Chcken Coop

Heres my guess as to the top 5 reasons for piles around the home...

#5  lack of time to deal with it or bad routines

#4  you plan to use it in the immediate near future 

#3  youre afraid that out-of-sight means out-of-mind, so youve left it where you can see it

#2  one of the kids left it laying around when your back was turned and now it has sat there for a week!

#1  youre not sure what to do with it because it doesnt have a "home"(and other family members are suffering from the same dilemma)

If lack of time or poor maintenance routines are an issue, give yourself 10-15 minutes each day to tackle the piles and youll find theyre shrinking fairly fast. Do it for 30 days and youll have that habit in place. If you plan to use it in the future, there are ways to manage it that will keep the item at hand while still keeping them "in mind".  If its the kids, you have a parenting issue, not so much an organizing one, UNLESS... theyre like you and they dont really know where to put it.

Ive tried to make a home for each item in the house for a few years, but seems like I avoided a few items because they were tougher to find a good location to park them. summer, my goal was to find a home for EVERY LAST THING!!! Thats right... every item down to the last paper.

To do this, I found I had to go back and do a little purging... again. But, purging needs to happen on a regular basis anyway. I got my donation box all set up and items are headed to the thrift store. Next I had to do some creative problem solving for these tough to place items.

I found that if I narrowed down WHERE it should go, based on where I use the item, then I at least had a starting place. Next I usually took everything out of the space where I wanted to house it and just stared. Yep, you read that right... stare. And think. And imagine. Sometimes Id google some ideas on the Internet, but usually I thought about how I WANTED the space to look with the item in it. Then I worked backwards thinking how I could get it that way. Sometimes other items had to be relocated to make way for the new item.

One area in particular that was an issue for me was my jewelry. It has been in some trays in a drawer for years, yet I really did NOT like this solution. I wanted it in my closet where I actually dress, however, my shelves were full of books that had no real home. So I imagined how I wanted my closet to work and started to work. The books came out and went to the room where they should have been in the first place. Then after a deep clean, I moved the jewelry in place and started organizing. I had a bunch of old boxes with some sentimental pieces handed down to me, but they didnt look too good.


A large basket with a lid hid them all nicely and stayed in keeping with my "vision"...