How to Declutter with Home Storage Ideas
Home storage ideas are plentiful and it’s a good thing. Many of us are buckling under the weight of our possessions strewn about our homes. We need to declutter, but don’t know where to put it or how to go about it.
Now the Good news: It can be organized! One national organization reports that 80% of the clutter in your home is due to a lack of organization, not to a lack of space or deliberately hoarding clutter.
Home Storage Ideas Save Your Time and Sanity
Good home storage ideas allow you to save more than just space, though. You also save time.
For example, research conducted by IKEA tells us that each day people spend an average of 6 minutes just looking for their keys. Multiply that by other searches for papers, boxes, and other articles around the house and imagine the hours, even days, that could be rescued for doing more enjoyable things.
In fact, organized world.com discovered that Americans waste 9 million hours annually looking for things. If we want to save our own sanity and generate a sense of well being, implementing a few well chosen tips on decluttering will go a long way.
How Much Space is in This Room?
Pick a area to begin in and work through that space before moving into the next site or room. You may want to measure the space as well as the various surfaces in the room. This doesn’t have to be perfect, but it could help when you go to a container store. If there are cabinets, drawers, or closets, some experts suggest that you may want to measure the inside of those as well. Measuring your space is helpful because it outlines which home storage ideas fit best for you.
4 Questions from an Expert on Home Storage Ideas
Now you need to ask yourself some questions to help steer your efforts. These are important because how you utilize the room will determine which items stay and which will not.
Charlotte Steill, expert organizer, recommends you sit down with a notebook and make notes regarding these questions:
1. How does your family use this space? Is this a shared space that the entire family use? Or does someone’s privacy need to be respected? What are all of the activities that happen in this area?
2. What items need to be stored in this room to make it more usable? Books? Magazines? Toys? Games? Art supplies?
3. What already exists in this room that I can use to store items? Maybe you already have some shelving built into the room. Is there a closet? Does the ottoman have storage? Are there tables with drawers?
4. Do I need to move some furniture out, rearrange it or change it?
Sorting: Things to Keep, Donate, Sell, Store or Trash
Now begin sorting the contents of the room. The goal is to keep the items that belong in the room and to remove to another place those that don’t. Those things can be sorted later and taken to where they belong.
Doing it this way means 2 things: you don’t have to make every decision immediately and you can wind up with an ordered room really fast.
Place four boxes or baskets near you and sort items in the following manner: things to keep, things to donate, things to sell, things to store, and things to throw away [Use a trash bag].
Organizing expert Liz Witts offers some tips: “If you need to spend more than 15 seconds thinking about what something is, or when you last used it, or why you even have it, then you probably don’t need it.”
- Keep. While you are sorting, you need to place items in the keep pile or basket if you use them on a routine basis.
- Sell. In your sale pile, place things that you really can live without, but that are in good enough condition that someone would buy.
- Donate. In your donate pile, place items that you are finished with but someone else could use.
- Store. In your ‘things to store’ stack, place things that you need to hold onto or which have tremendous sentimental value, but that you do not need.
- Trash. In your trash bag or box, you want to place articles that cannot be used anymore.
- Home for the Routinely Lost. Now create a home for items you are always searching for. Your car keys, for example, need a home. A small basket on the entry table works great for our keys, my wife and I found, not to mention other regularly used items.
More Home Storage Ideas: Labels, Pictures and Zones
Labels and Pictures. Now head to a container store. Once you have the right size containers to help you declutter and organize, label them or put a picture on them so that the entire family knows what goes where.
That way when your child is trying to put up a toy or a book, they know where to place it. A little sign goes a long way toward keeping organized year after year.
Zones. While organizing your items, follow the hot, warm and cold zone approach.
- Hot. The most used items should go in the hot zones, which are the eye level spaces, countertops, fronts of drawers, etc.
- Warm. Things that you don’t use often—say once a week, or once a month—go into the warm zones. These are zones that are somewhat harder to reach—perhaps you have to bend or stretch, or open a door to get to them.
- Cold zones are for things you rarely use and they are the spaces that are hardest to reach.
Utilizing the better home storage ideas can make decluttering a whole lot easier and bring organization and order to your home. The experts also predict it will increase not only your space, but your available time and sense of well-being.
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