Household Organization Does Not Come Naturally to Me
I have a hard time describing myself as either an organized or an unorganized person. It’s pretty easy for me to say that my household organization interest often falls by the wayside, though. Certain parts of my life are very well organized; others are simply cluttered and scattered. In a perfect world, I would like everything in my life to have a neat little space, but this requires time and patience I generally do not have.
My Household Organization Systems
My systems are far from perfect, and I find it hard to keep up with my organization from day to day, but I’ve acquired some useful tools that make keeping things orderly a lot easier. I found it was easier to work on one room at a time; otherwise, it can be pretty overwhelming.
Household Organization Tools to Try
Bathroom Clutter Collection
Makeup and skincare products are a bit of a nightmare to organize. All my compacts and pieces are different sizes and shapes, making it next to impossible to stack things or line things up neatly. Furthermore, even though I don’t use every piece of makeup every day, I generally want to keep it all readily available.
For example, I generally don’t wear mascara if I wear my glasses. I wear my glasses most days for work, which means I end up not using my mascara for days at a time. However, for the days that I do wear my contacts, I want to be able to grab the mascara quickly and easily.
One of the best bathroom organization items I have is a sliding cabinet organizer. Technically, it is designed for pantry organization, but it works great for makeup, hair products, and other little things.
This two-tier organizer is great for a number of reasons: first, it is easy to put together; second, the drawers slide really easily and hold a ton of stuff; and, third, you don’t have to nail it in to the cabinet or anything!
I use the top drawer for hair ties, scrunchies, and spare/unopened makeup. The bottom basket is filled with hair products, deodorant, and body sprays. It really saves space and makes space out of otherwise useless storage.
Beyond the two-tier organizer, I have found that a little translucent organizer box like this is super useful. With a few divided spots, the box is perfect for the little things that don’t otherwise have a spot, like flosser picks and bobby pins.
I also ordered this box from Amazon for bathroom organization, but it was bigger than I expected. After moving it around a bit, I found that it was great for my larger hair products that didn’t fit in the cabinet. Plus, I keep my hairbrush in it, so it’s easy to grab but out of the way!
Bathroom Shelving
Since moving into our new house in fall 2022, Brett and I have found a few things that have made a big difference in our organization systems. Most notable are the floating shelves pictured here.
Our bathroom doesn’t have a ton of storage space, so I knew I wanted to get some low-profile shelves of some kind for my daily beauty products. This set of two floating shelves seemed too good to be true at just over $20, but they are the real deal! They look great, were pretty easy to install, and come with a little hand towel bar (picture from before we added it).
The floating shelves easily hold my acne meds, moisturizers, hair products, and sunscreens, among other necessities. Brett ordered a second set to put up on his side of the counter, as well.
Clothing & Dresser Drawers
Not unlike some of the difficulties in organizing makeup and toiletries, organizing dresser drawers can be difficult at best. I’ve changed things up a bit, though, since I saw Marie Kondo’s show on Netflix. I have found that her methods of folding and using boxes have actually been easy to maintain.
Ikea has great folding boxes (also available on Amazon) that, I’ve found, hold a number of shirts with ease. Although I have stuck with the Ikea boxes for my dresser, I think these Target baskets would work great, too. The Target options come in more sizes and colors, so you can personalize it more.
Living Room Organization
I had thought organizing our living room was more difficult than it actually turned out to be. Organizing my yarn collections was overwhelming. Most of the yarn wound up in different spots throughout the room, wherever it kind of fit — a pretty haphazard system. Really, once I got a handle on the yarn, everything else kind of fell into place.
Maybe that’s an oversimplification, though. For Christmas, we got a Threshold 8-Cube Organizer from Target. We purchased six of the cloth cube boxes for the organizer. However, I have since discovered that the woven baskets also fit, as well.
Really, this organizer unit is what made taming my yarn collection possible. So now, instead of keeping the yarn wherever it would fit, I have three cubes in the organizer. The cubes are even semi-color-coordinated. Progress.
Laundry & Cleaning Inventory
Household organizing for laundry and cleaning supplies has been surprisingly easy for me, largely thanks to an idea from Pinterest. This is probably the easiest organization hack I’ve come across. Pick up an over-the-door shoe organizer like this one and fill it with cleaning and laundry products.
Originally, I ordered an over-the-door organizer like this one, but found that it was difficult to keep in order. Individual slots work better. We got tired of trying to make the original organizer work with the laundry products, so we moved it to a linen closet and ordered the shoe organizer.
Now, the original over-the-door organizer houses spare paper towels and the like, while the shoe organizer has laundry products, wet wipes, Swiffer pads, and trash bags. Both of these organizers worked, but we definitely found the shoe organizer to be easier to manage.
Ready to tackle your pantry organization next?
Get simple tips and see my favorite kitchen and pantry organization tools here!
*This post was originally published in May 2019. It was most recently updated on August 25, 2023.
