Top tips for organising your space

[Huma0]

Oh, how I love my stuff! I have to admit I'm a hoarder at heart. While I want my home to be beautifully presented, I do have a problem cutting the clutter. I recently had two storage rooms converted into new bathrooms and have no idea where to re-home the enormous amount of stuff I'd managed to cram in there. Sure, I should get rid of a lot of it, but, well... it might come in useful.

I also noticed once of the criteria for the new Plus category was an uncluttered interior, e.g. no unsightly cables on show. Now, I don't qualify for Plus anyway, but it made me think more carefully about my clobber. I dream of an ordered office, sorted shelves and carefully curated cupboards.

Who out there is a genius at this sort of thing and would you care to share your tips?

PS These are NOT my shelves!

[Huma0]

To start off, here's a cute way to organise bathroom cupboards (again, not mine, but borrowed from Pinterest):

[Sarah977]

@Huma0Being a minimalist myself, I've noticed that hoarding is a really hard disease to cure 🙂

Everywhere I go, I'm amazed at the amount of STUFF people have. I'm happiest when I'm getting rid of things, rather than accumulating them.

Yes, it all might come in handy one day, but it feels so good to get rid of things that you really don't use. I guess you have to decide if it's more important to have the security of not getting rid of things that you might make use of some nebulous day in the future, vs being able to enjoy a clutter free space.

My rule of thumb is if I haven't used it, or worn it in a year or two, it gets chucked. Also, if you come home with a bag full of things you just couldn't resist buying (whether it cost a small fortune or you found it second-hand for next to nothing), make sure you bag up the same quantity of stuff to pass on or throw out that same day.

Most women I know have closets crammed with clothes, half of which they never wear. There's those things that you love the look of, love it when it's on the hangar, but when you put it on, you end up changing an hour later because it's just not you somehow. Give it away or take it to the consignment store, rather than putting it back on the hangar.

My ex boyfriend had a huge pile of building materials, pvc and metalpipe, fencing, etc. etc. that he refused to get rid of because it was all useful stuff. yet when he was in the middle of a project, that thing he knew he had was buried so deep in the pile and he just wanted to get on with the project, that he usually ended up going out and buying more.

I was staying with friends, went around and gathered up all the coffee mugs I found in the greenhouse, the garden, the shed, etc. and washed them all. They had 55 coffee mugs!

If you just can't get rid of stuff, get some plastic totes, organize all the stuff, and label the boxes. Go through it once a year and re-assess what you really want to keep. If after a year, you find you need to buy more totes, you're in trouble.

[Huma0]

@Sarah977

Thank you! That's all really sound advice. I don't have 55 mugs, thankfully, but I think I share your ex-boyfriend's habit of hoarding DIY tools and materials. That's what most of the things in those two small storage rooms was. I am always convinced that I am going to need that stuff! So, I'm trying at least to get it organised so I don't spend forever hunting around when I do actually need it.

I like your idea of getting rid of the same volume of things every time you come home with a bag of shopping. I know I would struggle with this, but it's a good principle, kind of like the 'one in, one out' method of keeping closets under control. I did actually take some books to the exchange the other day and, rather than swap each one for a new one, I left five there and only toook one in exchange. A small thing, but I felt rather proud of myself!

[Sarah977]

@Huma0   Actually, building materials are something I admit I do hang on to. I actually do eventually use them, even if I don't get around to that project for a year or 5. Consequently, my storeroom gets pretty full and messy. I haul everything out of it once a year and re-organize, go through paint to see what's dried up, etc.

As far as paint goes, I like to always keep some of every color I've used in the house for touch-ups. But instead of keeping a litre can which is only a quarter full, I transfer the leftover into a container which is the appropriate size for the remainder, label it as to room and paint color formula, so it takes up much less room. I like to use glass jars for this, so I can find at a glance what I'm looking for.

[Huma0]

@Sarah977

I had exactly the same idea and, while I did decant some of the paint into little jars, it also gave me an excuse to hoard a load of glass jars that I haven't gotten around to filling! You have reminded me about that little project. I will set it as a task for the weekend 🙂

[Kelly149]

@Huma0 I think the key to these kinds of spaces is that you must let the space dictate what is there rather than letting the stuff take the lead. So, if the shelf can artfully hold 5 towels then you may not own 6 towels. Also, the thing that the organizer shops don't tell you is that sometimes you could just throw out your old stuff and then buy new stuff if you needed it later for less money than what you'd spend on bins, buckets & shelves to store it all.

But! We house 7 people, 1 dog, 1 cat, 2 rabbits, 5 chickens and an ABB that holds up to 10, so being organinzed is essential in my world. This photo is for what we call the Shoe Room, it is the passageway from the garage to the house and it is by far the most coveted room in the house anytime we have guests over. Don't know if I should feel proud for the Shoe Room or bad for the rest of the house.....

[Jessica-and-Henry0]

Haha~ @Huma0 @Kelly149 @Sarah977

I'm a bit of a hoarder and I'm really NOT an organized person 🙂 I kinda drive Henry crazy with my messiness..... but at the same time I really don't like clutter. My solution was to shove everything into a drawer or behind a door where no one can see it 🙂 I am the type where on the outside I kinda look like I'm aiming to be minimalist, but you open a drawer or a cabinet and it's chock full of items just shoved in. 

Henry got so annoyed with the way I'd just push stuff somewhere and keep things out of sight, then would never be able to find anything that he he bought a bunch of baskets, pulled everything out, and MADE me organize just before our current guest arrived 🙂 

This is what my kitchen pantry looks like now. (I don't have a before pic~)

I've gotten a little better about organizing and de-cluttering since I started hosting.

Hopefully, I'll improve 🙂 but I'm sure I'll never be a neat-freak. 

I don't have any tips...... but I think it's important to find a balance of what you can manage on your own terms with the space you have available. 

For clothes, shoes, bags, accessories, I trust the golden rule that if you didn't wear/use them at least once for the past 5 years it's time to throw 'em out. 

[Huma0]

@Jessica-and-Henry0

That certainy does look organised! Storage like this is really useful, as long as you make sure you put things in the correct drawers. Actually, most of my kitchen cupboards are super organised. All of them except until you get to the end of the counter and then there's a couple where I just shove in the stuff that doesn't obviously belong elsewhere. Like you, I then have to take everything out of them to find anything.

Hosting has also made me more organised (in some areas). The guest rooms are spick and span with nothing superfluous lurking in drawers or cupboards. I made sure not to store personal things in them. Everything there is for guest use. It's so tempting though to fill those barely used wardrobes with all my stuff, but I have disciplined myself not to do it. I'm also pretty OCD about the bathrooms. My own bedroom, on the other hand, is total mayhem. It's not much better than it was back in my teenage years!

[Huma0]

@Kelly149

Funny that it's the most coveted room, but I can kind of see why. I want a shoe room now! Although really I should get rid of a lot of my shoes. I have an obscene amount of them.

Very good advice though on the space dictacting the stuff rather than the other way round. I had not really thought of it that way before.

[Jessica-and-Henry0]

@Kelly149

Most Asian homes are built to take shoes off at the entrance - so we usually have extensive storage space for shoes at the entrance of our homes. This is typical shoe storage in a Korean home......

 

Most of my work shoes aren't in my Seoul Apt - they are in the flat I stay at during the week for my current assignment so this looks very less cluttered - I probably have at least an additional 12 pairs of work shoes and 2 or 3 different work out sneakers at the other flat I stay in for work 🙂 Henry probably has a total 5~6 pairs of shoes/sneakers/flip-flops to cover for all occasions. I would assume I have at least 30+ pairs of shoes, boots, slip-ons, sneakers, loafers, flip-flops and what not. 

[Sarah977]

My own bedroom is minimalist as well- I usually just throw my clothes over a chair and they pile up over a few days until I get around the rehanging them, but otherwise, I love going into my bedroom at night after a hard day's work and feeling like I'm a hotel guest.

[Marit-Anne0]

LOL @Sarah977 HOTEL guest ? No way ! An airbnb PLUS guest 😉

[Sarah977]

@Marit-Anne0    I'd never qualify for Plus- place isn't generic enough- far too many funky artistic details (which my guests love), no consistent high speed internet around here, no TV (and don't want one), no hair dryer, no $20 bottles of gourmet shampoo and I actually interact like a friend with my guests 🙂

[Dawn162]

I must say that starting up Airbnb has forced me to do a serious spring cleaning.  We were redoing our bathroom so I had to remove everything out of that linen closet.  It wasn't bad however there were plenty of things I tossed.  Here is a photo of the after look.  When I look at the bathroom and closet it gives me.  happiness and a relax feeling as if I am in a spa.  Every draw in the vanity is empty.