OK, so I've organized the junk drawer in the kitchen. Now, I have to organize the junk cabinet that is directly above. This area holds cookbooks, recipes, playdoh, glue, paint and the massive coupon pile from Bed Bath and Beyond. I rarely shop there, but when I do I have to use my coupons!
This area is similar to the junk drawer as it can easily become a "dumping ground." Out of sight, out of mind, right? Well, at some point it just gets out of hand. My philosophy when it comes to organizing is this: If you haven't used it in the past year, get rid of it! Also, if you put it back where you found it, you will always find it! There are so many sayings for these ideas.
OK, so here's the junk cabinet before I got started.
The top isn't bad as the cookbooks are well organized, but the bottom shelf needs some work! The goal here was to add an iPad charging station for the kids school iPads when they have to be remote as well as stuff that is already there.
So, here we go! Steps to organizing:
Decide how you want to utilize the space: I wanted to add the charging station and just get the space organized.
Take everything out and go through everything. If it's trash or junk, get rid of it! If you haven't used it in a year, toss it! For me, I had tons of expired coupons that went straight to the trash. To get the kids involved, I called them in to check their playdoh. If it was dry, toss! If not, keep! Then, I combined those two half-open glue bottles. I normally don't allow such things, but when all the kids stuff was sent home from the school, we had tons of extra stuff!
Start to put things back in the way you would like. First, my husband built a little iPad charging station. We drilled a hole in the back on the bottom shelf to fit a plug through. Then, I put back the rest of what we were going to keep.
Here's the finished picture. It turned out beautiful and only took a couple of hours (includes my husband building the charging station).
We could have kept going with more slots to store things, or I thought about putting the coupons in a binder to organize, etc. but this works for our needs right now!
Again, don't get overwhelmed! Start somewhere small and just get started. With each space in the house you start to go through and organize, I promise you will start to feel less stressed. All of the "stuff" that people have can lead to stress. We have to take time to clean it, store it, take care of it, etc. By having less stuff, we have more time to do the other things we enjoy!
Happy Organizing! Let me know if you have questions or need help organizing a space.
Janel
Commenti