Organize Like a Pro With 4 Simple Steps

2022 is around the corner. You’re busy making your list of new year’s resolutions and goals. I bet you have home organization on that list. If so, read on to find out four simple steps you can take to help you learn how to organize and declutter like a pro.

I collaborated with Christen Fackler, a professional organizer and owner of iOrganize for this article. According to Christen, there are four phases of organization. Purging, sorting, organizing, and maintaining. Let’s learn how to organize your home room by room as we break down each phase.

To Organize Like a Pro, Make a Plan

Before you begin, it’s very important that you make a plan. Write out a list of areas in your home that you want to organize. If it’s the entire house, write down each room. Work through your spaces one room at a time. You can organize smaller projects in one day. Give yourself 30 days to tackle an entire house of organizing. Breaking it down and putting it on paper will help you stay organized like a pro, and on task. See there, you’re already learning how to organize by organizing your organization project. 😉

Purge

The first thing to do to organize like a pro is to purge. By purging, you remove anything that doesn’t belong. The reason to do this first is so that you can organize what’s left.

Declutter

The hardest part of organizing any space in your home is decluttering. Decluttering is an important decision making process. You are making decisions on what to get rid of in your home or your environment. This is the time to be honest with yourself. Ask yourself these questions when working on your clutter:

Do I need this? Does it serve me? Does it bring value to my life? Could somebody else use it? Am I going to finish this project? etc.

Learn When To Let Go

Sometimes it is hard to know what to get rid of, and even if you should get rid of it. A great tip to see if you are using those items or not is to make a “time stamp”. When you find an item in your home and you’re not sure if you will use it or not, take a Sharpie and write today’s date on it. Use painter’s tape to write the date on the item when you don’t want to write directly on it. Place the item back, or in a new, more organized place. When you come across that item again a year or two from now you’ll see that date you wrote. Have you used the item at all in that time? Knowing how long that item has sat in your home unused may help you feel more secure about letting it go.

What do you do with the things you have emotional attachments to? Things like trophies, awards, souvenirs, your kids school artwork? Items in this category usually don’t have a specific use. They are things that bring up feelings from our past. There are a couple of ways you can work with these items. You can gather it all up from around your home and put it in to a bin. Or even a decorative container like a wooden chest, or a basket with a lid. Another tip is to let it go. Take a picture of the item first. This way you’ll still have a visual reminder of that item, but on a more manageable scale.

Sort

When going through your things, put your like items together. This could be by size, color, category, by how often you use them, etc.

Create A System

During your project, it’s very easy to find something that belongs in another room and leave to put it away. This not only takes more time to do, but it can distract you from the task at hand. Instead, grab a few bins to take with you from room to room as you declutter and organize. One bin for “trash”, one for “donate”, and one for “relocate”. Once you finish with that room, then you can take care of each bin.

Trash

Take all of the trash out to the trash bin, and/or sort out items to be recycled.

Donate

Place items for donation into a box or bag and place in an area out of the way for now as you’ll be adding to it as you go along. Once you are all finished organizing, place that bin or box in your car immediately. This way it’s there ready for you to drop off when you go out next.

Relocate

It’s best to wait until the end of the day, or the end of your organizing project to work on this bin. Unless the bin starts to fill up, then it might be a good idea to tackle this halfway through.

Organize

This is where you get to decide not only where your stuff should live, but what container or area to house them in. This could be in bins, drawers, baskets, cabinets, on wall hooks, etc.

Decide Where Your Stuff Should Go

Figuring out where the stuff should go is sometimes difficult to do as well. Think about the interior space in your home as real estate for your stuff. The prime real estate is anywhere within your reach. Store your most used items there. For example, place that water bottle you use every day on the easiest shelf to reach. That coffee thermos that only gets used a few times a year goes on the top cabinet in the back.

Keep Your Kitchen Table a Sacred Place To Eat

If you have a kitchen table with papers piling up, this could mean that you need a proper desk, or work space in your home. If you have toys piling up near the table, then you need a better system to store those toys, like a toy box or shelving. The goal is to use the space in your home for its proper function. Like being able to sit down and have a meal at your kitchen table without first having to move piles of papers or toys. This applies to any space in your home. If clutter is piling up on your kitchen counters, coffee table, or desk, look at finding a new home for those items. This helps to keep your spaces functioning the way they are meant to.

Decide If You Prefer Design Or Function

Do you prefer your space to look pretty? Or do you want function? You can have both, and neither way is wright or wrong. Knowing what you prefer and what your priorities are in your space can help you decide how to best organize.

Function Over Design

This means you want to organize in a way that doesn’t necessarily need to look pretty. For example, stack those board games up according to size and place them on the living room shelf. Place a bowl on your entry table to hold your keys, wallet and sunglasses. As long as everything is organized, has a home, and is accessible, you can function.

Design Over Function

Organize your things so that they look pretty, and minimalistic. Things get put away, behind closed doors or drawers, and/or in decorative bins. For those board games, place them inside a cabinet with doors in your living room so you can’t see them. That bowl on your entry table becomes a decorative wooden box with a lid so you can’t see the contents inside. Tuck everything away in decorative ways.

Label Everything

Time spent looking for stuff is time wasted. To help you make the most of all your organizing work, make it easy to find everything when you need it again. Labels help you find everything you need fast. There are so many options. Use a label maker, painter’s tape, pretty labels, or write on the bin or item with a Sharpie

Give Everything a Home

When you’re losing things, like your glasses, your keys, or your phone, it’s because your unconsciously putting them where they don’t belong. Give each item their own place to live and make an effort to put the items in their “home” each time you set them down. This will narrow down the places where they could be the next time you go to look for them. Doing this each time will create a habit and soon you’ll always know where they are.

Maintain

To keep your space organized, you have to realize how it got that way to begin with. Self awareness and decision making are very important characteristics to have to keep your spaces organized.

Pay Attention To Visual Cues

When you see that your bins are overflowing, or the drawers are becoming a catchall, it’s time to address it. Perhaps your categories have grown and you need bigger bins or spaces to hold them. Tune in to these visual cues to tell you when it’s time to reorganize or make adjustments to your system.

Create Rules

After you’ve gone through your home and have a place for everything, it will be easy to keep it going. Set aside some time each week, or month, to go through your space and relocate items that have lost their way. It won’t take as long if you stay on top of it.

Recognize the Journey

With busy schedules and other people in your household, it’s easy for things to pile up on you and get out of place again. Don’t be hard on yourself or get discouraged. Recognize that you’re only human, and you can start again.

Ultimately, making the decision to get your home more organized is a great first step. Don’t overdo it and set unrealistic goals and expectations. This only causes more stress. Messy doesn’t necessarily mean that you are unorganized. You don’t ever have to be perfectly organized, and that’s okay. Nobody else is either.

About Christen Fackler

Christen has been professionally offering home organizing services for 12 years. She brings enthusiasm and motivation to any project.

As a teenager when babysitting or housesitting for friends and family her organizing and attention to detail was evident. It wasn’t until after working various jobs in customer service, retail, warehouses, nanny for quadruplets and a special needs sports instructor that Christen officially branded her business iOrganize in 2009.  You can catch daily tips on her TikTok and YouTube channels.

Check Out These Great Organizing Products