Our home is a reflection of Shawn & myself. Not only do we enjoy creating beautiful spaces together, but we also want it to feel cozy, organized, and clean. When my home feels cluttered I feel it in other parts of my life too. (Anyone else with me on this one?!) Being 100% honest with you guys, other than church activities (youth group, children’s ministry, women’s + men’s group, Sunday services) the rest of our time is spent at home. We both work from home so one of my must-dos is finding ways to stay organized that work for us!
One thing I found that is key for me to stay organized is that everything has a place! By giving everything a place I always know where things go and can avoid clutter. Anytime I take something out of its place to be used or buy something new I try my best to put it away right away. I’m not perfect, but this is the goal! Putting something away right away saves me time because I’m not going back later after placing it in an area where it doesn’t belong. I use this method with all areas of the home and it has worked SO well to help me stay organized!
My BEST tip is to find unique baskets/containers for things that need to be easily accessed. We’ve gone as far as using decorative honey pots for our dog bones and toys LOL. 😂 I love finding vintage and antique baskets and containers to use as storage. I can easily incorporate them into my decor and prevent having small piles of stuff sitting around our home. Keep in mind, this is what works for us … if you want to do this too, try to think about what would work best for you!
Items I Store in Baskets/Containers
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Basket for Shawn’s belts
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Baskets for fruit in the kitchen
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Boxes for shoe storage
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Organizer for pans
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Baskets for dog toys and leashes
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Vintage crocks for miscellaneous items
One of my biggest accomplishments…we don’t have a junk drawer!! We have an industrial cabinet in the basement that literally has a drawer for everything. It’s so useful!! If I have mail and paper that needs to be kept, I file it OR have a decorative box for it. We have file folders for taxes/house info/my work/church/personal and store them in our storage room, just to give some ideas. Then for more sentimental items, we have a memory bin. Every day when we get the mail we go through it as we’re walking into the house from the mailbox. It prevents the pile of unopened mail and we immediately know whether it needs to be saved or not.
I have a storage area in our home and this past year I switched all of my solid storage bins to clear storage bins. It makes it super easy for me to see what’s inside and find what I’m looking for at any time. This year I added labels to all of my bins and organized them by season and type. I also put the bins I won’t until the end of the year toward the back and the bins I’ll need earlier in the year upfront! I shared how I organize & store my Christmas decor over on the blog here.
You might not know this but we only have ONE closet in our home! 😱 Without closet space, it can feel like we are limited in storage. So I like to create decorative spaces that are super functional! To store Shawn’s shoes, we created a boot shelf and made his dunks look more ‘decorative’ by storing them in these cool bins. To store my workroom supplies we installed wall-to-wall shelves. Not only are these super functional for storage, but they are also beautiful to look at! That’s a win-win in my book. 😆
If you are interested in more organizing content, I shared more about how I organized my holiday decor here & how I organized my fridge here! Anywhere else in my home you’d like to see a more in-depth process of how I stay organized? Let me know in the comments!