If you’ve set a New Year’s resolution to get organized, DAK Self Storage is here to help. Here are our best tips for clearing clutter and getting organized in 2015:
Set Organizational Goals
One way to approach the decluttering process is to make a list of project goals and take it one room at a time. Prioritize the areas that cause you the most frustration.
An Example Goal List
- Kitchen: Declutter and organize the junk drawer
- Bedroom: Reorganize closet
- Living Room: Keep it looking neat everyday
Seeing the most important tasks on paper will help you get them done. Cross off each one as you finish for a sense of accomplishment.
Clear the Clutter
Taking care of clutter is an important step to getting organized. It’s helpful to remove outdated, unused, and excess items from your home to make way for an new year.
Sort through your items and decide if you should place them in storage or find a good location to keep them in the house. You may also want to designate items to donate, sell, or recycle.
A good rule of thumb is to get rid of anything that has not been used during the past year. Keep everything that is used frequently or that you may need immediate access to. Place in self storage anything used only a couple times a year, anything that is not currently used but will be in the future, and sentimental items that you don’t have space for.
Remove excess items from your home quickly so you can see your progress. If you don’t have a self storage unit, the new year is a great time to rent one. It can help you start you 2015 off decluttered and organized.
Give Everything a Space
As you declutter, take a mental inventory of what you have so you can figure out if you’ll need any organizational tools. Shelves, containers, drawers, hooks, bins, boxes, and baskets can all come in handy to hold things around the house. These do not need to be expensive; You can repurpose containers and boxes or even shop at a local dollar store for items. While it’d be a great help to get an ultimate organization shelving unit for the bedroom closet, these may not fit in the budget, or even be necessary.
Create an accessible spot for shoes, keys, and other things so they don’t end up scattered all over the house. This will keep the place looking neater, less clutter, and prevent things from being lost. Once you get in the habit of placing everything in a certain spot, you’ll stay organized and find things more easily.
Prevent Paper Piles
Paper is the common household clutter. We can easily add dozens of papers to our home daily with mail, newspapers, magazines, and school or work projects. You can quickly make any space look more visually appealing by simply removing paper from the counters.
Make a goal for 2015 to keep paper around as little as possible. When you check the mail, immediately recycle the pieces you don’t need, and file the rest. Keep a few folders for important documents you will need in the future. Try and keep paper from lingering around the counter space because it can create clutter and easily become misplaced.
Involve the Family
Keep up after your clutter and you will be off to a neat and organized year. Ask your family to pitch in and make sure they know where everything now belongs. If everyone takes a few minutes to straighten up each night it will lessen the load on one person. Have everyone pick up any random items that were left in the wrong place and return them to where they belong. Do this each night to effortlessly keep the place decluttered. If you put it off for even a few days, the clutter can pile up and may take hours to clear again.