TECHNOTES: Home Organization Follow-Up

Did you do some organizing this Summer before the busy school season started? 

We ran a 3-week series on how to organize your office, kitchen, and garage.  Hopefully, these articles motivated you to give some of the ideas a try in your own home.

The ideas motivated me! I’d love to say I utilized these great home organization tips throughout my whole home, but I didn’t get that carried away. 

However, just organizing a couple of things in my kitchen motivated my son (the young chef) and my husband to organize other parts of the kitchen.  Score!

Home Organization – What We Did

So here’s a follow-up article to show you a few pictures of how I organized parts of my office, kitchen, and garage. 

Feel free to reach out if you need help in implementing any of these home organization ideas in your own home.

Office

I spend a lot of time in my office.  There are a couple of drawers I used more than the others.  Although I have organized them over the years, they tend to get messy again. 

In our Office Organization article, we mentioned the Dollar Tree plastic containers for help on home organization.

I took my own advice and went to the Dollar Tree to buy a BUNCH of plastic small containers.  Some of them were 3 or 4 containers for a dollar! 

Finally, I can find things in the main drawer next to my desk.

The other drawer I use a lot is for storing extra cords, adapters, and small accessories. 

It’s been tough trying to find a USB-C, mini- USB, micro- USB, Apple Lightning, Apple 30-pin, and more! Now I can find them more easily!

Oh, and the cords under my desk are a mess.  I dread having to go down there.  But thanks to this simple trick, things will be easier in the future. 

I now have a collection of these bread wrappers by my desk, so I can label new cords as they come!

And here’s where I keep our tablets for safe-keeping and safe charging.  I keep it in my office. 

We recommend keeping phones and tablets downstairs in a centralized charging hub.  This way you can ensure your kids and teens aren’t up all night playing games and texting.

These small home organization changes make a big difference.  Finding things is easier and I just LOVE the way these drawers look when I open them, it’s like a nice surprise every time!

Kitchen

My kitchen can be a little overwhelming at times.  My son, our chef-in-training, loves to take it over. 

With everyone in charge of putting things away (or often not putting things away as is sometimes the case!), our kitchen drawers tend to get, well, a bit messy.

I loved this idea of using a tension rod to hold the lids of our pans and pots.  Our drawer is exceedingly long, so I needed to find a  long enough tension rod. 

The first tension rod I installed was too small in circumference and would bow with the pressure from the lids.  But this sturdier tension rods stays in place and keeps the lids out of the way, which is a great help.

My husband and son organized our spice drawer, it’s looking great!  

Here’s a clever way to keep cords wrapped with your appliances.  I bought this plastic hook with self-adhesion from the Dollar Tree.  They came 4 in a pack.

I’m a big fan of using clear glass jars to store essentials like flour, sugars, rice, popcorn kernels, lentils, and more. 

As I fancy myself as a bit of an amateur DIYer, I finally was able to create this Foil/Wrap Station I’ve always dreamed of. My husband helped me with the design and stain and I took care of the rest.  Love it!

Organizing your kitchen can actually be fun once you come up with ideas on how you can do it.  See more ideas in our Kitchen Organization article.

Garage

This Summer, an Odyssey of the Mind coach and beloved friend volunteered to help me clean out and organize my single car garage. 

In the picture below, I hadn’t clearly seen this wall in six years, as it was filled with cardboard and boards (from Odyssey of the Mind coaching all these years).

We cleared things out and I was able to create a nice workshop for my projects and Odyssey of the Mind problems (kids build all sorts of things for this competition).

I absolutely love my new space and being able to find things more easily.  My workbench is on wheels so I can wheel it outside to use when my Odyssey of the Mind teams come over to build.

I love the Slatwall behind my workbench and can organize it in any way I need.

You can buy Slatwall on eBay (for a better deal, look for used ones), retail store fixture places, and I have even found similar systems at  Home Depot.

My husband and I bought a bunch of Slatwall when Linens and Things went out of business.  We got it for a great deal the only catch is we had to take it down from the walls ourselves (and it’s heavy)!

We have a couple of wired racks we got when Linens and Things went out of business.  We keep balls in one of them. 

Putting wheels on this rack is so helpful.  Now I can swiftly move them out of the way or close to us as we shoot baskets in our garage (yes, we hung a backboard up on our back wall.  Works great when the cars are OUT of the garage!).

I bought some extra wheels so on a whim’s notice, I can wheel anything that comes to mind!

I love where I positioned my workbench but the problem is, there are not enough outlets to power important things…like my drill charging stations, my overhead lights, my fan, and charging my phone of course!

I bought this 25ft. Extension Cord Reel with 4 grounded outlets so I can bring power to my workbench.  And when I move my workbench outside, I can extend the cord out to bring power with me.

See our Garage Organization for more great ideas!

Home Organization

The thing about home organization is it can get very overwhelming.  When my friend and I organized my garage, we took nearly everything out.  Then when we were done, we had to put it back in the same garage or our larger garage. 

Things were a bit much lying around the whole Summer until we finally were able to get one of the garages clean.  I’m still working on the overflow in the larger garage!

My suggestion is not to drag everything out with rooms in your house that need an overhaul.  Choose a room or area to start with, like the office, kitchen, or garage.  Start small, like the hacks in this article. 

Conquer one drawer, one project, or one organizational hack at a time.  Before you know it, you’ll store up a lot of small wins and eventually, you will have reorganized one whole room.

Besides, there is a lot of satisfaction in just organizing one drawer, adding a tension rod to your drawer, or placing your flours and sugars in glass containers.  Every time you see your organization, you’ll smile.

Start small.  Make it your goal to organize one drawer in your kitchen, not the whole kitchen.  Then just go on from there!