I need help with how to organize my house. It seems Im always cleaning it. I have stuff everywhere.?

Question

It's not dirty gross by any means just cluttered. Any suggestions.
I have 3 kids 1 dog and a husband. Along with being a full time student and doing my externship. My time is limited.

Answer 1

To save time, money, and energy, look around at the thief starting at you.

It is the clutter that is robbing you of all these things.

You will want to pare down your stuff to a manageable level, then the everyday cleaning and mess will be less of a hassle.

I hear you saying that your time is limited, so I will ask for an hour of your time every day until your house is cleared out of junk.

Start with your closet. Wardrobe is just another word for laundry. Get rid of anything that

You don't wear.
Doesn't fit you NOW.
Needs mending and you won't mend it.
Is too ratty to wear anymore.
Is hopelessly out of season.
Doesn't match anything else in your closet.
You have many of very similar items, such as white blouses, keep one or two. Get rid of the rest. Only exception is if you have a lot for a dress code or uniform.

Getting these items out of your closets is the first step. It is nothing you will miss. You have asked yourself the questions necessary to decide if it is worth keeping.

From there, you may have things that can be boxed up for another time, getting them out of the everyday mess, but also not completely letting go of them.

Out of season. Box up and label.

Kids clothes that are between children, doesn't fit anyone right now but will and you want to save for later. Box up by size and sex, label specifically, and pull them out when they are needed.

Similar items that are way over in quantity. What you do is compile mini-collections that have a little of each thing, then store all but ONE collection. For example. You have 50 T-shirts. Sort them into ten various piles that give you good selection. Keep 10 out in your closet. Box up the rest in collections of ten. Every month, take out a new set of shirts and put the current one away. You would want to do this with different garments as well such as jeans. Anything that you have a lot of. Maybe what you can do is put away different OUTFITS that work well together.

You can use this method to go through linens, videos, books, music, toys, decor, any collection of items that has a lot of pieces to it and you don't need it alllllll out at once. First pare down what you know you don't use anymore, then sort it out for rotation. You are aiming for variety here. With movies, a few dramas, a few action, a few kids, etc in each rotation. With books and music, similar by genre. With toys, consult your kids about how they play and keep things together that are used together. For example if you put all the GI Joe action figures away in a different toy collection from the toy plane and jeep, then none of the toys will be played with as much.

OK moving on to consumables, such as toiletries, cleaning products, food, office supplies, etc. Gather like with like and then use the salt shaker method. When you use salt at the table, most people don't have the whole box on the table, you put a small amount in a shaker, store the rest away. This is a small amount that is easy to manage, doesn't interfere with your work space (in this case your dining space) and is going to last long enough to be convenient.

What you do there is purchase the small size of each type of thing ONCE and refill it from value sizes, and put a small reasonable amount of stuff at hand to be useful without being part of the visual or physical clutter. Store excessive amounts of things out of the way with similar items (for example, you might have a box labelled bathroom.) and when you run out of something, "shop" from your boxes. To help make things go smoother at first, leave out the products that are less than one inch in the container. Use them up and toss the bottle. As the collection starts to thin out, you will have space to either shop sales, or use that space for something else.

You can use this method with anything consumable, or relatively durable but needs replacing from time to time. Underwear, socks, kitchen gadgets like whisks and wooden spoons, etc. These are items that may be numerous, no one else really wants, and don't need to be replaced if they are in good shape. The point is to get MOST of it out circulation, and develop the habit of "shopping" from your overflow before you go to the store.

OK. So you have ways to manage inventories of items that you use and you have gotten rid of some stuff that is just not right for you anymore.

Now furniture and storage pieces. If you have pieces that are not used you can either get rid of them or repurpose them.

A dresser is nothing but a place to hide things.
A shelf is nothing more than a place to display things.

Not only that, a dresser has a surface to display on top, while a shelf with containers can become a place to hide or corrall things for easy access.

Most pieces are either "dressers" or "shelves" and they can go literally ANYWHERE in the home so before you let them go, stop looking at furniture according to what it was made for and see if it can serve you well some other way.

For example, a dresser you love that isn't being used so much can give you extra kitchen storage. Put tupperware in one drawer, good silver in the top drawer, table linens in another, etc...put the microwave or a breadbox on top, and it fits in beautifully in the kitchen. You might be able to outfit a wide bookshelf with wheels and a butcher block top, centered on the shelf, and make a portable island for food prep with storage underneath. An armoire in the kitchen corner or hallway to the kitchen might make a perfect pantry.

Organize your items according to where and how often you use them. For example, in the kitchen you want to honor the work triangle. The points of the triangle are the stove, fridge, and sink. The lines of the triangle are the traffic patterns between those things. MOST activity in the kitchen happens in the work triangle, so your most reliable, reached for pieces need to be there somewhere. For example, you want knives and cutting boards somewhere between the sink and the fridge...so you go to the fridge, take produce to the sink to wash it, then chop it in a few steps. You want dishes somewhere between the sink/dishwasher and the stove so you can wash them and put them away easily, as well as getting them to plate up food.

You might consider a snack station OUTSIDE of the work triangle, so kids can come and go without disturbing your work. This would likely be somewhere between the fridge and the entrance to your kitchen.

All things in your house can be handled this way. Keep magazines and books where you do the most reading. Keep toys where they are played with. Keep linens in the bedroom where they are used.

To organize the space even better, look at your storage areas. Put the most frequently used stuff in the front, on the surface, eye level, etc. Easy to reach. Put less frequently used stuff somewhere nearby but not as easy to reach. Put your overflow supplies and rotations in the deepest levels of storage, either where they will eventually be used, or in another room altogether.

Keeping stuff in containers helps you clean easier, even for stuff on surfaces. It also gives things a home, and manages AMOUNTS of things. When you go to clean, pick up the container, dust around it and under it and put it back, instead of having to handle every item in the container. When a container is starting to spill over, it is time to weed it out. You should have a trash container in each room of your home, an easy to use recycling area, and an easy access place for stuff that you don't want to stay in the home, donations, etc. When a box is full, remove it. You can also have a container in the room, to catch items that don't belong where they are. Everyday, go through the house with the container and put things away.

Get kids involved, this isn't just your job. Promote yourself from chief laborer to manager of your home...and delegate responsibilities to your family members. They will learn valuable things from it and it will bring your family together.

One last idea to share...develop a locker system for near the entrance of the house. Get some cheap plastic lawn chairs (one for each family member) and some art supplies. Let each person decorate their own chair and place a carpet square under each one. Line up the chairs as close as possible to your most frequent used door in the house. Each person hangs ONE jacket on the back of their chair, mittens and hats stuffed in the sleeves, bookbag, purse, or briefcase on the seat, and boots and shoes on the carpet square. This is also the place for KEYS, library books, videos, anything that needs to be accessible fast, or anything that is on loan to the family.

Answer 2

I feel for you, I was in the same situation about 10 years ago. My children were small, I was a part time student and worked 3 part time jobs. Our house was cluttered so bad. It wasn't dirty, just cluttered. You need time, and help from family or friends. Have a garage sale to eliminate some of the clutter, or just have someone help you organize what you have. If you don't have time for a garage sale, then donate to a local charity. Sometimes it takes someone that doesn't live with you to help, because they usually don't get overwhelmed. Before you start, have your husband take the kids to the park, or grandparents house. That way, you won't have any distractions. Good luck, now that my girls are older, they help around the house, and we are now clutter free.

Answer 3

Biggest thing with this kind of issue is not having a place for everything. Look around and see what stuff is piling up the most. Is it the mail or is it kids toys, etc. Then create a designated space for that stuff that is easy to get to and make yourself put the stuff in the space everyday as a habit.

You may need to take a day or an hour here or there to go through some of the things that are piling up as well. Kids toys seem to be a big problem and when yo go through them you can usually get rid of half of them. Piece by piece get rid of what they do not use anymore or things that are used so little it would be better to give them to someone who needs them. A lot of the toys will be broken and/or missing pieces and can be thrown away.

Basically it's just downsizing the amount of stuff you have as you will realize you do not NEED all of it and creating convenient storage areas for the things that you keep and making everyone stick to using them.

Answer 4

My house used to be so organized it wasn't funny. Then I got 3 kids in a 10 months period. Two I have custody of (grandchildren) and the other is another granddaughter that I watch during the day. My house hasn't been the same since. They are all two years old and I have stuff piled every where they can't reach. And I am a stay at home grandma.lol

My best advice to you is, as long as you know where most of the stuff is, don't worry about it. You will eventually graduate and the kids will eventually grow up. Then you can organize your home. I have tried time and time again to my house in some kind of order but by Tuesday it is a mess again. So for now I just keep things that can be harmful to the little ones out of their reach and I play with them during the day instead of cleaning. I try to get a jump on the next day after my 2 have gone to bed at night and then I get as much sleep as I can.

I keep telling myself that they will all be in preschool in 2 years and then my house will look better.lol

Answer 5

www.merrymaids.com

Also, how old are your children? Perhaps a chore schedule for your husband and children, including yourself, is in order to get things together. I had to do that for myself and my fiance because our apartment was looking more and more cluttered every day.

Answer 6

Have a sort out and have a Car Boot Sale ... gets rid of junk and makes cash

Answer 7

get a garbage bag and start throwing out anything you havent used in the last year.also www.flylady.com is a good site

Answer 8

I HATE TO SAY BUT I HAD SAME PROBLEM;SO GET TWO THINGS BOXES AND TRASH CAN IF NOT USING PLACE IT IN BOX;IF ITS A DUST COLLECTOR;OR BROKEN TRASH IT ALL THE LUCK IN THE WORLD HARLEY