Now is when you start organizing vs decluttering. First group like things together. Once you do that, you might find more to get rid of. For example, when I started organizing the three drawers in our bathroom vanity, I realized we had way too many half empty dentist giveaway dental flosses and travel sized toothpaste tubes. I got rid of most of them. You may find a smiliar hoard that you did not even know you had.
Once I started organizing these drawers, I realized just how much space was in them. It was great! But, wait. Empty space is clutter's nirvana and just tossing stuff in drawers will quickly lead you right back to where you were when you started.
The key to keeping stuff organized is to give it a permanent home in a contained space. That usually means baskets, bins, containters, oh my!
DO NOT get sucked into buying bins before you know what you are going to store in them. Organizing supplies are cute, fun, varied and addicting. If you are not careful you will have to declutter your organizing bins.
So what should you look for in an organizing container? Here are a few questions to ask yourself before parting with your money to buy a bin.
1. What am I going to store in this bin? If you don't know the answer to this question, back away from the bins. And "something" is not an appropiate answer to this question, sorry.
2. Will what I want to store fit well in this bin?
3. Will the bin fit in the space I planned to store it?
4. Is it worth the cost?
Don't get me wrong, I am not advocating you go out and spend tons of money on bins. In fact, I am suggesting the exact opposite. Most people with chronic illness don't have money to spare. We are new to the organizing game and we are going to make mistakes or just change our minds about our new organzation systems once we live with them for a bit. This is normal and a good thing.
One of my current favorite places to get bins is at the Dollar Tree, a local dollar store. Every bin is literally $1 so if it ends up not working it is not a huge loss. But still be careful to be picky about the quality of the bins. Even $1 is a waste of money if it breaks the first time you use it.
For us, this means any bin we bring into the house has to stand up to the weight of a cat trying to cram itself into it. Because if you leave a box, bin or basket unattended for even a minute, it will have a cat in it.
So what did I use to contain the items I wanted to store in my bathroomvanity drawers? Well, I looked at drawer organizers online and in stores and said "no way am I wasting that much money on those"! I am pretty cheap.
Instead I thought back to the very first area I decluttered - our plastic food storage containers. I got tired of the falling on my head and pulled out any that did not have a matching lid which was pretty much most of them.
But you know what? They may be useless as food storage containers but they work amazingly well as cheap (or free in my case) drawer organizers!
So make sure you are picking the right bin for the job, even if it means holding off on organizing an area while you shop around. Don't spend aren't more than you need to and try thinking outside the box for storage ideas that might already be in you home.
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