Home Organization Tips for Busy People

Between errands, work obligations, and finding time for yourself, a home's organization can fall on the back burner for most people. Everyone wants to come home to a place they’re comfortable in, where they don’t have to search high and low for whatever they need, but most people know they aren’t as organized as they want to be, blaming their busy lifestyle for the chaos.

If you’re a parent, you know how stressful and demanding each day can be, but you also probably daydream about a home that is stress-free, and everything has a proper place. If your days are crazy, but you want to have an organized home, follow these tips to help get your place in order.

Take an inventory of the mess

When you have a free moment, get a piece of paper and pen and walk through your house to find problem areas and jot them down. Maybe your table is a landing spot for incoming mail, or you find that the linen closet gets disorganized easily. Check every junk drawer, closet, and room for problem areas that need to be addressed so you can come up with a game plan to help solve these problems.

Figure out why there’s mess

For every problem, you listed, come up with an answer as to why each of these areas is messy. If the table is the place where all the mail goes to, maybe you need to buy a container that acts as an inbox, or maybe, you haven’t gone through your mail in a while, and it’s really starting to pile up. Or maybe your linen closet is a mess because you’re trying to fit too much in there and really need to start getting rid of the linens you no longer use. Whatever the reasoning behind the mess is, figure out why it's like that so you can then figure out how to make it better.

Steps toward solutions

Now that you’ve determined where the mess is and why the mess exists, you can now start to think about ways to go about changing it for the better. Are there solutions you can put into place with your family members that you can implement? Are there organizational tools or products you can invest in to make a difference in the amount of clutter? Make sure to talk to your family about what needs to be done and look online for storage solutions that will help you out.

These steps don’t have to happen right away. It’s important to realize that small changes will make a huge difference over time. If you’re short on cash for new organization tools, look at dollar stores and resale shops for inexpensive solutions.