I love reading articles or Facebook posts about organizing. The Minimal Mom is one of the Facebook pages I enjoy reading tips from. I think the best advice I have read is declutter, downsize, and use what you already have. Don’t go out and buy any totes or organizers before you try using what you already have, to organize first.
When we moved into our house in 2005, we had a big change from our first house and upsized. We had a little coat closet and no room for shoes in our old house. When we moved to our new house, we had a mud room, and I felt like sky was the limit for organizing. I didn’t want a closet in the mud room. I wanted a cubby system. We started out with some shelves, and I could already tell after a short amount of time it wasn’t going to work for us. I found two pressed wood shoe cubby holders at Menards. I had my husband mount them a few inches off the floor, so shoe trays could go below them, and then he made four cubbies. One for each of us and then the last one for the dirty shop coats. Each cubby has 3 hooks. There are two shelves above the cubbies and each one of us has our own baskets for hats, gloves and off-season items. The new system still works out awesome! We have a coat closet on the other side of the cubbies for off season coats. I bought an old set of skis that I had Mike put hooks on, which works perfect for snow pants.
I love hooks, but I think my favorite organizing item is over the door hooks. You can just toss them over the door without having to screw anything into the wall or door. When I get lazy and don’t want to fold or hang something, I just toss it over the hook and take care of it later! But I never toss a wet towel to dry on the door hook, because it could wreck the door!
I also like clear containers because you can see what you got. For our silverwear drawer organizer, we have a metal holder where all the crumbs fall through to the drawer. Just lift the organizer out, and cleaning the drawer is easy. I also have six laundry baskets, not just for laundry. When I am sorting clothes or tossing papers, taking down Christmas decorations to put back in their totes, they come in handy to contain whatever, but they all are the same so they stack and do not take up much room.
Stay tuned for next month’s topic: Too many t-shirts!
There’s so much to do, so little time. Bye for now!
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