Having an organized home is something many people long for, but few achieve.

Why?

Because home organization takes time, and it takes consistency.

Here are some easy, effective, and effortless home organization ideas to help you say bye-bye to the clutter and mess once and for all.

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Home Organization To Tackle The Clutter

I can’t stand living in an unorganized home. I used to spend hours upon hours every week just organizing our house. But, as life got busier I started having less time to spend organizing.

Because of that, the state of our house quickly diminished and it started to become an overwhelming, cluttered mess.

It was then that I realized I needed to learn some home organization tips that were quick and had the most impact. Tips and tricks that I could implement as I went throughout my day instead of setting time apart to dedicate to organizing and tidying up.

Related: Why laziness isn’t the cause of disorganization

Organizing Tips and Tricks

I started gathering a list of organizing tips and tricks and put them to the test. It turns out that most of them were too complicated and required far too much time. But there were a couple of organization tips that fit the bill.

Over the years I have gathered even more hacks that I use in my everyday life to keep our home organized (even when I don’t have time).

If you’re looking for some home organization tips to help you create an effortlessly organized home, here are 6 home organization hacks.

6 Home Organization Tips for an Effortlessly Organized Home

1. Put things away right away

It’s so much easier to put things away as soon as you’re done using them.

It’s like the saying goes:

“Put it away, not down.”

If you put something down when you’re done with it, you have a good chance you will forget to come back to it. That is the main contributor to a cluttered home.

And the mess?

It’s mainly made up of items that are simply out of place.

If you’re reading a book, put that book back where you got it from (unless where you got it isn’t where it belongs) as soon as you’re done. If you’re cleaning your house, put your vacuum cleaner and cleaning supplies away as soon as you’re finished with them.

If you’re doing paperwork, file the papers away as soon as you’re done.

It’s about changing the finishing point of an activity to include the putting away.

Work on instilling this method to each member of the household. In return, you will create healthy habits for an effortlessly organized home.

2. Invest in baskets

In the event that you can’t put something away right away and you have to come back to it later is where using nice baskets like these becomes incredibly useful.

Miscellaneous baskets are any kind of small baskets that you keep in various places around your home, usually the rooms of your home that see the most activity throughout the day.

All you do for this tip is put one empty basket in a couple of different rooms throughout your house. Then if you don’t have time to put away an item, place it in the basket for later cleanup.

Baskets speed up the cleanup process

At the end of the day, you can grab all the baskets and make one trip around your entire house putting everything away where it belongs.

Before I started using miscellaneous baskets I would spend half an hour some nights just putting items back in their proper homes. I would grab a handful of stuff from the living room and put it all away where it belongs, then another handful, and another.

By doing this I was creating a LOT of extra work for myself.

Now I can just grab the baskets we have in our entryway, living room, and kitchen. Make ONE  trip around the house putting stuff away, and I can do it all in less than 5 minutes each night. (Talk about a much simpler way of doing things!)

The basket system is fast and efficient.

3. Have a place for each item

If you find you still have stuff lying around your house even after you have spent hours organizing, then there’s a good chance you own too much stuff.

An effective decluttering rule to follow is to have a home for everything you own, and if you can’t find or create a home for something, it might be time to get rid of it.

There’s no use in keeping dozens and dozens of items around your house that don’t belong anywhere. This will only make your house look cluttered and unorganized.

Try simplifying your home by creating a space for the things you need, and getting rid of anything that doesn’t have a proper place.

4. Clean your home regularly

Continuing on from the last tip, purging your house regularly is another way to keep your home effortlessly organized.

How?

By purging your house on a regular basis (if you do it regularly it shouldn’t take you more than half an hour each week), you will be creating an organized, clean environment.

When you get rid of the unnecessary items from your house you are doing two things:

• Instantly making your home tidier by having less stuff lying around
• Making your job of organizing and cleaning your home a whole lot easier

If you’ve never purged your home or your belongings before, the first time you purge can feel extremely daunting and overwhelming.

To make this easier on yourself, you can break your house down into sections. Don’t look at your house as a whole, but instead look at little sections of your house that need to be decluttered.

Rather than looking at the whole living room and feeling overwhelmed by all the stuff that you need to go through in there, look at a corner or a small area of the living room. Focus on one small task at a time, then move on to the next.

(And don’t move on before you’re done where you are.)

Create a list to tackle the mess

When I feel overwhelmed by everything in our house, I sit down and break our house down into rooms. I write down which rooms are the biggest messes and will require the most time.

From there, I break those rooms down into sections that will only take me about 10 minutes to complete (have you heard of the 10-minute miracle concept?). For example, if I were starting to purge in the living room, I would start with a targeted, small section like the coffee table.

Then once I was finished with the coffee table, I would move on to purging bookshelves, closets, and cabinets, focusing on just ONE thing at a time.

The first time you purge your house will be the most difficult, but once you have the big purge out of the way you can focus on doing small purges weekly. I recommend walking through your house and collecting anything that you don’t see a use for, anything that is broken, or things that you should have gotten rid of earlier but forgot about.

Remember – the less stuff you have in your house, the easier it is to keep your home organized

Only keep stuff that you use regularly, need, or love. Don’t hold onto unnecessary things.

Need more help decluttering?

We can help walk you through the process with Decluttering School’s free print book, Step-by-Step Decluttering. (Yes, it’s free – just pay shipping!)

5. 10-minute clean up

Before everyone in the family heads off to bed, try making a habit of having everyone (even the kiddos) spend 10 minutes each evening tidying up around the house.

This will make a world of difference in the whole state of your home the next day. Rather than waking up to a house that has toys and crumbs scattering the floors you can wake up to a home that is organized and put together.

This will help you start your day off in a much better mood.

Keep in mind that this isn’t the time to go crazy and spend an hour deep cleaning your house. The whole point of this quick clean is to get everyone involved and clean as much stuff as you can in as little time as possible – on a daily basis.

10 minutes is the right amount of time

I like to aim for 10 minutes each evening, it’s not too much time and not too little.

This is when we:

• clean up any dishes that got left around
• sweep the kitchen and dining room floor
• put away toys
• empty the miscellaneous baskets (the ones we talked about earlier)
• pick up any laundry that’s lying around

There’s no need to focus on making your house look spotless. Instead, focus on making it look clean enough.

Clean enough that when you wake up tomorrow morning you won’t walk out of the bedroom and be face to face with clothes scattered everywhere, toys on the floor, and yesterday’s dishes still on the counter.

6. Control clutter hotspots

You may have realized by now that clutter attracts clutter. If you have papers sitting on the kitchen counter, for example, it’s a whole lot easier to throw your keys and purse there, too.

There are certain areas of our homes that seem to gather clutter faster than others (like the kitchen counters), and the one thing all these areas have in common is:

They are all flat surfaces.

The most common clutter hotspots are generally the entryway (especially if you have a bench in the entryway), the kitchen counter and table, the coffee table, the bathroom counter, and of course, the junk drawer.

Clutter accumulates

The places that clutter accumulates the most in your home might be different from these clutter hotspots. It’s important that you learn where your home’s clutter hotspots are, so you can focus on keeping them organized.

Usually, clutter hotspots are small enough areas that they shouldn’t be too overwhelming to tackle.

Sometimes, investing in some additional organization accessories will help you achieve your goals for a more organized space:

• If your beauty products take up all the counter space in your bathroom, it’s time to come up with a better bathroom storage system (like this on Amazon) that works with your routine.
• Random and messy paper piles call for a better file organizer or document organizer.
• And that junk drawer could probably be fixed with a good drawer organizer (like this on Amazon).

Do you struggle to keep an organized home?

Do you find there’s just not enough time in the day to organize your house? My hopes are that you’ll be able to use even just a couple of these tips to create an effortlessly organized home in no time.

Looking for more home organizing tips and advice?

Join the Organize My Home membership right here on Decluttering School! Learn how to transform your home in as little as an hour each week.

Best of all: It won’t burn you out, even if your home is a hot mess!

How have you implemented effortless home organization tactics in your life?

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AUTHOR BIO:

Amy is a young wife and a new mother who knows that homemaking can be a thankless job. Amy is the founder of DeliberatelyHere.com where she is using her passion and skills for homemaking to help other wives and moms create thriving homes that they can be proud of with helpful tips and resources to encourage and inspire them along the way.