Cleaning & Organizing
mdupon70997
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Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
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.
I Need Some Organization
My husband is very messy and lately I haven't been very good at picking things up either. I just look around our house and feel like giving up. We're not hoarders or anything. But our house is tiny - only one bedroom, a living room, a kitchen, two tiny closets, and a bathroom. It's very old so there isn't much built-in storage. And we both have so much stuff. My husband especially will hold onto instruction manuals (even though we all know that men never read the instructions), product pages from the internet, bills, and junk mail. We don't have a ton of cabinet space (although hanging a pot rack from our kitchen ceiling did free up a whole entire cabinet.) I feel embarrassed about how messy our house looks, but I just don't know what to do about it. Whenever I want to take a weekend to really clean, he doesn't want to. I was raised in a VERY tidy home and this is making me crazy. Also I just got rid of three laundry baskets full of clothes/blankets today. What are your organizational tips for living in a tiny house? The entrance to our house is in our kitchen and so I always feel like that needs the most work. Any suggestions for a great entry organizer for bills and stuff?
Re: I Need Some Organization
Guys hate the fact that an entire day or weekend should be spent cleaning, and, actually, you should hate that too. Break it down into little things that you can do each day to help keep things tidy. You can use my blog post about creating a Cleaning Calendar for help: http://www.rhodylife.com/2013/06/cleaning-calendar.html
Encourage your husband to do some of the tidying up during the week so that when the weekend rolls around, you can spend time together doing something fun rather than cleaning. And if you really want to get him involved, make sure you stick to the part about keeping each day's duties to under 20 minutes of work.
Also, create some drawer organizers using empty pantry item boxes. I made a DIY tutorial on my blog of how to do this: http://www.rhodylife.com/2013/05/diy-recycled-drawer-organizers.html
These boxes will definitely help drawer organization - use one box per category of item. Anything that doesn't fit a category and should be in that drawer goes - in other words, you don't need 30 pens and pencils in that junk drawer...stick with two or three of each.
Take advantage of furniture storage, like bins that fit under your bed to store seasonal items or spare pillows and linens. Roll clothing in drawers instead of folding it - that saves a ton of space. Get an ottoman that acts as storage so you can store extra linens and blankets. Over the door hooks and shelves, command hooks, and use shoe organizers to hold mail, cleaning supplies, and items other than shoes, although you can still buy one and use it for shoes.
Find a universal cleaner for the finishes in your house so that you don't end up with 13 different bottles of things to clean with.
Add additional shelves in closets and clips on the inside of doors to hole handled items, like brooms.
And like PP said, scan and recycle/shred. You only need a year's worth of bills, with the exception of health information, mortgage payments, and tax information. Everything else can be scanned in and then recycled/shredded. If your husband really wants to keep the junk mail, go through it yourself, find the website for the product that has the same information on it, bookmark it for him, and then recycle the paper. Electronic information always takes up less space than paper.
DIY & Home Decor Blog
DIY & Home Decor Blog
Re-gift that wine...just make sure your in-laws aren't there to see it.
Do you have a file cabinet? If he must keep things, they should be in hanging file folders.
Put off season clothes/blankets in space-saver bags and store them in luggage or at the very top of a closet where you can't reach anyway.
Hang an organizer by the entry- one for things to do, one for things to file- and then have a trash can nearby. Don't lay mail down on the counter- put it in one of those three places.
Your best bet is to get rid of stuff. Just like you shouldn't spend more than you have... and you shouldn't own more than you have space for (this is a daily battle for me, so I know it's hard)
For the manuals, buy a 3 ring binder and some sheet protectors. Each sheet protector gets a manual. Keeps them nice and concise, and it's easy to flip through to find what you need! Tab and categorize them if needed: appliances / kitchen / garage
I can't bear to throw my away either.