There are certain spaces that almost everyone struggles to keep organized, some are small and contained while others spill over and can add clutter to the whole house. I’m tackling 8 of the most common organizational challenges with practical solutions you can implement today. 

Junk Drawer aka The Catchall Drawer

The dreaded junk drawer, every house has one, every home needs space to put those things you need but have no other place in your home. I prefer the name catchall to junk because the items inside should be purposeful. 

The first thing to do is to empty the drawer and group similar items together. Throw out the actual junk, and put the things that belong in other places away. Measure the space and get containers to put each category into. Use double-sided tape to keep the containers in place. And the most important part is to maintain the space, don’t add items that don’t belong and throw out the actual garbage that ends up in the drawer regularly. 

Mail, magazines, and all of the little papers

This is the stuff that piles up on the kitchen counter, table, your home office, living room, and even the bedroom. The first step in organizing these things is to create a space for the things that need to be dealt with. I recommend an inbox near the door so the unopened items don’t end up taking up space on your counters. Then after you’ve opened or dealt with it, it can either be recycled or filed. Make space for magazines on the bookshelf, read them and let them go once the space is full. 

Kids Art

This is one that many parents struggle with, it’s not that you don’t care that they made each picture, it’s just that there is a LOT of it. So don’t let that guilt get you and put 90% of it in the recycling bin. Once you’ve curated the best pieces it’s time to find space for them, a few options are an art wall in the playroom, a binder of their work, a keepsake bin that has each year, and you can file away their favorite pieces and memories each year, or take a picture of each piece and create a photo book of their art. 

Craft Supplies

So Many Little Pieces! Whether you’re a crafter or it’s for your kids a craft space can be really tricky many of us don’t have an extra room to use so it becomes part of your home office, the living room, or a section of the playroom. In order to keep things accessible, organized, and manageable you first have to pick a dedicated space. Take time to think about where you’ll do the work, then add the necessary storage. If you have a closet add shelves and containers, if it’s builtins you just have to contain everything. Use bins, jars, drawer dividers, or organizers like this to keep things separate. If you have no space for storage consider an art cart. They are small, and by adding drawer organizers you can keep things contained and separated.

Under The Sink: bathrooms and kitchens

So much awkward unusable space! Here the key is to use the vertical space, which can be tricky around pipes. Take everything out and group it into categories. You can use under sink organizers or just basic shelf risers, Or stackable drawer bins to use the space as best as you can. Alternatively, you can use baskets to organize instead of going “up”. Command hooks are a great way to use the space as well by hanging your hair tools. 

Utility items

Things like lightbulbs, command hooks, picture frames, and extra pieces for the furniture seem to end up all over the house so it’s time to store them all together, This could be in the Laundry room, or a linen closet but the key is having them all together and contained in one place that everyone in the home knows where to find them. 

Makeup

I usually find this stored in drawers or bags, years’ worth of makeup that is rarely worn. The first step as always is to take everything out and get rid of the things that you no longer use. Step 2 is to ensure you can see all the products you have. Add a drawer organizer and sort by type of makeup, eyes, face, lips, etc. 

Photos

Whether it’s printed photos or your phone’s photo album they both need to be paired down and contained. To me, the only option for printed photos is albums. Boxes of photos sit unopened for years moving from house to house and person to person. The reason for physical photos is to look at them and enjoy so curate and get them in books/ on the wall. 

For your digital photos- If you’re like I was, with thousands of photos stored in various places, here’s how to get things under control:

• Store and backup photos: Like documents, backup photos on a physical device or with a cloud storage system. Consider an external hard drive if you have a large photo library.

• Organize a folder system: Organize photos under a Photos folder. One approach to sub-folders is to organize by year and then by the event or place. (I do a hybrid of this approach, using specific photos for trips and filing most other photos under the year I took them.)

• File or delete photos: Depending on how many photos you have, you may want to break the task of organizing and deleting them. Listen to a good podcast while you categorize your digital photo archive.

• Move photos off your smartphone: To free up space and keep your photos in one place, try to move them off of your smartphone and onto your computer, either through syncing to a cloud service like iCloud Photos or Google Photos, or connecting your phone to your computer.

Did I miss any spaces that you’re struggling with? Tell me in the comments or book a complimentary consultation so I can solve them for you.

Happy Organizing

Jocelyn