Getting Organized in 2021
If you’re like me, we are spending more time at home which has made us take a good hard look at our space and our clutter! Between our new home “offices,” play area, and bedrooms, stuff is everywhere. Living in a well organized, clutter-free home has never been more important as more of us are now home-based during the pandemic. My goal for 2021 is to clear the chaos and create more organized spaces.
Luckily the experts at Whitmor came in with some great tips and a great system to help me jump-start the process. The Whitmor’s new Clip & Cube Collection makes affordable and customizable cube storage for any space in your home a breeze. It’s easy to assemble with all tools included and features a smooth, durable wood grain laminate finish. Designed to evolve, a patented locking clip technology lets you reconfigure your system as often as you like for whatever changes life brings. All for under $100 and online exclusively from Wayfair! From the home office to the playroom, their easy cube system was a breeze to put together. Now I have created a space for toys with different bins. It also works great for home office areas.
You may be thinking getting organized sounds great on paper, but I am a burned-out, stressed-out parent trying to balance life. How do you expect me to get organized? I get it! I have found it helpful to break it down into mini-tasks, working a little bit at a time each day instead of trying to tackle it all in one day. After all, the clutter didn’t show up in one day.
Teamwork makes the dream work – if your children are older, assign them with mini tasks as well as have them involved in the process. Did they leave toys and their stuff all over the living room? I drop their items into a basket/container; it is the owners’ responsibility to put them away. If the item is still there the next day, they might find this item in “jail” and need to do some chores to retrieve it.
The new year is an excellent time for a PURGE! It might be easier to part with old toys when you remind the kids of the latest toys they just got last month during the holidays. When I am in the purge process, I keep a large donation bag by the front door. As I am putting away laundry, going through closets, it is easy to add that item to the bag. When the bag is full, it moves to the trunk to get donated, where hopefully I don’t drive around with it for a week.
Another rule I have started to implement is the “one in, one out rule.” My fiancé actually started me on this. I wanted this baby Yoda coffee mug, and I have too many coffee mugs. He suggested I could get it, but I would need to donate one of the old ones. So my new rule is one needs to go before another comes in. This works both ways; he collects too many hot sauces, so now he has to finish a bottle before buying a new one. This rule can apply to the children – toys, stuffed animals, books, etc.
I do not expect my home to be perfect, but I have tackled a few spaces in my house already and have some more to work on as we enter 2021. If “getting organized” is on your 2021 list, Whitmor is providing you with a fail-proof road map. You can download it, print it, and hand out copies to your family.