Organizing Your Home: Where To Begin? (Part One)

When looking at your home, you come to realize that there is definitely room for some improvement! As it is with anybody, home organization is a constant need, especially when the family is growing.

You might think that the first room in any home to organize would be the kitchen, and I am not saying you would be wrong. However, in this article we will be tackling another area of the house first. In fact, the kitchen comes much later! So, let’s get going shall we?

By way of explanation, let me tell you why we will be addressing another area of the house rather than the kitchen first through a visual:

Stop and take a look around you. What do you see? Let me cut to the chase: clothes! There are clothes everywhere! They are packed tight in your closets, laying around in piles, in laundry baskets or even still waiting to either be folded from the dryer or in the washer to be dried. Still in the dryer equals wrinkled and still in the washer equals smelly! In addition, the hamper is probably holding clothes waiting to be washed. The fact is, your house is literally overflowing with clothes!

So, that being said, the first place to begin organizing your home is the laundry room.

To think about it, if your laundry room is organized, that means your clothes are clean, dry, folded and put away, right? And, when your clothes are no longer scattered throughout the house, you have come a long way in getting organized!

Face it: when your laundry room is organized, you will be better positioned to keep up on the laundry and all that that means. It also means you won’t be constantly running the dryer on the ‘fluff’ cycle for the umpteenth time and the clothes will be folded and put away. This can really contribute to keeping other areas of your home organized as well, and the overwhelming visual of clothes lying everywhere will have been eliminated.

Admit it: there’s something that contributes to a breath of fresh air when you have a laundry room that is clean and organized; akin to when you open up your closet and find everything hanging neatly.

So, where to begin. Well, I recommend we start with small steps:

1) Ask yourself: can you see the floor? If not, then pick up what’s on the floor and put it in laundry baskets. If you don’t have enough laundry baskets to accomplish this, then just sort the things in to piles outside the laundry room. I make piles of light clothes, whites, darks, and towels/rags.

2) Are you able to see the top of the dryer? If not, put the excess clothes in the aforementioned piles. Grab one rag to dust and have two plastic grocery bags—one to collect junk, and the other for later. Dust the dryer from the lint-leftovers and use a little window-cleaner if it doesn’t come off readily. Don’t neglect the area where the “start” button is—that can be grimy, too!

3) Can you locate the top of the washer? If not, repeat the steps in #2, using the window cleaner if necessary.

Whew! Now that you’ve got your washer & dryer cleaned off, let’s continue to take those small steps in the laundry room….

4) It is time to take a critical look at your supply-shelf(ves). Do you have empty bottles or boxes lying around from spent detergent and/or fabric softener? Clean those out. Use that grocery bag that you’ve put excess dryer lint in and pitch those empties. Then organize what’s left. If you need to add things to your shopping list, now is the time—now you know what you’ve got and what you need to buy. When you organize your supplies, I recommend putting the detergent and any liquid softener above the (gasp!) washer. Make it easy to reach. Put the dryer sheets over the dryer—why reach more than you have to? If your shelves are higher than you’d like, use the top ledge of your washer & dryer to hold supplies! I’ve never seen a washer and dryer that don’t butt up to a wall for the electrical plugs they need. So use that space to your advantage. Put the detergent box or bottle on the top of the washer, along with whatever other washing supplements you have. Put the dryer sheets on the top of the dryer so you don’t forget and end up with a load of static cling!

5) Should you have wire-shelves above your washer & dryer, you’ve got a built-in place to hang a trash bag. Use that extra grocery-sack and cut one of the handles in half. Then tie those two ends around some of the wire-shelf and use the bag to collect dryer lint and empty containers from your emptied laundry supplies. When it’s full, cut it down and put it in the trash and put up a new one.

6) Now that you can see your floor, does it need sweeping? If so, grab a broom and sweep. It won’t take you more than 5 minutes and you’ll feel much better about your room and your work—especially if something you’ve just washed falls on the floor as you’re transferring stuff to the dryer.

7) Take a minute to pat yourself on the back! You’ve done the preliminary work of organizing your home—you won the battle in your laundry room! Take a 15 minute break and enjoy this victory. Then start the task of doing the excess laundry that you’ve been collecting—one pile at a time. When the first is done, swap it out immediately to your dryer or to hangers, if that’s more appropriate. Take it one pile at a time—in other words, small steps! Soon, you’ll find that it really only takes 5-10 minutes to fold warm clothes from the dryer and put them in laundry baskets, ready to transfer to the appropriate rooms, closets, and drawers. The rewards are huge here—keep up on it (one load every day) and you’ll win the war against the Mt. Vesuvius of clothes in your home.

In future articles, we will be taking a look at all the other areas of the home that badly need organizing. When done with this series, your house will qualify for the Good Housekeeping seal of approval!