We have recently starting getting our place better organized. I mean we’ve lived here for 3 years and in the time, it really hasn’t felt like a home ya know. Well with the new additions to our place like a platform bed for us and twin beds for the monsters, it’s really helped us get into the mood to reorganize! Here are a couple of things I suggest for reorganizing and staying organized!
1. Go through clothes frequently- We had to do this one last night. We have so many clothes it isn’t even funny. Right now I’m looking at 2 hampers, two bag and three baskets of laundry. The stuff we usually wear gets washed often but the other stuff, has probably been sitting like I just described for a month. Tonight I’m going to wash it all but before I could, we needed to make sure we weren’t just washing stuff that didn’t fit either us or the kids anymore. We ended up taking out a whole hamper and basket of clothes. It’s crazy how easy it accumulates.
2. Lots of little toys: Keep them together- Landon is a train lover. I can’t even tell you how many train pieces we have. Between all the trains themselves, tracks and little extras like signs, it’s well over 150 pieces. Sometimes Landon just wants to play with his trains so he would dump ALL the toys from the big bin just for his train stuff. The other things would sit on the floor and it would be such a hassle to make him clean it all up again. A great way to help with this is to get bins for specific types of toys. If you get the flat ones, you make be able to save space with them under the bed even!
3. Sometimes it just takes some moving- Sometimes houses look more cluttered and unorganized than they are. It might not be that they have a bunch of stuff so much as it’s the way the furniture is set up. The way we had our couches before was in an ‘L’ shape. Buy the couches, it looked cramped and then the other half of the room looked really big. It was also slightly annoying because there was a 2 by 2 foot corner that got really messy from the kids often. Little stuff and paper would some how accumulate in it. Since it wasn’t somewhere Chris or I really sat in, we wouldn’t realize how dirty it was until the kids started falling all over themselves in it. Now we have our couch in a straight line and and the room feels and looks less cluttered and we can see what the kids are doing at all times.
4. Label- If you can get a label maker, I would recommend it. I’ve tried tape and permanent marker, but it doesn’t seem to work as well. While the kids can’t read yet, it’s great for letter learning as well as reminding a busy mom where everything goes without having to check everything else first. Also it can be a good reminder for the husband. I’m not always around and sometimes when Chris is cleaning, he’ll rearrange stuff. Then we both have something different going on. It can be a real pain to sort back out afterward when you’ve already done it.
5. Furniture with storage- For the longest time, our TV was mounted. I loved it. I really did but with the shelf under it, holding the xbox and modem for the internet, there wasn’t much room for DVD’s, games, or the controllers. I can’t tell you how often we lost the remote in the couch or the kids put it somewhere and it got lost in a blanket. We recently took the tv down and got a stand. It’s got a spot for the xbox, modem, games & dvd’s, plus other selves. It’s really been nice. Before the movies would sit in the kitchen and clutter that portion of the house. Also the wires from the mounted tv hung down and made it look unpleasant so it was really for the best! But beware because sometimes you’ll start using the storage as a catch all.
I recommend getting TV wall straps for your flat screen. I know before I knew about them, I was always worried that kids running by the tv hard enough would make it tumble on them!
