Without Intentional Effort, Homes Will Accumulate Clutter
Leave a house alone, with nobody inside to make a mess, and it will still become a mess in the fullness of time. Bugs will deteriorate walls, vermin will chew through things, woodland creatures will make nests, and even a home in a barren lifeless desert is subject to wind, sunshine, and other factors which reduce its stability. Entropy is not clean, and it’s everywhere.
So what do you do? Well, for one thing, you’ve got to do something. All property requires management to maintain vitality. Sure, a few months or years here and there when no activity on property happens won’t necessarily cause any decline in cleanliness. But when you live in a house, and you move about it daily, you are the prime mess maker.
Families with small children will have an especially difficult time keeping things clean and clutter-free. One of the best ways to get the results you want as regards home organization will involve storage ideas for the whole home. To that end, here we’ll explore four key strategies that can make home organization a natural expression of daily life, and not a chore.
- Eliminate Things You No Longer Want Or Have Use For
Do you need that pile of beer cans that are overflowing the trashcan? How about that old fake plant from when you were working night-shifts in that tiny apartment when you were in your twenties; is it worth keeping around, or does it just take up space? The kids took the cat when they moved out—do you still need the cat box? Unless you’re Schrödinger, no.
Go through your home with a fine-toothed comb, find all the things you don’t need, and get rid of them. You can throw them away, you can give them away to varying centers which specialize in furniture or clothing items for the poor. You can even have a garage sale which may put a few hundred—or a few thousand—dollars in your pocket.
Heck, you could do a garage sale for a few weeks and see what ultimately happens. The point is, find a way of downsizing the clutter in your home by getting rid of possessions you don’t need anymore. Unless you’re Oliver Twist, you’ve got a few things you can probably do without.
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- Incorporate RTA Cabinetry Options
Ready To Assemble, or RTA, cabinetry can be precisely conformed to your particular space. Take a look and see if this option is worth your while try it out! Essentially, many homes have rooms that aren’t conducive to traditional cabinetry options. But with RTA, you can define specific parameters which allow you to put new cabinets in old rooms for storage. - Get In The Habit Of Continuously Cleaning Up After Yourself
A big part of what’s making your home a mess is you. You, your family, your friends, your guests, your pets—all make little messes that are avoidable. But even if they can’t be avoided, they can certainly be cleaned up immediately. One of the reasons your house is disorganized is that you don’t clean up after yourself when you’re done with something.
Dishes and the kitchen tend to be the biggest problem here, with bedrooms coming in second and coats or shoes distributed about the foyer coming a close third. Essentially, when you’re done cooking, put up pots, pans, and other dishes. When you come home, organize shoes by the door and hang up your jacket. When you make a mess in your bedroom, clean it up.
- Integrate Vertical Storage Below And Above As Applicable
You can use the top of cabinets to store things as well as the cabinet’s insides. Under your bed, if you’ve got a space that’s a foot high, six feet wide, and eight feet deep, you’ve got 48 cubic feet of storage space. Use it. Find ways of using the space above and beneath things as storage.
Keeping Your Home Clean In An Active Way
When you eliminate unnecessary “flotsam” of the cluttered variety, incorporate the latest relevant RTA options for a given room, make immediately cleaning after yourself (and loved ones where appropriate) habitual, and store things below or above varying furniture items as applicable, your home will practically clean itself.
Sure, it’s you who’s doing the work behind the scenes, but the mess won’t become some insurmountable pile of clutter like some funky property from a Hoarder’s episode. Cleaner homes have greater property value, and since your living space is an outward expression of your inner mind, they have a positive effect on mental health as well. So clean up!
