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17 Savvy Tips to Organize Your Life

by on Mar 28, 2012


This Curbly guest post was written by Tiffany McLean of Living Saavy

I love it when my life and house are organized.  This month on Living Savvy, I dedicated all of March to organizing my life and space.  I attacked anything behind a close door!  I also asked a few other organized bloggers to share their own organizing secrets.  So, here are seventeen tips from the best of the blogosphere to get your life and home in order.  1. Carmel from Our 5th House: It’s simple really – “make it pretty.”  I swear I’ve learned over the years that if you take the time to make a closet, a drawer, or whatever look pretty you’ll do a much better job keeping it organized.  It only takes a little more time, but it’s so worthwhile.

2. Jean from Flower Hill Design Company: I keep a large plastic storage bin at the bottom of my son’s closet.  Whenever my son outgrows a piece of clothing (which is often) and it’s still in good condition, it immediately gets placed in the storage bin.  Clothing that is not in good condition gets tossed.  Once the bin is full, it’s labeled with the clothing size, the lid is placed on and it gets moved to storage.

3. Brandi from Don’t Disturb This Groove: To keep my son organized for the school week. After washing and drying his clothes I separate each outfit and place it in the hanging organizer by the day of the week.  This system makes getting ready for school each morning so much simpler.

4. Carly from A Simple Affair: Organize based on type of clothing: sleeveless tops, short sleeve blouses, long sleeve blouses, basic tops, cardigans, chunky knits, etc.  Once you have organized by types of pieces, then you can organize by color.  Two good things come from this: you can find a very specific piece easily and you can see what you have too much of or too little of in your closet.  For example, after organizing this way, I learned that my idea of adding color to my wardrobe is only buying blue and pink,  I have WAY too many grey and neutral chunky knit sweaters and that all of my tank tops are prints.

5. I like to keep thinks on hooks so they are easy to find and displayed

created at: 03/27/2012

6. Linda from My Crafty Home LIfe: The best thing that I purchased are these thread holders. They keep me from buying colors I already own.  And I labeled everything!

7.  I converted an antique armoire to hold all of my crafts and sewing items.  I used a lazy suzan for all of my adhesives, a wire rack so all of my fabric is visible, and installed to keep things like scissors handy when I need them.

8. Shauna from Satori Design for Living: I’ve learned a number of great organizing tips over the years, but the best advice I have for anyone is to create a designated place for everything and label, label, label. In my home, the areas where I’ve taken the time to create a proper organizing system seem to require the least amount of effort to keep neat and tidy.

9. Colleen from LemonDrop Dreams: I seperated everything into categories…shampoo/conditioner, toothpaste/toothbrushes, first aid, kids medicine, adult medicine, etc. 
I purchased the bins at Walmart for around $2.00 each and put the label maker to good use.

10. My pantry is full of glass containers!  I like to keep as much food as possible on display.  This makes making a grocery list so much quicker!

created at: 03/27/2012

11. Kelly from Refresheddesigns: I found this great vintage wire shelf at a flea market and hung it on my bedroom wall to neatly display necklaces and hold bracelets. The I picked up the 3-tiered tray from IKEA to hold earrings and rings. Finally, a ceramic egg crate from the supermarket holds more earrings. All of this makes a nice little display in the corner of my room, and all my jewelry is easy to see and find in the mornings. 

12. Kim from Kim Keller-Creative: My favorite way to store my earrings is by hanging them on the inside (or outside) of a bowl, glass or whatever else looks pretty at the moment.  

13. Andrea from Oak Ridge Revival: I recently gave my walk-in closet a complete overhaul.  My favorite part of the project was making a jewelry organizer out of an old window.  I had been hoarding this old window for way too long. I simply attached a piece of metal mesh that came off an old fireplace screen to the back of the window.  I added some cup hooks and some “S” hooks and hung everything up.  I wear more of my jewelry now that it is all in plain sight.  Bracelets hung from “S” hooks.  Earrings hung from “S” hooks.  Necklaces hung from cup hooks.  No more tangled mess of jewelry!

 created at: 03/27/201214. Vicky from Decor & Harmony @ 4290: Like many of you I’m a collector of recipes, I find myself  printing, copying and tearing recipes from magazine and before you know it all you have is a unorganized mess. A few years ago I decided to get a handle on the situation. I bought two binders and sheet protectors this system has really helped me keep my go to recipes neat.

15. Cate from They Call Me domestiCate: A few years ago I consolidated all of our appliance and product manuals in one location.  I used this cute little hanging file basket (I think I got it from Pier One eons ago).  I created a hanging folder for several general categories…Large Appliances,
Small Kitchen Appliances, Baby Toys and Products, Computer and Printer, Outdoor Tools, Textiles, and Misc.  Often comforters, tablecloths, scarves, and other linens have big labels,
so when I carefully cut them off, I tape the label to a piece of paper and jot down what it belongs to.  Now, when we need to reference a manual to change a setting, or to disassemble for cleaning, or whatever, we know just where to find it. Simply tape your receipts to their manual, and if you need to return something, you’re all set.  And if we sell or donate something, it’s super easy to find the manual to send along with it.  Of course, you could certainly
apply this theory to a few folders within a larger file cabinet, or to
whatever filing system you already use.  Try it out!

16. Kim from Kim Macumber Interiors: While this is not really a “pretty “ organizational tip … it has made my life so much easier. I have to also tell you that we have four children … and I finally learned this trick recently, so I couldn’t use it to it’s fullest potential … but maybe you can!
I tried all the bulletin boards, wipe boards, file folders, etc. to keep my childrens’ activities organized. I always found myself searching for the right football, soccer, baseball, tennis, you name it … team roster and schedule for each child. No matter where I put them, I could never find what I needed.  Now I have a binder with a tab for each child … it is always hanging around in the kitchen. Whenever they come home with a new piece of paper from school with a project description or a sports team and schedule, it goes straight into the notebook. And guess what … they don’t have to ask anymore, they know right where to look!

17.  Suzy from Saved by Suzy: Most of the paper is my kids’ artwork and other things they bring home from school.  In the past, I was at a loss about what to do with all of that cute clutter.  Do I throw it away?  Do I save it?  If so, where?  My solution is to take photos of the artwork and then make a digital scrapbook of the pictures through a site like Snapfish or Shutterfly.  I do keep a few extra-special pieces in a file in our filing cabinet.  The rest goes into the trash when the kids aren’t looking.  The scrapbooks are great.  We have a memory of their projects in a neat little book that they love to look through.  It’s so much better than the piles of creased and wrinkled paper that were taking over my countertops!

Check out all the tips for an organized life: HERE

 

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1 Comments

  1. Hi Tiffiany,

    Great article, I love inspiration like this. I should really show this to my kid’s, maybe it will be more clean around the house!

    You have some great pictures of different ways to store things and stay organized, I find this really useful for my home and will defniatly motivate me to be more organized. Thanks for the tip’s though will defniatly come in handy, look forward to more articles from you. 🙂

    Thanks,

    Ed.