If you’re feeling overwhelmed at the thought of organizing your home, you are not alone! According to the National Association of Professional Organizers, 80 percent of the stuff that we keep in our homes goes unused. Some of us stack it, some of us stash it in boxes, and some of us squeeze all of the clutter into one room like the garage.
No matter how you choose to keep your clutter, the challenge of organizing your home can be overwhelming if you don’t know how to approach the process. Did you know that there are professional organizers that make a living teaching the rest of us how to keep our homes in working order? It’s true! There’s even a popular book called The Fifth Discipline that explains the science behind organization, written by an MIT professor. He founded MIT’s school of organizational science! Luckily there are a few tips that we all can follow that will help make our lives more organized.
Local Orange County Organizers
The Organizers Network of Orange County
Organizing Before Selling Your Home
The number one action you can take to help maximize the appeal of your home to potential buyers is to de-clutter. What you may see as a “cozy” family room full of children’s toys and packed with creative storage options, may be making your house look smaller to potential buyers.
The best way to make your home look as large and appealing as possible is to move the clutter to a separate storage unit before showings begin. This way half of the packing work is already done before the stress of moving sets in.
De-cluttering doesn’t mean you have to empty the house completely. Remember, homes sell more easily if a buyer can visualize how they might use the space. Instead of stripping your belongings down to the bare bones, try to keep items that add to the appeal of the space in place.
Organizing Before Moving
It may be tempting to dump your junk drawer into a box and vow to organize it after you’ve settled into your new home, but it is well worth the extra work to purge unwanted items before the move. Don’t move garbage! Unpacking in your new place will be far more enjoyable if you purge your unused items beforehand.
This rule of thumb doesn’t just go for the junk drawer either. Make sure you take the time to go room by room and eliminate items that no longer serve a purpose in your home. Set the proper time aside, and dig in!
Here are a few more tips to make sure you have an organized moving experience:
Bowl Full of Lemons: How to Organize Your Move
Organizing Daily Use Spaces
Life can be hectic, so who couldn’t use a little more organization in our daily lives to help make our jobs easier? High-traffic rooms like the kitchen and bathroom are often overlooked when de-cluttering, but these spaces generally harbor some of worst stashes of unused items. When was the last time you really went through the items in these rooms and got rid of what you don’t use? How long has that box full of medication been in your medicine cabinet?
Here are a few ideas to get your kitchen and bathrooms organized!
