Cleaning & Organizing
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Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
If you have questions about this, please email help@theknot.com.
Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
Tips for organizing on a budget?
Our house needs to be organized. Its big with plenty of room but always looks messy becuase its needs organization in every room. Our house is fairly new, so it has nothing as far as organization goes and it drives me crazy.
Ideally I'd love to go to Ikea and spend 1k on all sorts of stuff, but that can't happen. So any helpful tips in the meantime? Our plan is eventually to do one room at time, but i'm not sure I can wait that long without losing my mind.
Re: Tips for organizing on a budget?
what room/rooms are most important to you to organize? What are your problem areas?
Quite frankly, you can "organize" for free, or at the very least, cheaply.
Give us some ideas about what you're struggling with, and maybe we can help more specifically.
Main conerns are closets and pantries. Our pantry is a big open room, one shelf, thats it. Our closets aren't huge, but again one shelf/bar.
Our family room/playroom has a built in unit with closed doors on the bottom (wiht 1 shelf) and bookcases on top. We tried those canvas bins for part of the bookshelf part, but its too high and the kids can't reach their toys. And with the layout of the room there's not really a place for a stand alone storage unit.
We had to turn our laundry room into a pantry because our "pantry" sucks (it's like 3 small cabinets - even though the kitchen is big! Who thought of that?) Anyway... I bought a stacking shelf organizer at Home Depot - and then found them for like 1/3 the price at Walmart yesterday. They're like $15 & take like 2 minutes to put together. http://www.walmart.com/ip/Plano-4-Shelf-Storage-Unit-Dark-Grey/8251820
Not sure for the toys - sorry! I posted this the other day but in my classroom I use open stacking bins like this http://www.containerstore.com/shop/storage/stackingBinsBaskets
I have very little cabinet space in my kitchen and after we got married we got so many new gadgets and what nots for the kitchen that I had no space for. I put everything into one of our guest rooms and left it for 6 months before I decided to finally do something about it. So my grandmother was getting rid of her entertainment center so I took it and replaced it with my old one and moved the old entertainment center into my kitchen for added kitchen space. Worked out perfectly. I would suggest going to garage sales, thrift stores, and ask friends and family if they are getting rid of anything. A bookshelf would work too if you can keep it looking clean.
Also with the closets, I had that problem too, I would just clean each one out every Sunday till they are done. I have a 4 bedroom house and my husband and I had several roomates before we got married and each one of them left something. Im talking at least 7 different roomates (we were together for 4 years before and started living together after 1 month). EVERYONE left something and I called all of them and told them to come get it or it was going in the trash. Only one guy came to get his stuff. Dont get me wrong, I have clothes in everyone of those closets and random things that I have like sewing stuff, scrapbooking ect and I had to go through all of it and it was really exhausting but I did it one closet at a time and feel so much better now.Good luck on getting organized! Believe me it will be a relief once it is done.
I'd start with decluttering and selling everything you don't need. You'd be surprised how much your able to get for things you consider junk! Then do your orginzation spree with your earnings. That way you won't be moving the mess.
quotes Michelle likes