Living in a spacious apartment comes with its pros and cons. While there’s a lot of space to accommodate your furniture, household items, toys and items picked from the grocery store, it is often tiring to find your house in such a mess that you have to de clutter and arrange it regularly. Each time it feels you’ve gotten it right, yet, the constant need to exercise caution and not get the house into disarray especially by energetic kids keeps gnawing in your belly.
Keeping your home clutter-free requires a great deal of effort. However, the six simple steps gathered below can help you get it right.
Table of Contents
1. Create a Toy Storage Station for the Kids’ Toys
Having kids is one amazing feeling you can ever have as a parent, but at the same time, you’ll agree that having to deal with a home littered with toys, just as much as stepping on a teddy strewn across the floor all the time, is quite frustrating. To avoid getting your cluttered home constantly in disarray, you can try these toy storage ideas.
There’s a wide range of ideas to pick from, like purchasing a toy storage rack or wood stump stool where you keep all the toys. It saves a good deal of time having to multitask between running the home and constantly stopping to pick up some stray toys littered all over your space.
2. Provide Space for Every Item
The home gets cluttered when there’s a bit of everything heaped in one place to sort through later, and this is often tedious. It is typical to find items like earrings, sunglasses, mails, coats, or watches at random places in the bedroom, countertops, and vanity tables. To avoid this, make a provision for every item to have its space, a place it goes into when you’re pulling them off. Think of it as a house for each of them to live in; a station where you can put them away when not in use at that particular time.
You can opt for small fancy bowels, baskets, or trays to hold these items. When each item goes into its storage location, you don’t have to go through the stress of sorting through them when they pile up.
3. Shop Intentionally
While other things add up to the clutter in your home, chances are that shopping contributed to it too. When you’re prone to getting the whole grocery or cloth store down to your home, it is obvious that you’ll have to sort through it and give your home the needed space. The surest hack here is to practice intentional shopping just as its name suggests.
Buy only the necessary things you need and not on impulse. Impulsive purchase is one where you buy things you don’t need, but rather one that catches your fancy at that particular time. Make a list of the things you need for your home and stick to it. It reduces the stress of having to sort through unneeded items later.
It’s also important to avoid recreational shopping or shopping for fun. If it helps, stay out of stores or malls until you’re in dire need of an item. This works even with the clutters in your home. Once you give room for clutter to come in, it becomes practically stressful to get them out. Don’t get them in if you do not need them.
4. Get a Paper Shredder for Your Paper Clutter
Nothing causes a stuffy home more than paper in the form of junk files, old mails, bills, magazines and catalogs, and paper clippings. One effective way to deal with piled-up paper junk is by using a paper shredder. You can have one paper shredder just beside your door to shred all the junks you probably do not need anymore.
Where a paper shredder isn’t readily available, you can either provide a folder for them, like a bill folder or a cabinet where all the worn-out papers go into.
5. Sort Through the Mess as They Come
Another tip to keeping your home organized and tidy is to sort through the mess as they come. Leave no clutter or spills unattended. Getting right to it at that instant saves you the stress of having to sort through a whole lot of them later. Hang your coat in the right place, a rack or coat hanger instead of leaving it out on the dresser or couch. Others would always find their way there and it’s bad business when they accumulate over time.
It’s advisable to clean the dishes while cooking, take out the old mails from the mailbox once a new one arrives, sort through the laundry, and pick up the toys. Leaving them to heap up will likely pose difficulties when it’s time for a cleanup.
6. Give Away Things You Don’t Need
You’ll always have a bunch of old clothes, books, household equipment, or furniture you don’t need anymore. While moving out, you can gather up these items and donate them to charity or give them to those in need of them. Place a shopping bag in your closet where you can easily put in the items you haven’t used or worn in a while, anytime you spot them.
Sometimes you might be indecisive on whether or not to give a particular item away. When this happens, hold off for a few months before deciding on the next step. If you haven’t gone back to pull them out, then it is time to give them away.
Conclusion
Having come this far means you’re set to getting your home organized and running. The key is to remember all these simple hacks and follow them one by one. However, here’s one last tip. Understand that they’re some things you can’t change.
If you have kids, there would always be toys littered around the house, the same goes for paper clippings and clothes. Taking it one day and pick out what works for your household.
