Spring is here and summer is just around the corner here in the Carolinas; goodness, didn’t we just celebrate the new year?! It’s such a beautiful time of year to enjoy a new home from True Homes. From Greensboro, Winston-Salem and Raleigh to Charlotte and Charleston, it’s the wonderful time to plan get-togethers with friends and family.
Before that happens, you might want to tame some clutter around the house. Fortunately, de-cluttering can be a super-simple home improvement project! Need some ideas? How about 20? Check out these easy ways we’ve assembled to get — and keep — your True Homes dream house organized!
- Take control of your entry way. Now, when we say entry way, what we really mean is whatever way you come into the house. Designate a place where the mail, your keys, and your purse or satchel always go — a basket, tray or box for the mail; a dish or a hook for the keys.
- Keep clothes off the floor. Keeping a hamper in the bathroom or each bedroom—wherever family members step o
ut of their clothes—should inspire them to put laundry where it belongs. For kids, think about ways to make picking up their clothes a game, like shooting baskets or feeding a hungry monster!
- Make your bed every day — and take advantage of the space under your beds for storage. There’s just something about making your bed that gets the day off to a good start. Use bed risers to add a few extra inches of space beneath your bed – it should be enough to accommodate luggage, which takes up so much space in a closet. Or try this DIY version to make bed risers that look like furniture legs!
Get more use out of your under-bed storage with sliding or rolling trays like these. They’re great for sheets and blankets, pillows and other bulky items. Do you have an old dresser that you’re ready to pitch out? Check out this idea to reuse the drawers.
- Make flat surfaces too pretty to clutter. Does your coffee table or dining room table seem to be a dumping ground for the day’s mail, magazines, half-empty coffee cups, or discarded jackets? A bit of a beauty with a personal connection, such as a tray handed down from your grandmother, a memento from a favorite trip, or a book signed by your favorite author, may be all it takes to keep it tidy.
- Create a household information center. Julie Morgenstern, author of Organizing From the Inside Out, says that a two-drawer filing cabinet is pretty much perfect to handle the amount of paper it takes to run a home. Make a quick sweep of all flat surfaces by piling papers in a bin, then sorting and purging as necessary.
- Use empty tissue boxes to corral plastic grocery bags. This is great way to recycle the tissue boxes and keep the plastic bags from taking over a cabinet.
- Claim the space above doors. The space above the door to your laundry room, pantry, butler’s pantry, or guest
bathroom may be just the place to store some bulkier items.
- Add shelves to cabinets on either side of the kitchen sink to free up counter space. Use spice racks and hooks to take advantage of this space. What a great place to keep your dish soap and towels handy!
- Go vertical with sports gear.Hang bikes, skateboards and other athletic equipment on a wall or from the ceiling in the garage. That ceiling space is also a great place to put seasonal items, such as holiday decorations.
- Take command of your tools.A pegboard and an assortment of hooks can help keep your tools easy to find. You can use an old pallet to store garden tools, the odd piece of lumber, PVC pipe, anything you’d rather have standing up than lying on the floor or leaned in a corner.
Tame the hair care products. Are your bathroom cabinets stuffed full of curlers, blow dryers, curling irons, combs, sprays and gels? Cabinet door hangers and pull-out shelves keep everything neat and accessible. Here are some other options.
- Get a tiered shoe rack for your closet. Organizing expert Morgenstern says she would take a shoe rack over a hanging shoe bag any day. It saves on valuable hanging space, keeps them accessible and cuts down on the risk of them dirtying or staining your clothes.
- Tidy up the toys. For most families, all you really want is for the toys to be off the floor where you can step on or trip over them. Fortunately, there are about as many
great storage ideas for toys as there are toys themselves. Check out these 44 toy storage ideas. There’s bound to be one that will work for your space!
- Hide your ironing board. Like most things that aren’t needed on a daily basis, ironing boards have a way of getting in the way. With just a couple of hooks, you can hang your ironing board out of sight until it’s on your mind.
- Make the most of your bench with cubbies. A bench with cubbies right is one of the great features of many True Homes floorplans, like the Jasper II. This is the perfect place to organize backpacks, gym bags and sports equipment, hang jackets, and take off shoes before dirt or mud gets tracked through the house.
- Master the junk drawer. Post-It Pockets, where have you been all our lives? This is a great way to take control of everything from take-out menus and stamps to concert tickets and permission slips.
- Bake up some storage. A muffin tin is a great way to separate and collect all those little things, such as push pins and chip clips, that have a way of cluttering up a drawer.
- The sweet sound of organization. Those of us over a certain age will remember buying compact discs. We don’t play them anymore, but we probably still have CD holders. They make great organizers for plastic lids. Ditto for file folder organizers and pot lids.
- Put a ring on it – or put it on a ring. Who would have thought that shower curtain rings would be such a great way to consolidate scarves, belts, ties, or other accessories? Well, someone did, obviously!