How To Organize And Clean Your House

‘A tidy house is a tidy mind’ goes the old adage and for anyone that struggles with keeping a clean house, organization is key to ensuring your home becomes, and remains, spotless.

The first step in understanding how to organize and clean your house is to make sure that everything that is within your house is both necessary and needed. A house full of clutter, however artfully arranged, can be visually disturbing and it is also harder to clean. Imagine what other things you could use your time for rather than cleaning ornaments on shelves.

Decluttering can be both a tedious and emotional task, but it isn’t a task you have to undertake alone. Invite a friend and spend a day trying to organize your things together. Make three piles, throw away, give away and keep. Try to make sure you that don’t have more than one of anything, don’t keep anything that is broken or tired, and if tempted to keep an item ask yourself, do I use it/ will I wear it. If you haven’t used that item for over a year chances are you never will, or not frequently enough to be of use to you. If there are items you simply can’t bear to part with, consider how else you could store them: Art from the when the kids were young? You could take a photo and create a digital archive or even a photo book. Old CDs? Can you copy these to your iPod and donate the hard copies to charity. Even just think about storing mementos in box in the loft rather than on the mantelpiece.

Once you have decluttered you should carefully consider a place for everything. If items are going back into a drawer, buy a drawer organizer to ensure you can find everything later.

Place small kitchen items into baskets and boxes, rather than leaving them loose or lying around drawers.  Organize plates, bowls, cups and glasses by size and stack them together. If they are mismatched, consider new ones.

Put food into storage jars and tins, as well as avoiding cupboards overflowing with packets and boxes, you can even use these as a feature by putting up shelving and displaying them.

Scour shops for antique vases and jars and use these to store your bathroom products. Place them on shelves rather than throwing them all into a cupboard, this will also allow you to see what you have and what is going out of date.

Consider using labels on shelving so that you know where everything should be. This is particularly useful for closets and laundry cupboards.

Put up coat hooks and shoes shelves by the front door and stop people throwing coats on the nearest table or chair.

With these few organizational tips your home will be transformed. Less clutter, more space and knowing where things belong, will make it easier to clean your house. By ensuring everything put back in its rightful place straight away and doing a speed clean every day, you will keep your house looking show home perfect all the time, and put an end to spending most of Saturday doing the ‘big clean’.