Getting Organized for the New Year
As the Holidays and the year are coming to an end, we are left with the question of what to do with all of the decorations and gifts now scattered about the house. Here are a few ideas we have used or will be employing the the coming days.
- Storing Decorations
Whether you have a little or a lot of holiday decorations, you have to put them somewhere for the other 11 months of the year. Plastic totes are a really easy, fairly inexpensive way to keep everything in its place. Boxes work but if you are going to put them in the attic like many of us do, remember that cockroaches love cardboard as food and nesting material.
- Prioritizing what decorations to keep
We recently helped a family member move and discovered that Holiday decorations have a way of sticking around through the years. We vowed that moving forward we would purge old as we accumulated new. Tastes and styles change, as you update your decor let the old stuff go. Ridding yourself of duplicates and broken items is a great start.
- Toys/Playroom
Any home with children has toys, and this time of year there are some really exciting new favorites. The old bin still works really well, but for smaller items or fragile ones you may need to think outside of the toy box. Bookshelves combined with baskets or trays are a fairly cheap and aesthetically pleasing way to keep the mess at bay. An inexpensive hammock or net hanging in a corner is great for stuffed toys. Hanging shoe organizers are a fun and easy way to store dolls or action figures. Bonus points for displaying them in a clear organizer! For very small items like legos, a basic tackle box keeps things separated and organized. It also makes them easier to locate.
- Garage/Shed
As with anything else, budget has a lot to do with how you go about organizing your garage. I am sure many of you got big boy/big girl toys for the holidays. I have seen garages that look like NFL locker rooms or Nascar offices, but you don’t have to go crazy. Peg boards don’t cost a lot and can do wonders. One of the easiest and most cost efficient methods is totes. You can stack them, put them in simple home-made wooden racks or on shelves. One of my personal favorites is if you know of a school that is getting new lockers installed, the old ones can be repainted and repurposed into plenty of out of the way storage.
We have been in many beautiful homes over the years and one of the things that always stands out to me is how many simple yet create ways there are to personalize and de-clutter different spaces. On a side note, be careful when you are throwing out the wrappers and boxes from all of those new toys. You don’t want just anyone knowing the size and brand of your TV because they drove by. You can put boxes in a bin or turn the labels inside-out so it is not an advertisement. Please share your ideas with us. We love being able to pass on tips, and use them ourselves!
