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Now you’ll not only get our personal experiences you’ll also be receiving tips and tricks from a professional organizer, right here on our blog!
While I’ve been training to become a certified professional organizer, I’ve learned quite a few tricks that have been tremendously helpful in my day-to-day life, and now I’m sharing them with you. 🙂
One thing that has been stressed to me on numerous occasions during my training is to STOP hiding things. When you hide something it becomes forgotten, and often times we hide the things we don’t want people to see. We hide our laundry baskets in closets, our trash cans under the sink, and we toss our excess items into the garage. All in hopes that no one else will see these things but us. But the problem with this is once these items become out of sight, they do become out of mind. We end up forgetting about those boxes in the garage that we had every intention of breaking down and recycling. Our laundry winds up in piles on the floor because the laundry basket is now out of reach. And our recycling or trash items pile up on the counter until we’re ready to put them into the can. Instead – keep these items in sight at all times.
- Keep trash cans beside the counter. If you feel the need to hide what is in the trash can, buy one with a lid. But make sure it stays within sight, making it less of an effort to throw things away.
- Avoid tucking things away in the garage by tackling them immediately. If, for some reason, you’re unable to do so right away then keep the item in a visible location. You’ll get a move on when the threat of having guests see it lingers around.
- Don’t tuck your laundry basket into a closet or cabinet, keep it in a corner in your bedroom. Make it a game with your kids by having them ball up their clothes and try to score a basket.
- Another trick to try with laundry is just putting the clothing directly into the washing machine once you’re done wearing it.
- Don’t keep a junk drawer. A junk drawer just gives you an excuse to accumulate clutter in a hidden location, one that ends up rarely being cleaned.
When you first begin organizing many think that by buying a bunch of storage bins this will help them organize. Really, this ends up having the opposite effect. We buy the storage bins, declutter very little, and stuff the bins full. Instead, start with what you have…
- Declutter rooms such as closets and garages first. If you keep pushing them off, you’ll never get it done.
- Downsize BEFORE you buy any storage bins. If you buy the storage bins first, you’ll be tempted to keep as much stuff as you can fit in the bins, but by downsizing first you’ll only buy the bins you need.
- Use bins that are clear and see-through. This goes back to the hiding tips above. If you buy a bin that is see-through, you’ll always know what’s in the bin, rather than hide the items in a colored bin.
- Group like items together in the bins. This helps you in two ways: easier to find things, and let’s you know if you have too many duplicates of the same item. Too many duplicates means you probably have some room to downsize.
Lastly, don’t save the deep cleaning for spring. If you start by doing little things here and there, you’ll eliminate the need to spring clean all together. Keep an eye out for even more tips from my professional organizing training. 🙂
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