January 15, 2015

Organization House Tour

I hope everyone is having a great Thursday, only one more day until the weekend (Woot Woot!) Today I'm going to be sharing an organization house tour of our home. I had a couple Instagram followers ask me about ways that I organize and tips that I might have regarding this topic, so I thought this would be a great way to share those with everyone!  By no means would I consider myself a great organizer, but I definitely have come a long way. I used to be that person who would misplace stuff constantly, and  would end up in a tizzy while digging frantically trying to find stuff. It drove both me and others who had to experience my frantic outbursts nuts, and eventually I forced myself to change and become more organized. 

The thing that has helped me most in being organized is having a place for everything. Like the phrase goes, " a place for everything and everything in it's place" meaning, everything should have a place to be stored and it should be returned there when not in use.  By having a specific place for everything, you will never doubt where you put something.

In the kitchen, I would of used to just thrown the pyrex lids in a random drawer and would have had to dig through it to find the right size.  Now, by putting the lids from largest to smallest and inside the colander helps not only conserve space, but makes it easier to locate the appropriate size lids.

I also like using the lazy suzanne to keep all of my smaller sized pyrex. 


We just got this buffet for Christmas, and it has been so nice to finally have a place to store our China sets that we received for our wedding. Buffet's and china cabinets make for great kitchen storage for those dinnerware items that you don't know where to store. 


On the left side I have stored my cookbooks, chargers, silverware holder,  and a white porcelain bowl that didn't fit that well in any other kitchen cabinet. 

 On the right side, I have my china dinner plates and china salad plates stacked. I kept the filler that came in the box to separate each plate so that they wouldn't get damaged. 

 Having a little recipe box is a great way of keeping all of your recipes together. 

 The one that I have has different food category tabs in order to help organize all of your recipes. 

I'm someone that sometimes has to be incentivized to keep things tidy and organized. The way that I do that is by using pretty things, like in this case cute recipe cards. Also, banana bread is a great recipe to have close by for those times that the bananas get really ripe before you or your family eats them. 

I like having all one color dinnerware because it instantly makes things more organized looking. I chose white because if I had to I could intermingle pieces from my china set with my everyday Correlle dinnerware.  

Here is a cabinet that I have dedicated solely to stemware and glassware. I group like glasses together so that I never have to dig through the cupboards to find that missing glass. It also looks pretty too this way!

The pans in the kitchen also have their distinct place. I like to personally stack them from shortest to tallest, but you could put them however. In my opinion, there is nothing worse than clanking around pans and playing Tetris with them until they fit. That said,  I think the important thing with pans is finding a configuration that fits in the cabinet and works for you and keeping with it.

Clear airtight containers like these Oxo and Crate and Barrel ones are great for organizing things in the kitchen. I personally use them for flour, sugar, powder sugar, brown sugar, pasta noodles, bread crumbs, oatmeal, and quinoa. 

Using a bread basket to store your weekly fruit not only looks great, but also keeps you from having to find an extra space to store your bread basket. 

I like using baskets, binders, and magazine holders on my bookshelf in my home office to store things. 

This is my home binder that I made to help organize all of that paperwork that you never know where to put.  The binder is from target and then I bought some plastic page sleeves to store the paperwork in. 

 In the first part of the binder I store the manuals of the appliances and electronics that we've purchased. For instance, here is the manual to our washer. 

In the next section, I store all of my coupons. At the end of each month I go back through them and get rid of all of the coupons that have expired, but I always hold onto the Bed Bath & Beyond ones since they don't expire. 

In the next section, I keep my receipts. I do this to not only keep track of my monthly budgeting, but I also keep them in a central place in case I want to return something, which is often because I'm indecisive like that! I have two more sections in the binder as well, but I didn't post pictures of them for security purposes. Those include medical documents and the checks that I've deposited via my phone. 

I use one of the magazine holders on my bookshelf to help store all of the design ideas I pull from magazines. If I think I will forget what I liked about the photo, I will sometimes write a note on the page before I store it away. 

 

 In our master bathroom, I organize my makeup using the Muji acrylic cases and my brushes with a glass vase from Michaels and plastic filler beads. By being able to see everything, it's much easier to find things. 

The same thing goes with my jewelry, by having everything displayed and visible it's much easier to locate things. Also by hanging your necklaces on a holder, it helps keep them from getting tangled.  


I found this small plate from HomeGoods and love to use it to place some of my earrings. 

I organize my closet by color and the type of clothing it is. For instance, here are some of my blouses. 

Even though I color coordinate my closet, I still find it hard sometimes to keep items in a specific place especially when the clothes are jammed tightly together and it's hard to find where you pulled the shirt from.  To fix that problem, I leave  the hanger pointed up when I take a shirt off the hanger so I know where it belongs when I go to hang it back up.  

Before getting this scarf hanger, I use to struggle to keep my scarfs organized. I would end up storing them in my purses, and then I would have to dig through each of them to find the right scarf. These hangers would also be great for ties or belts. 

Lastly, I like to start off everyday by making my bed. It not only starts the day off on the right foot and makes the room look cleaner, but it also helps, in my opinion, with adopting better everyday habits regarding keeping things tidy and organized. Staying organized is something that takes time and effort, and should be worked on regularly. That said, I usually like to spend Sunday's reorganizing things or cleaning them. That way the work week begins on a clean slate. 

Other tips to maintain being organized: 
1. Organize regularly so that you aren't constantly feeling like you're catching up, and rather things are maintained. 
2. Organize small areas each day so that you aren't feeling overwhelmed. 
3. Feel free to downsize and get rid of items. The less things you have, the easier it is to stay organized. 
4.  Although it takes time to organize, in the end you are going to save time when you know exactly where something is and you don't have to spend time searching for it. 

We've only lived in our house for 4 months and are still getting some things situated and in their permanent place, but I hope you enjoyed the home tour of how we've organized so far! I'd love to hear in the comments section below tips you might have about organizing!

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