My Favorite Home Organization Hacks
A comment I get a lot, especially when I share videos about home organization, is that I'm very organized. I was diagnosed with ADHD when I was 16 so since then I have learned a lot of different things that I can do that help manage my ADHD. One of those things is staying organized. Organization is not a skill that I come by naturally. In fact, as a kid, I very distinctly remember cleaning up my room one day and a friend that I grew up with came over and said "wow, I didn't even know you had a floor in your room!" It is something that I work towards every single day. I'm constantly reorganizing things in order to stay on top of it. So today I want to share with you some of my home organization tips to help you stay more organized in case you're neurodivergent or you have trouble staying organized as well.
My Favorite Home Organization Hacks | Tip 1: One Space at a Time
The first tip is when you're organizing your home, take it one space at a time, not a room at a time, but a space. So, if you're working in your bedroom, do your nightstand. One day, just do your nightstand. The next day, do your bathroom. The next day, do your closet. Don't do your entire room and ensuite in one day, you'll never get it all done.
For someone who's neurodivergent, biting off a huge chunk of space is super intimidating at one time. You're also much less likely to get overwhelmed and burnt out because you're just doing the one space and you can deal with the stuff in the one space and then the next day or when you're ready, you can do another space in that room.
My Favorite Home Organization Hacks | Tip 2: Get Containers to Utilize Space
My next tip is to get containers to utilize and maximize the space that you have. I know it's really easy to get hung up on having matching containers so that everything looks perfect. When I organized my nightstand drawers, I did not use all matching drawer organizers. Some of them were clear, some of them were black, some of them were kind of opaque. They didn't all match, but they all used up as much space as possible in that drawer and I was able to utilize all of the space.
If you're really hung up on stuff matching, I recommend the clear bins from The Home Edit. Their bins are different sizes than the clear bins at Target so you can mix and match those together. My closet is another example of utilizing containers. The very top shelf of my closet, actually the top two shelves, are clear bins that have stuff in them. So instead of just shoving stuff onto those shelves, I actually put things in bins thereby utilizing the space as much as possible and not letting stuff get cluttered.
My Favorite Home Organization Hacks | Tip 3: Utility Over Aesthetic
This is going to be hard for some people to understand, but I believe that utility is more important than aesthetic when it comes to organizing your home. If you have a hard time staying organized or becoming organized, do not focus on how everything looks.
Find a system that works for you or your family, it doesn't have to be pretty to work. That kind of goes back to my argument about the containers. I promise you will feel better having a home that is organized than having everything be aesthetically pleasing, but its a disaster. So those first three tips are really about getting started. These next tips are actually about the physical organizing.
My Favorite Home Organization Hacks | Tip 4: Declutter Regularly
My fourth tip is if you haven't used it in the last year, get rid of it. If getting rid of it means donating it, trashing it, selling it, or giving it to a friend, it doesn't matter, just do not keep it in your home. The only exceptions to this are a) if you are keeping it like an emergency kit or b) I have a bin that I keep stuffed animals in that my daughter doesn't play with and hasn't played with for a while. I put those in a bin and they go in our storage closet. I wait a year and if she hasn't asked for them, then I donate them. So that's an that's an exception, since we keep them for longer.
My Favorite Home Organization Hacks | Tip 5: Find a Useful Place if You're Not Ready to Get Rid of Something
If you come across something that you haven't used in over a year, but you still aren't ready to get rid of it, try testing out to see if you'll actually use it. Put it in a new place, somewhere you can see it and have easy access to it. That way after a year, if you still haven't used it, you have full justification to get rid of it, or you have used it and you don't need to get rid of it.
I did this when I was reorganizing the cabinet under the sink in my bathroom. I have a lot of beauty products that I really want to use, but I keep forgetting they're there because again, I have ADHD and struggle with object permanence. Instead of getting rid of some masks and hair products, I am moving them into a different drawer in my bathroom so I can see them every day when I open the bathroom drawer. That way I will either use them more or I won't use them at all but "not remembering them" won't be a justification.
My Favorite Home Organization Hacks | Tip 6: Keep Bags for Trash and Donations When Organizing
This tip is pretty simple, but I like to keep separate bags for trash and donations while I'm organizing. That way I don't have to get up and get distracted to throw something away or put it in a donation pile. The bags are already with me and I can continue in the flow of what I'm doing without getting sidetracked.
My Favorite Home Organization Hacks | Tip 7: Think About Usefulness in a Space
When thinking of a place for something, ask yourself a few questions. If it's a drawer, what things will you need to access the easiest? Should it be in the front of the drawer or should it be in the back of the drawer? If it's a cabinet, do you need to change the height of a shelf so you can get more items in there? Do you need to add drawers? What do you need to do in order to put things in this space to utilize it the best way possible for you? Often you have to do this while you are physically organizing it. It's not something you can plan ahead of time, because I feel like as an ADHD person, I have a hard time doing that. It has to be in the moment for me.
Hopefully these seven tips are helpful, and you will have a little bit of an easier time organizing your space. Happy organizing!
