10 Genius Home Organization Tips Every Homeowner Must Have
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Organizing your home is a stressful task, but it doesn’t have to be. In just a few minutes, these genius home organization tips will make your live a whole lot easier. After all, who has time to deal with cleaning up chronic messes? Certainly not you!
10. CD holder lid holder
Now that your entire CD collection (hello, 1990s…) fits on your cellphone, you might be wondering what you can do with those CD holders that used to house your prized playlists. Turns out those handy little things can still be pretty useful, just not for CDs. Instead, give them new life by using them to organizing all those plastic food container lids you’ve got floating around your kitchen cabinets.
Even if you don’t have a CD holder handy, you can usually find them at garage sales or thrift shops for next to nothing, since they’re all but obsolete.
9. Overhead garage storage
Part of living a life of genius organization is being able to utilize wasted space like some kind of stealthy homemaking maven. If you’ve got a garage, chances are you’ve got ample unused space that you’re not using. Just look up! Unless you drive very large vehicle, there is likely a large amount of space on your garage ceiling that is practically begging to be put to use with a genius home organization tip.
Hang overhead shelves or tracks where you can slide everything from your holiday decor to off-season sporting goods and make use of all that wasted ceiling space in your garage. You’ll be able to reach just about anything with a simple step stool in most cases, and it’s basically a freebie storage space secret. Not anymore!
8. Tissue box plastic bag holder
Plastic grocery bags have an array of uses, from pet poo duty to bagged lunches to bathroom trash can liners. However, they can quickly get out of hand. So, how can you keep your plastic bags organized without taking up an entire drawer in your effort? The answer lies in an empty box of facial tissues.
Shove the bags into an empty tissue box one by one and you’ll find you can fit nearly 100 bags in one single container. Just pull them out one at a time as needed. Give the kids some markers and they can even decorate the boxes for you!
7. Shelves or hooks over your kitchen sink
Another often wasted space in the kitchen are the sides of the cabinets that back up to your kitchen sink. Organize everything from drinking glasses and mugs to eating utensils and cleaning supplies by installing hooks or wall-mounted shelves on the sides of the cabinets. You can add a ton of space to organize with very little investment– and it looks cute too!
6. Recharge station
Organize your electronic devices and all the cords that go with them with the genius home organization tip: buy a cheap mail organizer from an office supply or thrift store and use a drill to make holes in the bottom just large enough to fit charging cords through. Plug all the chargers into a surge protector and hide it behind a table or desk. Set the organizer on the table or hang it on the wall and fill the slots with your cell phones and tablets while they charge overnight. Voila– no more cords tripping you up or lost chargers!
5. Magnetic strips
Magnetic strips with adhesive backs are super cheap and one of the best secrets when it comes to keeping your home organized. Affix them to walls in the kitchen, bathroom, or anywhere else you need to organize smaller items. It the kitchen, they work great for hanging knives or metal serving utensils. In the bathroom, they’re great for stray bobby pins. Add adhesive magnets to the backs of makeup bottles, compacts, and lipsticks and you can even use them for your cosmetics.
4. PVC pipes for socks and undies
There’s almost nothing more frustrating than keeping your kids’ socks and underwear organized. If your kids are anything like mine, unmatched socks seem to be the norm. To keep these organized, purchase some PVC pipe from your local hardware store and have it cut into 4-inch sections. Paint it with spray paint to match your child’s room decor and use a hot glue gun to affix them to a sturdy backboard or pegboard, then hang it on the wall. Stuff socks and undies into the tubes and voila– no more loose socks all over the room with very little effort.
This project also works great for art supplies and other small toys or craft products that need a little organizing.
3. Donate bins
You know how you’ve always got a few things lying around that make you say, “I should donate this…”? That’s the whole problem. It’s hard to make time to donate a few things, but it’s a lot more worthwhile when you’ve got a boatload of stuff to get rid of at once.
Be realistic by placing items you want to donate in a bin in your closet or garage, and once that bin is full, haul it up to your local Goodwill or Salvation Army store. Fill it with clothing you or the kids have grown out of, old toys, books, kitchen gadgets, and more. It’ll be kept out of the way, but once it’s full, it makes a trip to the local donation center make a lot more sense. Oh, and don’t forget to get a receipt; you can write off that donation on your taxes!
2. Velcro remotes
If you’re always losing your media remote controls, you’re not alone. We’ve found them in some pretty creative spaces: in between sofa cushions, in pockets, in the refrigerator, and buried underneath mountains of toys in the kids’ rooms. While this won’t guarantee that the kids won’t walk off with them, it will help to keep them in one place and out of the way!
Place adhesive Velcro on the backsides your remotes and then put a strip of it along the side or underneath of a coffee or end table. Stick ’em in place so they don’t get bumped off tables or played with by little ones pretending they are toys.
1. Hooks instead of towel bars
Ah, the dreaded towel bar in the bathroom. Is it me, or does it seem like no family member can be bothered to put the towels on straight? Instead, they just shove the towels behind the bar, leaving them dangling precariously or worse, on the floor most the time.
Save yourself the time and hassle by replacing your bathroom towel bars with a wall mounted coat hook panel instead. No need to fold the towels before hanging them, and now you can hang four or five towels instead of just one without making a mess. Bam… problem solved!
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