providing function
A nice coffee table with storage underneath or in the middle would also work great.
A great way to keep blankets handy in the living room without feeling cluttered or them ending up on the floor.
For larger spaces and that farmhouse feel consider a cabinet with a sliding barn door for blanket storage
Whats your preferred blanket storage system? How many blankets and other similar items do you have around your house? I will probably purge a few of these blankets before we move since there isn’t a need to have 33 for our small family. Getting rid of excess items is one of my tips for decluttering items you don’t need prior to moving. I will be following my own advice!
Craft Supply Organization
I’m honestly not that crafty. But every now and then I get a wild hair up my bum and decide to make something like this (below) for everyone in my family. I needed wood, paint, nails, string of different colors, and a whole lot of other supplies and tools for this endeavor. I’ll admit I was not very organized during the project.
(Find the round-up from Sugar Bee Crafts here with links to the how-to posts)
During the project and after completion the supplies were strewn haphazardly all over the living room, kitchen table, and back porch for a few months. Leftover supplies got shoved into a drawer or placed on a shelf until my next project comes around and joins them. I don’t think I need some fancy craft organization system but a cabinet dedicated to crafting supplies in the utility room would be helpful. Plus this kids have their paints and play-doh and such that also needs a home to rest. Here’s a great round up of craft supply organizing ideas from Heart Handmade.
Check out this extremely organized crafting closet by Designed Improvised:
If you have room, you might consider a crafting table/storage system in one. You can always build one yourself. But if you prefer a simpler approach Amazon has these as well:
There are all kinds of little boxes for beads, pom-poms, pipe-cleaners, etc. Depending on the types of crafts you enjoy doing you may need a variety of storage containers. Here are a few options to choose as needed.
Holiday Decor Organization
I have an entire post dedicated to organizing holiday decor. Head on over and check it out when you’re ready. There was so much to say and so many ideas I couldn’t just write a paragraph and post a couple of suggestions.
Photograph Organization
With electronic photos this is easier than ever! Some people prefer to organize electronically and just print a few of their favorite photos out for viewing. If that’s more your style check out these awesome posts for organizing digital photographs: Spring Cleaning 365 Declutter and Organize Digital Photos, The Organized Mama How to Organize Pictures on Your Computer, Simple Scrapper Easy Digital Photo Organization for Non-Techie People. I enjoy using Walgreen’s website for photos. It’s easy to upload and create picture books for different vacations we’ve been on. I also really enjoy their photo collages. If you have old printed photos around consider electronically filing them by scanning them to your computer for better photograph organization.
For already printed photos or if you prefer to print pictures on a regular basis there are some great options for keeping them organized below. Utilized picture frames or photo books and toss those old shoe-boxes! This is definitely an area I need to work on in my own life. Tune my Heart Blog has great advice for How to Organize Your Photos: A System that Works. If you have a photo organizing and displaying system I would love to hear about it in the comments!
One Crazy House 14 Simple Tips and Tricks to Organize Your Photos
There 100s of adorable photo albums to choose from to display your photos. You can also take up scrap booking if you’re crafty and can find the time!
Don’t forget to get some amazing picture frames to display your favorite photos. Here are some options for creating some eye popping photo walls: The Todd and Erin Favorite Five have an awesome picture hanging guide and the Just the Jensen Family has a great DIY gallery wall (see below).
Grab your own frames via the Amazon links below!
Book Organization
Books shelves are obviously the most common and reasonable storage and organization system for books. However, just piling all your books on a shelf in no particular order isn’t very helpful. Consider making each shelf its own category, alphabetizing each row, and donating or re-gifting any books you (or the kids) are never going to read again. I’d like to get a little more creative in my dream home for book organization. I plan to separate children’s books and my books. I really love these organization strategies for children’s books:
Simply Kierste Design collaborated with Oopsey Daisy for this color coded kid’s book organization system
It’s Overflowing has the plans to make this awesome Wall Mount Bookshelf for kid’s books storage
For more sophisticated spaces and those of you that have just as many books as your kids check out these options for organizing and storing your favorite books:
Painted by Prestige turned this unused closet into a reading nook
Up to Date Interiors has some awesome advice for decorating and styling your bookshelves so they are cute and functional!
For additional bookshelf storage, styling, and organizing ideas check out this round up by I am Baker and this one on Gurl. For home library inspiration or eye candy here’s a great round up of 15 Stunning Home Library Decor Ideas To Inspire You and another 50 jaw dropping home library design ideas here. If you’re getting the itch to start decorating, styling, and organizing see below for some shelving to help you get started!
Unique designs:
Floating Shelving:
Kids Rooms:
Corner Shelves:
Farmhouse Style:
Mail/Paper Organization
A drop zone or command center (check out these ideas or these) is a great place for incoming/outgoing mail, bills that need to be paid, and magazine subscriptions that need to be kept neat. Our dream home is going to have a command center/mail sorter built in to make mail and paper organization easier. Our current home doesn’t have an ideal space for this and we end up using the kitchen counter. I’m really horrible at keeping paper clutter organized and at bay. Hopefully you find these ideas as inspiring and necessary as I do.
One Creative Housewife has a great tutorial for this functional command center.
Jenna Burger Design created this family command center and also has some free printables if you’re interested
These command centers will work amazing for the daily ins and outs. But what about the papers you need to keep? Filing cabinet work great but they need some organizing. Do you know which papers you actually need to keep? And for how long? Modern Homemakers Society has a great post on organizing paperwork. Looking for different ideas? Check out A Cultivated Nest’s post for different tips for organizing personal papers. Make sure to have a plan for decluttering the filing cabinet yearly so it doesn’t over fill. Check out The Federal Trade Commission’s Infographic for when to shred and when to keep personal papers.
Here are some great options if you’re looking to DIY command center style. Don’t forget to look for filing cabinets and other needs while you’re shopping!
Recipe Organization
Do you love to cook? Do you have several cookbooks that barely get opened? If you’re like me you answered yes to both questions! With the internet and ease of carrying a smart phone around, old fashioned cookbooks just don’t much sense in the modern world. This is a great post by The No Pressure Life on how to create a digital cookbook of all your favorite recipes. Right now I like my current system, but I might try something like that for organizing my favorites in the future.
I find tons of recipes on Pinterest and usually once a year I sit down and pull them into my Pepperplate account. I love Pepperplate because it’s FREE and its both a website and app. The program allows you to load recipes and meal plan, create a grocery list, and organize it all in one place. The recipes will automatically populate your grocery list if you want! It’s super simple to use. Highly recommend it; definitely the best recipe organization system I’ve ever used. If you prefer to print your recipes check out this Printable Recipe Binder from The Pioneer Woman.
I get a new cookbook every year from my mom for Christmas. It’s a tradition that I imagine will continue for a while. I plan to keep these cookbooks and few of my other favorites. I just can’t seem to part with them. Since I won’t be purging these items I’ll need a good system to organize them and the recipes inside when we move to our dream home! I plan on adding the recipe name and ingredients to my Pepperplate account and noting which page the recipe is on and which book its in. That way I can have the ingredient list handy but don’t have to add the directions to the app. If I want to make that meal I can just quickly look up which book and page I need to find the recipe. Here are some great ideas for storing cookbooks in your home:
Deeply Southern Home/Paper Daisy Design DIY Custom Shelving
Board Game Organization
We love board games at our house! They’re super fun to play and make for some great family quality time. I scoured Pinterest for some storage ideas for you because our games currently sit on the top shelf of our playroom closet. The kids can’t even see them much less reach them when they want to play. I need a more kid friendly storage solution. In our previous house we stored them in a hall closet. That wasn’t particularly ideal either because they didn’t fit well and we were constantly moving and shuffling them around to get the ones we want. I added my 2 favorite ideas below but if you need more inspiration check out the Money Saving Sisters round up for starting board games. Because board game boxes are all different shapes and sizes these 2 board game organization ideas made the most sense to me:
Joyful Homemaking Board Game Storage Tips
Between my first How to Organize Your Home Post and this one I’ve covered 13 different topics. What am I missing? I’m sure they’re are more items that need to be organized. Leave a comment below with your best home organization tips or let me know what items are giving you trouble!
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