Now that Christmas is over it’s time to start getting the home back to normal. But Christmas also means that there is a lot of stuff laying around the house–unwrapped gifts, wrapping paper, decorations…
People are always amazed at how I keep so organized. It’s something that has always just come very natural to me and I love the feeling of clearing clutter and creating pretty organization.
This can be both a gift and a curse though, because when things aren’t organized and tidy I totally freak out!
The day after Christmas is always one of those freak out days for me. While most people are probably relaxing in front of the fireplace and enjoying the rest of their holiday, I am frantically trying to organize all the unwrapped gifts that are clumped in piles throughout the house and our cars. (Hey at least I wait until the day after Christmas right??)
I’m going to show you a side of my house you won’t see often. This is what our living room looked like on the morning of December 26th. Eeeeeek!!!!
Most of the stuff were items that needed to go up to the bedrooms, but a lot were toys that I wanted to keep down in the living room for my little bean to play with.
Our most functional living room piece is this organizer that I got from Target.
I like the fact that it has legs so that it looks like an actual furniture piece. The cubes that you can buy for it are made out of a really nice material and they come in all sorts of colors and designs.
Oh and right now it’s on sale for $45 🙂
We had three cubes filled with DVDs, two full of random junk and one for the little bean’s toys.
Now that he’s bigger and playing with more toys, it was time to give him two more cubes which meant that I had to clear the junk out.
Even though I like to keep things organized, there’s always that one spot or two that ends up being my “junk stash pile.” Sometimes it’s a drawer, other times it’s a whole closet.
It’s where I throw things that I don’t know what else to do with such as important papers, decor that I’m not currently using, phones cases…you name it.
So in addition to organizing all of our new Christmas goodies, I had to organize the cubes too.
There are 3 steps to my organizing system.
Step 1–Make a mess!
This step is the easiest and can seem somewhat counterproductive at first, but it is totally necessary. Dump absolutely everything out of the bins or space that you are organizing and create one huge messy pile.
My mom will try to take one thing out of a basket or closet at a time, and she usually ends up either sidetracked or discouraged half way through.
If you dump it all out in the open, you almost have no choice but to go through it all and finish. Trust me–it makes it so much easier!
Can you believe allllll of this crap was in two of those little cubes??
Step 2–Make Piles
Once you have your big mountain of junk all laid out, it’s time to get down to business and complete the least fun step–sorting.
Just take one thing at a time and begin creating piles of like things.
I had a pile for shred, trash, papers to file, decor items and then everything else by the room that it needed to go to.
The items that were seperated by room I placed in piles at the bottom of the stairs so that I could run them up one room at a time.
Step 3–Put it all away and make it pretty!
Once everything is sorted out it’s time to start putting it all away. If it’s going into an organizing system or closet, this is the time to start making it functional by having like items with like items.
For the toys I had three groups: cars/trucks, books/puzzles and interactive learning toys.
I know that my 15 month old couldn’t care less about having his toys organized this way but it makes Mama feel good when I pick it all up at the end of the night and I’m not just cramming it all together into a big unorganized mess.
This system has worked for me everytime, whether I’m cleaning out a junk closet, unpacking or just re-organizing under the sink.
If you’re like us and live like actual humans, it won’t stay perfectly organized forever and you will need to repeat the process every now and then.
I hope everyone has a very happy new year! See you all in 2015 🙂
Linking up to these awesome parties!
Great tips! And it feels good to know your living room looked pretty much like mine did on Dec 26th 🙂
Haha yep gotta keep it real! Thanks for stopping by 🙂
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