Tips to Get your Home Organized, Part 2

Yesterday, we brought you the first of two parts on organizing clutter. Here's the other half, with more ways to put order into your home:

14. Finish reading before piling.
Bedtime reading is a lovely thing to look forward to. But does the pile on your bedside table leave no room for a carafe of water or even an alarm clock? Institute a one-in, one-out rule. Allow yourself only three books on the table. Keep the rest in the living room or study room bookshelf.

15. Clear the paper trail.
Are your desk drawers bursting with receipts and billing statements? It’s time to get sorted. First, let go of past statements. Regina Lim keeps bills and statements only for one year. “We still have our 2009 statements and utility bills so we can use these as reference for our 2010 consumption. As soon as there is no need for past documents, we rip and throw them away.” If you want a record of all your statements and bills but not the cluttering papers they are printed on, simply keep a master computer file of all data from past years.

16. Group the groceries.
In Joy Cabrera’s home, the kitchen cabinets have assigned occupants. “The vinegar, soy sauce, and all liquid condiments are in one cabinet. Dry ingredients like flour and breadcrumbs are in another cabinet. I sort them so that even my helpers will not have a hard time finding them. If I need ketchup or soy sauce, they know exactly where to find it.” To avoid spoilage, Joy also labels items with the expiry dates. This way, expired items don’t take up space unnecessarily.

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17. Don’t be dazzled by gadgets.
Regina Lim opts to keep her kitchen countertops and drawers only with essentials - hot water pot, rice cooker, basic cooking tools. Her philosophy: “Before I buy a kitchen gadget, I always ask if there is really a use for it. I look through what I already have and see if any of the items I have can double as something else. Why would I buy a garlic press when a simple whack of the knife will do? Apple corer - no thanks. The knife can slice away the apple core.”

18. Go for multifunctional furniture.
Nowadays, savvy furniture design makes clutter management easier. Cleverly-hidden storage spaces can be found in desks, coffee tables, media cabinets, and the like. Cherry Chan-Tan, who has three children under the age of six at home, appreciates additional and secret storage.
For example, she says, “We have a coffee table with inconspicuous drawers for storing remote controls, pads and pens, and whatnot.”

19. Give up the freebie dependency.
Is your kitchen or dining table littered with free notepads, tote bags, bag clips, pouches, booklets, etc? Free promotional items that come with supermarket purchases can easily fill counters and cupboards. If you don’t need them - seriously need them - don’t bother getting them. Trade the joy of scoring a freebie for the joy of having a clutter-free space.  

20. Give homemade art the gallery treatment.
Cherry Can-Tan’s school-age kids, Dave and Cady, love to make artwork and cards for their grandparents. “My husband and I frame their ‘masterpieces’ and hang them on a ‘hall of fame’ wall near the playroom. This way, their hard work gets acknowledged and appreciated, and they feel some sense of accomplishment.”

Cres Yulo does the same and solves a space predicament at the same time: “All our windows [in the condo] are floor-to-ceiling glass. We get both morning and afternoon sun so you can just imagine the heat in our place. I got several foam boards and embellished them with Clara’s artworks. I put the boards on the ledge to shield us from the blazing rays of the sun. So we have an instant gallery as well.”

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21. Cover with art!
Six-year-old Jamie Lim turns her drawings into greeting cards whenever there’s an occasion. Her mom, Regina, also enjoys using the larger artworks as wrapping paper for presents. If you are a jot-downer, you could also use the kids’ paintings to cover journals, notebooks, or sketchbooks to make them uniquely yours. Cover it with contact paper to protect the artwork from the elements.

22. Select what’s special.
What to print, what to pass? If you want to keep a manageable number of photo albums, you must select family photos with care. Here’s how Regina Lim does it: “We take a lot of photos of the kids, but from these photos we only choose the nicer ones to keep. From this ‘nicer ones’ batch, we further dwindle down the list of photos to print. The ones that don’t get printed are kept in a CD or an external hard drive.” To keep your photo CDs organized and make it easy for you to search for snapshots, include a table of contents for each.

24. So long, souvenirs!
Souvenirs accompany you home from every wedding, every christening, every class reunion, just about every special-occasion gathering. It’s time to get serious about which ones hold true meaning for you and which ones are mere dust collectors. Do you really want to hold on to a figurine of a couple you barely even know? Junk the souvenirs that are just that - junk. And next time you’re handed a souvenir at a party, it’s perfectly okay to “accidentally forget” to take it home.

Just as persistent as souvenirs are items bought in the name of fund-raising and benefiting charities. If you don’t really need those greeting cards or magnets or commemorative whatnot, simply make a straight donation. You’ve helped, but you’ve kept the clutter out - totally win-win!

25. Go digital.
If you have prolific children and you simply cannot bear to let their artwork or school projects go, you can have your cake and eat it too, so to speak. Before you throw away the actual piece, take a snapshot. Load the photos into your iPod, iPhone, or laptop, and voila, you can enjoy every single creation of your tots anytime, anywhere, minus the physical disarray.

Photo from flickr.com