The 5 easiest spots to organize in your home

If organizing doesn’t come naturally for you, then it’s best to ease into getting your home organized by starting with an easy area. Save the tough, complicated spots until after you have successfully organized some of the simpler spots in your home. But where are these simpler spots? Here are the top 5 easiest-to-organize spots in your home. Check back Monday to read about the top 5 hardest-to-organize spots:

Top 5 Easiest-to-Organize Spots (#1 is easiest):

5. Pantry Fairly easy because we are not dealing with items that hold a lot of memories or were very expensive. If you have ever been inside a grocery store, then you can organize your pantry. Start by tossing all of the expired, moldy, buggy or unlabeled, don’t-know-what-it-is food. Donate food that is still good but your family will never eat to your local food pantry. Then organize your pantry the way a grocery store is organized by designating a section for each type of food (eg. all the pasta and rice on the top shelf, all of the canned vegetables on the middle shelf, etc.) Label those shelves so someone in your family besides you can actually put things away. You might need a few products such as risers and pull-out drawers to maximize space, but consider that a really valid excuse to spend an hour collecting ideas from Pinterest.

4. Gift wrap Your gift wrap is pretty easy to organize because you simply toss the ugly, wrinkled, torn or never-used items (I’m talking about you, 50th anniversary-themed gift wrap!) Then you group like items together. For this type of project, you might want to purchase a gift wrap organizing device. Here’s an old blog post of mine with some ideas.

3. Bathroom Don’t let the size of the space intimidate you. It is in the easy category because we are not usually dealing with sentimental objects in the bathroom or lots of little items that defy categorization. Work one shelf or drawer at a time. Toss expired cosmetics and medicines. Toss products you never liked or will never use. As a general rule of thumb, if it’s covered with dust or grime, toss it (the dust and grime indicates that you are probably not using it). Then designate each drawer or shelf with a category (eg. cosmetics, hair products, shaving items) and put items away.

2. Linen Closet Not too many decisions to make here, just grouping like with like (the more decisions you have to make, the harder the project is). Pull everything out on to the floor. Toss all of your threadbare, ripped or stained towels (or donate them to your local vet’s office or humane society). If you don’t like mismatched sheet sets, discard any sheets that are not part of a full set. Then fold everything back up. Group your towels on the shelves by bathroom. Group your linens together by bedroom. Toiletries or cleaning products get grouped together into little baskets. Label the baskets. That’s it.

1. Tupperware/Gladware This is the easiest spot in the house to organize because it requires very little decision-making, very few steps, hardly any time and no purchases. Simply pull all of your Tupperware out of the cupboards. Match up lids with containers. Containers without lids and lids without containers get chucked. Do not save more than 15 containers. Nest all of your square-shaped containers together, your rectangular shaped ones together and your circular ones together Place lids on their sides, grouped together by shape in an empty container. When it comes to organizing, it doesn’t get much easier than that.

You will notice that the easy spots all involve minimal decision-making, relatively small spaces and few to no new purchases (purchases can be tough because they require more decision-making). So if you are new to organizing and feeling a little overwhelmed, make it easy by starting small. And if even the small spots intimidate you, you might want to consider calling a professional organizer (like me!) to come and help you.

Check back on Monday to read about the 5 hardest spots to organize. And in the comments below, let me know if you agree that the 5 spaces I listed today are easy to organize. If they are not, what makes them hard for you? What are easier-to-organize spots in your opinion?