So, you want to get organized? Keep reading and you will learn how to organize your home, school, office and more!

Ready? Getting organized the quick and easy way – - -

Step 1 – move to a new house

Step 2 – don’t bring anything with you

I am kidding of course, but sometimes it feels like that may be the only way to get a handle on things.  Perhaps you are just looking to learn how organize a small space, or perhaps you need help with how to organize the whole house, either way hopefully you will find some ideas within this site to spur you along your organization journey.

There are a lot of sites out there that tell you how to organize, how to get organized, how to stay organized, and how to be an organized person.  This isn’t one of them.  Well, it sort of is, but it sort of isn’t.  Clear as mud, yes?  Let me try to make that more clear. 

There is no one way to organize your home – just because something works for someone else doesn’t mean it’s going to work for you.  When we had our first child one of the best pieces of advice I received was this :

“you are going to get a lot of advice, take what works, and leave what doesn’t”

I have setup links on this page to try to focus on how to organize key areas of your home.  The closet organizers link will help you learn how to organize a closet, the kitchen organization link will help you learn how to organize a kitchen, the homeschool link will help you learn how to organize your homeschool – do you see a trend here? 

Getting organized is like sitting down to put together a puzzle.  At first you think, "Hey, won’t this be great", but then you dump out the box of 5,000 pieces and suddenly it looks overwhelming.  Where do you start?  How do you start?  Why do you want to start?  Ok, put the puzzle back in the box, it’s just making a mess anyway and who needs more clutter.  But wait – there is a way for this to go together and once you figure it out, it is easier to do it again.

Some people are born organizers, the rest of us are just trying to keep up.  But never fear, it can happen.  Just like you put together a puzzle, you learn how to organize one small piece at a time. 

The Steps to Organization (aka How to Organize) are fairly straight forward.  Imagine you are putting together a puzzle.  What is the first thing you do when you start a new puzzle?  (Well, first you open the box, but I am figuring we got past that part.)  so what do you do second?  Depending on the kind of person you are, you start by sorting the pieces.  The pieces that have straight edges go into one box, the pieces that don’t go into the other.  (If you are one of the jump right in and start in the middle of the puzzle kinds of people, more power to you, but for the purpose of this explanation we will use our imagination and pretend that you are one of us.)  So our first step in learning how to organize is:

So let’s start up our Steps to Organization!

How to Organize Step 1 — Sorting!

The sorting process can be as in depth as you want it. 

(Sanity note : never pull out everything at one time and expect to get it put back before lunch – it works great on those TV shows (who have lots of people behind the scenes doing stuff), but not so much in real life.)

How to Organize Step 2 : Building A Border

(Yes, I know I didn’t explain what to sort or how to sort or what to do with everything once it is sorted.  Generally these things are more room specific so the details are on the various pages – otherwise I would be telling you to put all your dirty dishes in the sink when you are organizing a closet and you could become very confused – you would call a plumber thinking you need a sink in the closet, then you would start doing dishes in the closet, you would have nowhere to put your clothes (or they would be wet all of the time) – basically life would just decay into complete pandemonium – so it is better this way.)  Where was I?  I probably should take this moment to mention I tend to ramble and occasionally get off track.  Ok, back to learning how to organize.

Where were we, oh yes, building the border.  After the pieces are sorted, I like to take the edge pieces and build the border.  This helps in multiple ways.  First – you can get an idea of how big your puzzle is going to be, two – you have  general idea of how the picture is supposed to look and C – well, there isn’t a c, I just wanted to switch bullet points and see if you noticed.  Anyway, organizing is the same way – when learning how to organize you need to build a border.  That is, you need to decide what you are going to organize and how it will be organized.

There are a number of ways to set up a border – these again are more room specific, you will need to purpose your space.  The general idea is to decide the use for the space.  For example, think about your hall closet, is it going to be for outerwear wear and shoes, is it going to act as a pantry, is it going to be for storage of cleaning supplies (like vacuums, mops, maids, etc).  When you are trying to determine how to organize a room, you need to determine the use for the room – this may sound simplistic, but it really helps.  (Think back to the dishes in the closet.)

The border is now built, but we are not done yet.  If you left the puzzle with just a border you never get to enjoy the beauty of it.  The same goes for learning how to organize.  Building a border is great, but now you have to use it.  How do you use a border?  I am glad that you asked (Ok, I am glad that I asked, but if you were here I am sure you would have asked.)  We use a puzzle border to give us information about the puzzle.  The border tells us how big the final product will be and it helps us to determine where the interior pieces should go.  A puzzle border also lets us see a light at the end of the tunnel.  (I went from puzzles to trains, and soon I will go back again.  It’s a mixed metaphor, bit I digress.)  So step three of how to organize is:

How to Organize Step 3 – Filling in the Missing Pieces

This makes sense when you are thinking about a puzzle, after all you have this pile of non-straight-edge pieces just sitting there and waiting.  How does this work with organizing?  Do you recall way back in how to organize – step one where we were sorting?  Those are our missing pieces, filling in the missing pieces means that you are now putting stuff away.  This is where you can get creative, deciding how to organize your space.

How do you want the items to go back into the space?  (No, tossing everything back in and trying to close the door is not one of the options.)  First, realize that you don’t have to put everything back in.  Some items were there, but didn’t belong (goldfish under the bed), while others you may decide you don’t need at all (dead goldfish).  Check out the various links to see more ideas on filling in the pieces.

So that’s it we are done, right? After all, we sorted the pieces, we built the border, we filled in the pieces, our puzzle is done. Right? Wrong! Sorry, but there is one more step before you are organized. (Actually, I am not sorry, but it sounds nicer to say it that way rather than – tough luck bucko, quit being a whiner.) So then what is the last step? Take a minute and think about it – when you are done with a puzzle what do you do? Do you leave it where you built it? Do you take it all apart so you can do it again another time? Do you smear goo on it so that is will become a work of art for you to hang on the wall? For the purposes of our analogy (i.e. comparing building a puzzle with learning how to organize) We are going to so no, no, yes. No, we don’t just leave it where it is – that just adds to the clutter. No, we don’t take it apart (What? Are you crazy? We just did all this work getting organized, for goodness sake, don’t take it apart.) Yes, we smear goo on it so it is a work of art. Now, before you go get actual goo and really make a mess of things remember – this is an analogy. The goo is basically the stuff that holds the puzzle together and keeps it looking nice. That is what we need – we want our newly organized area to look nice. So the final step is:

How to Organize Step 4 – The Final Step: How to Organize so you can Keep It Organized

(Ha – you thought we were done, after all you take out a puzzle, you put it together – then you are done, right?  Wrong!)  The final step is deciding what to do with the finished puzzle.  Do you take it apart and put it away to do again later, do you smear a lot of puzzle glue on it and put it up for display; do you give it away so someone else can enjoy it?  The final step in learning how to organize doesn’t fit my puzzle metaphor quite as nicely, but we have come all this way with the metaphor so we will make it fit (kind of like that last puzzle piece – we have worked this hard just hit it really hard a few times – it will fit!)  Of course, we are not going to take the nice new organized room apart and do it again, but you do need to decide what you are going to do to – duh nuh duh nuh duh nuh (think Jaws music) – KEEP IT ORGANIZED!  Small consistent efforts will help with this, as well as the way that we organized the space – this will become clearer as you look at the various links.  (I keep referring you to these links that well help you learn how to organize your various rooms – why?  Because it keeps my page organized and like a puzzle, each thing is in its right place.)