8/7/2019 Organizing Your Home

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THE CHALLENGE: Gone are the dayswhen the kitchen was used mostly forcooking. Today it can serve as communica-tions hub, mail sorting station, homework center and conference room. Is it any won-

der you can’t find the pepper grinder?

SIMPLE SOLUTIONS:

1. Go paper-free. Debbie Lillard,author of “Absolutely Organized: A Mom’sGuide to a No-Stress Schedule and Clutter-Free Home,” says much of what overloadskitchen surfaces is paper — the kind thatseems too important to get rid of so it just

piles up in drifts. For her three elementaryschool–age kids, Lillard transfers pertinentinformation from school announcements,

birthday invitations and team schedules toa master wall calendar, then recycles theoriginals. She also recommends color-cod-ing the calendar by child.

2. Establish an art box for each

child. Deposit daily artwork and school

papers in it, then at the end of the year,sort through the pile with your child tosave, say, 25 treasures. The sortingbecomes a time to reflect together onyour child’s accomplishments and thetruly important mementos don’t get lostunder a landslide of old spelling tests.

3. Try a rolling storage cart. Pairedwith one of these carts, available at most

home stores, your kitchen table can dodouble duty as a craft center or home-work station. “Store supplies in the lowerdrawers and leave the top drawer emptyto sweep unfinished work into for nexttime,” says Cynthia Townley Ewer,author of “Houseworks: How to Live

Clean, Green and Organized at Home”and editor of organizedhome.com . Whendinnertime rolls around, free up preciousfloor space by wheeling the cart to a lesscrowded spot.

THE CHALLENGE: Large flat sur-faces such as the kitchen table, coffeetable or guest bed are clutter magnets.

I’m just guessing your own dining roomtable right now is home to junk mail, anabandoned craft project and a brokentiara awaiting a (missing) glue gun.“Clutter attracts clutter,” says Ewer. “Itmultiplies like rabbits.”

SIMPLE SOLUTIONS:

1. Make lost-and-found boxes and

charity bins. If items are left out too

long in common areas, put them in a lost-and-found box, then kids will knowwhere to look for them. If you don’t mindplaying hardball, you can call it a “toy jail” and require your kids to pay bail —

do an extra chore — to get their stuff back. Outgrown clothes and toys can go

in a box by the back door. When the boxis full, take it to a local charity.

2. Establish temporary catchalls. Tocollect the remains of the day, place basketsat high-traffic points, such as the bottom of the stairs. Make a rule that the stuff must beclaimed and put away every night, or elseyou’ve just created a new dumping zone.

3. Don’t be afraid to improvise. Inmy own quest to glimpse the surface of our dumping room — I mean, diningroom — table, I have experimented by

telling my 9-year-old son to “pretend thetable is on fire, and everything you leavethere will be burned up forever!”

THE CHALLENGE: The glowingcomputer screen has replaced the firesideas the heart of the home. Kids do theirhomework, play games, load music andcheck all-important e-mail at this high-traffic, high-demand spot. It easily canbecome a disaster area: a tangle of cords,

disks out of cases and papers left on thechair for the next user to squash.

SIMPLE SOLUTIONS:

1. Create separate spaces. Erin

Rooney Doland, author of “Unclutter YourLife in One Week” and editor of unclut-terer.com, recommends setting up thecomputer desktop so that each user hasher own password and account. Familymembers can be given a box or drawer

nearby to quickly stash their stuff. (Makeit a rule that you have to leave the areaclean for the next user.) And keep handy abox with a stapler, pens and other necessi-ties so that kids can finish their homework without having to hunt for a paper clip.

2. Make a backup box. Store yourcomputer’s hardware manuals and pro-gram disks in one dedicated box in acloset, advises Doland. If there’s a prob-lem (a broken mouse, say), all the infor-mation will be right there.

3. Try a disk folder. To save spaceand avoid playing matchmaker with com-puter game disks and cases, Ewer lovesdisk folders, available at office supply

stores. Manuals and disks are simply slidinto the plastic sleeves, where they areeasily accessible.

THE CHALLENGE: Most kids ownmany times their own body weight intoys, with new inventory arriving on each

birthday and major (or minor) holiday.The result: kids get overwhelmed, have ahard time choosing what they want toplay with, or can’t find their favorites.

SIMPLE SOLUTIONS:

1. Let go of unused toys. BrooksPalmer suggests parents help their kids

weed out unwanted and outgrown toys.“I’ll hand a child one toy at a time and ask,‘How about this one? Do you still playwith it … or not?’” Donating the unwantedtoys to charity helps kids feel good aboutthe process. Just make sure the bag goesright out the door, or else your kids might

be tempted to pull the toys out again.

2. Select smart storage. Group toysby type in open bins on child-level book-

shelves. Pasting a picture on each bin of what goes inside will help kids organize.Avoid scooping all playthings into one hugetoy box or hard-to-open container.

3. Store toys where kids typically

play with them. Why are the boardgames always strewn around the livingroom, where inevitably the dice arekicked under the sofa? Because the game

shelf is down in the basement, a flightaway, says Erin Rooney Doland. Better toclear an area on a living room shelf tomake putting away games easier.

THE CHALLENGE: Though this areaof the home is the first, and last, place youand your guests see, it’s often the most

chaotic. Kids dump their backpacks, shoesand coats right inside the door, then makean Olympic dash for the refrigerator. Later,finding a homework assignment or missingsneaker requires an archaeological dig.

SIMPLE SOLUTIONS:

1. Assign each child his own easy-

to-access space. Use chic lockers(available through home catalogs) orplastic milk crates lined up in the hallwayto give kids a self-serve place to stashtheir boots and bags. A row of sturdywall hooks at child level for coats.

2. Establish a family launchpad.

Ewer suggests giving everyone their owndedicated space for can’t-leave-home-without-it items. Have family membersdeposit cell phones, keys, flash drives,permission slips, homework, lunchmoney and sunglasses here.

THE CHALLENGE: Often large or

awkwardly shaped, sports equipmenttends to get tossed onto a messy MountEverest in the garage or mudroom.

SIMPLE SOLUTIONS:

1.Thin the herd. Doland advisesweeding out items that aren’t being used.“Many people have a hard time getting

rid of unused sports equipment because itcame with a high price tag,” she says.Selling gear on eBay or to a sports resaleshop, or donating it, can ease the pain.

2. Sort by sport. During baseball sea-

son, Lillard’s son keeps a sports bagpacked with his glove, bat and otheressentials hanging at the ready on thegarage wall. Use tall freestanding cloth

laundry bins to keep equipment sorted bysport and off the floor.

3. Maximize your space. To store bigor unwieldy equipment, use wall hooks,baskets, hanging bags or sturdy shelving.

BY JENNIFER KING LINDLEY/DISNEY FAMILYFUN MAGAZINE

I used to dismiss the highly organized as just a bit ...uptight. Then, one morning, I gazed out of the kitchen win-dow to see my two kids fidgeting in our idling van, five min-utes past when they should have left for school. In thegarage, my husband hunted among bags of old grass seedand toppled bikes for the tennis racket he needed for a min-utes-away match. “It’s around here somewhere!” he said.

That was an Aha! moment for me. I realized that, far frombeing a waste of time, getting our home organized wouldactually save our family time and stress.

Luckily, there are experts out there who specialize in tam-ing just our kind of chaos. Here’s some advice from four pro-fessional organizers on managing a home’s most commondisaster zones — clutter hot spots — from crowded kitchencounters to messy play areas.

Follow these basic rules to make your home runmore smoothly:

■ Reduce the amount you need to organize in

the first place. Keep only those items you truly love or

use, says Brooks Palmer, author of “Clutter Busting:Letting Go of What Is Holding You Back” and editor of 

clutterbusting.com. Don’t hang onto an unwanted item just because it cost a lot or Aunt Sue gave it to you.

■ Give everything a home. “A place for every-thing and everything in its place” may seem an old-fashioned idea, but it really works, experts stress.

■ Don’t shoot for perfection. Cynthia Townley

Ewer recommends starting small by identifying theproblems that are causing the most angst (the missingcar keys), then trying the easiest solution (a bowl ontop of the fridge!).

■ Get the kids involved. “More important thanhaving fancy organizing equipment is teaching yourkids good routines,” Debbie Lillard says.

■ Spend a little time every day maintaining

your system. Erin Rooney Doland suggests creating ahalf-hour MP3 mix (let kids pick their favorite high-energy selections) and make that your family’s cue tostart a daily evening cleanup.

ILLUSTRATIONS BY BETSY EVERITT/COURTESY OF DISNEY FAMILYFUN MAGAZINE