Hey friends! One of my goals for 2019 is to clear the clutter in some key areas of our home.  Over the years there are a few spaces in our home that I’ve always had a hard time keeping organized and clutter free.  They become these little areas of frustration that slowly nag at me and eventually get bad enough that I do a big clear out and then start fresh.

I recently read “Homebody” by Joanna Gaines.  One of the consistent themes of the book was to view your home and really see how your family lives in it.  It was recommended that you look for the problem areas and then find solutions for them.  Does your husband always throw his hat down on the bedroom floor?  Why not give him some wall hooks to hang it on.  Are you constantly making a pile of items that need to go upstairs?  Why not place a nice basket at the base of the stairs to put these items in.

I decided to take this advice and spent some time walking around my house finding some of these problem areas and coming up with some easy solutions.  I’m committed to continue doing this and stay on top of it.  I thought I’d share a few of my problem areas and their brand new solutions.

All the things

The top of my husbands dresser was ALWAYS full of random receipts, loose change, keys, and more.  Basically, the top of his dresser held all the things.  He’s busy, were busy, life is just busy so its not realistic to keep those items caught up.  He always gets to it but it never looked nice and the clutter of it was just another reminder of “things to do” when we were in our room.  Being that our room is meant to be a place of relaxation and rest, I knew I needed to find a better solution to this cluttered dresser situation.

So, I placed a catch all basket on his dresser.  You would think this is an easy fix but the key is that he actually places ‘all the things’ in the basket.  So, we had a little husband/wife chat and I explained the new routine.  Fingers crossed that he plays along;)

Cluttered Staircase

The upstairs pile.  I mentioned this at the beginning of my post.  My kids rooms and bathroom are upstairs and as all kids do, they tend to leave little pieces of their lives all over the house.  I found myself constantly adding items on the stairs that needed to go back to their rooms or bathroom.

A cute little basket on the stairs to hold these items and a rule that the basket needs to be emptied by the end of the day. Here’s hoping!

Solo Socks

The missing sock saga.  Every family has one, the sock thief.  No one knows where they go or why but I’m pretty sure every household has this issue.  For years I’ve let the “one sock collection” build up in a large laundry basket and every few months go through and decide whether I’ve given up on finding the match, eventually throwing the solo sock in the garbage.

You guys, I’ve had like 30 random socks sitting in a basket before FOR MONTHS.  I guess I have a hard time letting go ha!

I bought a cute little metal bin that sits on the laundry counter AND made a new rule: There can’t be more random socks than this small metal bin can hold.  This hopefully will ensure that I’m not holding onto random socks for months on end.  Wish me luck!

Bath Toys

Our poor master bathroom has always been one of the hardest areas to keep clutter free.  Its probably the biggest sore spot for me and I think the fact that no one but us sees is just makes it harder because naturally it becomes the last place I get to.

Its also the place where we bathe our little one because its a big fun soaker tub and the most accessible.  This added another element of clutter to our bathroom though because of the bath toys.  I needed to find a solution that would look nice and keep the toys hidden between bath times.  I found this plastic basket that looks like a cute wicker basket.  The perfect solution! Now the toys are tucked away neatly.

Letter board Pieces

All the letter board pieces! Ok, this one will only pertain to anyone who frequently changes their letter board.  I love switching up my quotes regularly but always dreaded how long it took looking for the right letter/number/symbol in the little bag that came with it.

I can’t even remember where I saw this idea but knew it was going to be a game changer.  This is actually a fishing tackle box that I found to organize mine and its going to make changing my letter board to much easier!

In a perfect world, there would just be no clutter, right?  I also know that some people are really good at keeping the clutter at bay and just not allowing it to grow.  I think for me I was always trying to achieve that but it wasn’t realistic for our lifestyle.  These little solutions help me to stay on top of it better but also give me a little grace in the meantime and help keep the little piles of “life” look a bit better until then;)

Do you have any home organization hacks?  I know there are TONS more out there!  I want to keep finding these little solutions that encourage a less cluttered life because It does make our home feel more like a peaceful haven when I’m not looking at “to do” lists all the time:)

Until next time,

xoxo