Let’s face it, it can be stressful to maintain a sense of order within the home when you have numerous responsibilities. Even living alone, you might be wondering how to avoid being buried by the shipping and product boxes that may be stacking up in your home.
Having difficulty making sense of all the chaos going on in your over-stocked pantry or closet while still keeping things looking nice? You may not need more space, you may just need a plan. Read on to learn about the latest trends in home organizing and how you can improve the organization of your home.
A Minimalist Approach to Home Organizing
Entirely re-thinking how your existing space is being utilized could be incredibly useful, such as taking an existing office space and changing the layout entirely. For example, perhaps instead of a desk in the center of the room, a desk space along the walls with a work table in the room makes more sense for you. Additional cabinet space could make all the difference with any clutter in the home along with:
- Rainbow-ordered organizing. It might not be the most logical or practical way of organizing, but it may help you maintain a better sense of “home” aesthetically.
- DIY furniture refurbishing projects. This includes things as simple as painting designs on furniture and then using diffusal buffing techniques to give an organic look.
- Coronavirus safety in organization. How are you handling your shipped items? How are you storing them? Consider quarantining any items that you cannot disinfect.
- Plastic art supply organizers. These have a lot of potential to be used in virtually any space in your home, along with any sort of labeling system that suits your needs.
Rethinking how space is traditionally used may be beneficial beyond just your home or office space.
For example, consider what your bedroom space could provide if you had a raised bed frame. How many containers could you fit under your bed, concealed by a comforter? Or the space you use for an entertainment center, would that be better suited for a bookshelf if you mounted the TV to the wall instead?
Modern design sensibilities have shifted evermore towards minimalism and minimalistic furniture has become more available and more capable of suiting any needs you may have in your home. Consider minimalistic lamps, end tables, dressers, or even couches and chairs designed specifically to use up less space while even providing extra storage options.
Using Space Wisely
If you take a closer look at your living space, it is likely you can see areas that could be potentially used to better help organize inside of your home. Do you have a lot of unused vertical space, but do not want to have unsightly shelving or containers in view everywhere you go?
Consider slightly larger projects beyond hanging shelves, take up a DIY project to repurpose an old cabinet to fit the space better.
Unused vertical space can make any cluttered area much more manageable with some careful thought. Repurpose an old bookshelf into a haven for your plants in your living room along your walls, or maybe that bookshelf would fit better in your garage storing away excess pantry items. If you have got open wall space in your closets, maybe they would be the perfect spot for individual shelving.
Using vertical space does not have to end by only using your walls, get the most out of your standing cabinets by using adhesive hooks to create more opportunities for stowing away items without creating more clutter.
Get clever with how and where you can scatter things like adhesive hooks, consider using them to hang small bags of items that do not normally have a place to avoid ever needing a junk drawer.
Take Advantage of Vertical Space in Your Kitchen
Using your vertical space in your kitchen area may be as simple as attaching door organizers to your pantry doors, but you may even have an opportunity to hang something like a pot rack from the ceiling to keep your pots and pans out of the way of your regular working space.
In addition, taking your normal food preparation utensils and hanging them out of the way is an option. This could free up drawer space for your other kitchen necessities. It is important to think about these solutions in the sense of a whole picture, meaning every time you solve one issue, think about how many other issues the same solution could solve.
A few other methods to save space in your kitchen could be:
- Placing magnetized metal strips on your walls or tiles to mount metal kitchen utensils
- Use plastic art supply organizers in your pantry to keep your snacks concealed and organized, you may even consider adding labels to each drawer
- Keeping your portable kitchen appliances in cabinets instead of on your counter tops
When it comes to your pantry, using closing plastic containers to combine your entire stock of one type of food such as cereal, pasta, rice, beans and the like can eliminate a lot of space being used by product boxes and bags. Usually these containers are easily stackable as well and provide an air-tight seal for long-term storage.
Use Open Wall Space in Your Garage
If you have a garage space, there is a good chance that you may have a lot of extra vertical wall space that you could use for organizing. There are a lot of options when it comes to large open wall space and in your garage, storage solutions do not necessarily have to be limited to the same aesthetic design constraints that say your living room might, so your options are less limited.
Do you have a lot of odds and ends that you would like to be able to quickly take and use on your way out of the home, while being able to easily store them when you return? Consider a more industrialized wall hanging hook system for things like bikes, skateboards and any other types of items that belong in a garage.
Heavier duty plastic bin organization could also be something you might benefit from, particularly if you have a mess to organize in your garage. Things like extra car parts, fishing equipment and camping equipment might fit perfectly in an oversized bin, which you could then apply an in-depth labeling system to if you would like.
Consider Bathroom Storage Options
Do you find yourself looking for better ways to use the space in your bathroom, but you do not have the biggest bathroom to work with? There are a lot of options available to consider for this type of circumstance in today’s world because few like dealing with an overly cramped, cluttered bathroom. Here are just a few ideas to start with:
- Do not have a lot of wall space, but need a place to hang your towels anyway? Consider mounting towel racks behind your bathroom door instead
- Again, using an art supply container is likely very applicable to bathrooms of most sizes as they can be stored under a sink or on most countertops
- Consider using towel racks to hang storage bins from, keeping any shampoo bottles or the like out of the way if you lack space for them in your shower
Bathroom organization does not have to be anything beyond clever use of the available space you do have, if it is limited, but if you have additional space you might consider adding an over-the-toilet storage alcove to stow away towels, toilet paper or magazines. Consider what might fit under your sink if you just used one or two organizers.
Do not be afraid to use something that was designed for one room type, say an office, somewhere else also if it fits your needs.
Using Extra Space for COVID safety
Chances are, if you have been dealing with isolation and have taken safety precautions, you have been getting a lot of deliveries. Organizing around this extra material in your home may be tough, but using some of the advice above you can potentially avoid exposure to the virus while storing away these deliveries until you are ready to properly disinfect.
After receiving your items, using air-tight containers that you can easily disinfect before and after every use to store them away is a strong option for using space efficiently and staying safe. If you have a covered outdoor space, leaving deliveries outside for a few days is another option.
There are not too many other things to consider when it comes to storing deliveries other than safety, space and the survival of the items you are storing. Whether or not you have the extra space, organizing the resulting shipping debris is important if you intend to disinfect properly before recycling anything.
When it comes to grocery storing, while grocery stores do have disinfecting procedures sometimes things can fall through the cracks and depending on your trust level, you may want to disinfect the things you buy before storing them away in your pantry. You can use the same methods of storing via container before you disinfect and make certain you do not cross-contaminate by delineating space.
Storing your COVID disinfecting supplies does not need to be any different than how you store your other cleaning supplies, but you will obviously want to take more precautions on how you do it and where you store things. If you cannot store things without items sharing a location, just be certain to disinfect everything properly and then store them away.
Big Picture Organization
When you are taking the time to clean out your clutter, each area of your home may require different strategies to maintain organization. However, you may be able to incorporate a larger strategy to organize the whole home and sustain a cleaner way of living without worrying about encountering the same problems months or years later. You want a functioning, sustaining system in all parts of your home.
Mixing and matching covered storage spaces between areas may make life easier, meaning being willing to have some office things stored in another room, covered and out of the way. It may not be ideal, but compared to items cluttering up space that needs to be used it could go a long way to maintaining your sanity if you have limited space in one room or another.
Mixing and matching cleaners and storing them together is another easy way to save space. Things like detergents, window cleaners, mops, vacuums, bathroom cleaners and the like can all be stored with each other in one space, just be certain to label them clearly to avoid any mistakes with what you use where.
Chances are, even if you are very efficient with the usage of space in your home, you will be able to utilize wall space that you have maybe not considered as of yet. TV mounts, minimalistic book cases, kitchen organizers that use vertical space instead of counter space, these are all options.
About Element Home Remodeling East Bay
Element Home Remodeling East Bay is a home remodeling contractor based on Oakland, CA. We serve the entire Bay Area and have a reputation for great customer service and professional work. Contact us today to schedule a free consultation.
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