Two things that really work for me. First a place for everything (and with that returning things to that place). Second, trays to contain stuff in cupboards; I have started using clear trays to help group stuff in the kitchen and it is now so much easier to keep things clean and to get what I need when I need it. An easy thing that has made a huge difference in day to day life.

We barely have kitchen cabinet space, so we converted a hallway closet into a pantry. This satisfies my need to hoard canned goods and pastas :) and lets us reserve the small amounts of cabinet space that we have for things we use on a daily basis, like dishes.

A paper shredder! I used to let old bills and other papers pile up, then I'd sort and file when the stack became unmanageable. When the file drawer got too full, I'd throw them out. Hmmm. Now I keep a couple of recent month's worth for reference, and the bottom of my (tiny) paper pile gets shredded or recycled regularly.

Ah, forgot to explain how we did it. We couldn't mount shelves, so we bought metal standalone shelves from Home Depot and set them up inside the closet.

My purse organizer that I got for Christmas from QVC! It's wonderful!

I second the use of trays to group items and maintain more organized shelves and closets. Everything is so much easier in terms of tidiness and I have a much better idea of what I have and need to replace.

Believe it or not, the AT book helped us with this one. We have an out box in every room - usually a shoe box-sized plastic tote. This outbox doesn't necessarily mean 'out of the house' so much as 'out of the room'. That way, we can do a quick clean in each room and not worry about having to run things all over the place. When I have five minutes, I distribute a box to the proper rooms.

First one is translucent plastic boxes..... clear enough to know what's inside and opaque enought to not look too messy. Also keeping them as similarly sized as possible.

Second, is my personal promise of being able to actually "see" my closet floor.... That simple detail helps you be organized without feeling it like a grueling task.

@manu_pity - closet floor? What's that? Mine's just this black hole to where shoes disappear.

manu-pity is right; being able to see your closet floor just makes me feel civilized. Ikea Trones mounted on the sidewalls of the closet do it for me and my shoes.

We're a northern city, so we have plenty of outdoor clothing.
Instead of putting limited funds into renovating the kitchen, we expanded the front entrance foyer, and created storage for hanging coats, putting away boots and shoes, boxes for mitts etc. Best move ever.
Next step? Combination recharging and communications corner in the hallway. Phone, laptop, recharger wrangler and spare batteries are all going to be found in one centrally located place. Can't wait!
Closets will have to wait. (Arghh!)

Transparent containers everywhere possible. We use the transparent shoe boxes (larger size) from The Container Store in our only closet. In the kitchen cupboards we use glass canisters to store any kind of food that will reasonably fit in them (rice, popcorn, etc.). We have no drawers in our apt., including our kitchen, so we've had to be creative. Normally I hate buying plastic, but these boxes have been in use for 10 years. And this year I indulged my Virgo geekiness buy buying a label-maker;)

@DeborahMcP: You're so right. Having a separated mudroom is my key to keeping the whole house clean and organized. It's a luxury, I know, but if you can find a way to eek one out it's well worth it. Everything stops there: dirt, snow, mail, purse, stuff that needs fixing/cleaning/donating. If it's a mess I just shut the door until I have time to straighten it. Too many houses put an emphasis on openness and space for space's sake, and not enough on function.

We live in a 1000 square foot townhouse, and with two adults, a toddler, a newborn, and a 60-pound dog, it's a tight fit. I have learned that spending a little money on the invisible parts of the house--closet shelves, etc., makes a huge difference. I can't tell you how many years we scooped our dog's food out of its bag in the closet because I was too cheap to buy the dog food bin on wheels from Container Store. But the bin takes up so much less space, keeps the (tiny!) coat closet neater, and lets us see when we're low on food.

We are slowly but surely identifying and purchasing bins, shelving, baskets, etc., for everything that leads to clutter/wasted space. Oxo stackable containers for the beans and grains, bins for the baby's toys and outgrown clothes, baskets for our winter scarves and hats...

I suppose this is just a longer version of the first answer: a place for everything and everything in its place.

Eveything has its place is the absolute key to being organized. As for tools: (if you can call them that) baskets, baskets, baskets!

1. Breathing Space. It's my goal to have every part of my house have room to breathe (visually-speaking.) If items aren't jammed up against each other it looks cleaner!

2. IKEA's Expidit saved our living room from our book collection.

3. Hanging sweater organizers help store workout clothing, lounge pants, etc. since our teeny tiny dresser doesn't fit it all.

I try to live by "erase the evidence" (wish I could remember where I originally came across the concept). I tidy and clean as I go and return the space to it's original condition ASAP. For example, when I get up in the morning I make the bed, tidy the nightstand and make sure clothes are in the hamper. Every possible scrap of mail is shredded/filed/recycled as soon as I pick it up. Getting into this habit really helped when I was starting out on decluttering/organizing. I stopped making clutter and then slowly chipped away at what had accumulated.

Finding systems that work. I just put a small table in our teensy vestibule/entry with a bowl to catch keys, wallets, etc. I had a tray on the inside of the closet door, but it never got used so keys, wallets, etc., got strewn across the house. Now, everything goes in the bowl. It's not perfect, but it is much better than before.

I second bfootnovellista. AT has really inspired me, too. We've done some serious purging & cosmetic updates in our small house
in the last month. We've redone the entryway, decluttered my huge desk and repainted/updated the kids' rooms. We've incorporated clever hidden storage plus decluttered in every room of the house. We have plans to replace the pedestal sink with a cabinet sink in the bathroom next and building new kitchen cabinet cupboards and shelves (it's s tiny galley kitchen). In the mean time we are continuing to declutter and downsize stashes all over the house.

From perusing AT, I've reassessed what we need & options for what's left. I've purged books, dvds & cd's (because of using ebooks, lending services like Netflix and Hulu, and the library), organizing what's left in clever and attractive ways and incorporating as green of options for new changes as I can find in our budget and workspace allows. I'm planning my spring container garden with the help of AT, too.

One of the small changes I love is storing pet food in different size Mason jars. They're on top off a newly painted 4ft tall cabinet in the hallway. The jars show us what's left and inspires us to remember to feed the gerbils, rabbit and dog, and my kids are old enough to not break the jars!

Absolutely clean as you go. Makes a huge difference.

My SO and I are finally getting our own apartment w/o roommates, and we're trying to figure out our personal organizational style. He'd live forever with piles of clothing on the closet floor. I can't. stand. it.

I think hanging shoe organizers on the door and some shelving with bins will be next.

Every weekend for the past few weeks, I've cleaned out a room of its excess. The first weekend of the new year, it was my living room (loads of magazines were recycled, dvds were re-organized), then my bedroom (6 bags of clothes were donated), last weekend was my storage closet (another trunk-load donated) and yesterday it was my bathroom and kitchen (many expired items were tossed and a few new storage containers were utilized). Next weekend, I'll focus on the paperwork accumulating on my desk and get to work on my taxes.
These bigger clean outs have helped me see what stuff I actually value and use on a regular basis. It has also helped with more mundane, regular cleaning too - less stuff to dust, vacuum around, etc.

My husband and I are neat freaks. We are fortunate beyond belief to have a 3800 sq ft rambler in which to lose each other (this is slapstick comedy on a summer day with doors and windows open, each circling the house and yard looking for the other). In spite of all of this space, real limitations to getting organized since we moved in 12 months ago are proper shelving and containers. I have post-poned organizing in our guest room and my office for the basic want of consistently sized storage bins and missing shelves in closets. The common theme in the comments is a requirement for what I'll call an "organization infrastructure" -- this can't be underestimated!

Yep, I agree about a label maker. Love mine.

Leave space: don't fill a space to capacity. It makes getting to and replacing cleaning supplies or linens or whathaveyou tedious. And if an organization task is tedious, one is unlikely to maintain the habit.

Checklists posted inside cabinets: it's useful to keep an inventory list in a clear sleeve (or laminated) with a fine-tipped dry erase pen in places like pantry, laundry, bathroom. When an item runs out, mark it off and then cruise the lists before a shopping trip. Try as I might, if I don't keep track I will never remember the random mix of items that need replacing at radom times (toothpaste, tissues, windex, silver polish, cat litter....)

Two-tiered Lazy susan in the bathroom cupboard. Levels for Hair products and cleaning supplies. Nothing gets shoved to the back of a cupboard beyond my reach or eyeline any longer.

Drawer organizer trays are also a quick happy fix. Can't wait to solve my shoe problem

Mason Jars! I used mason jars to store just about everything and anything, dry goods, herbs and spices, pens, embroidery floss, loose change etc.

I actually read someone's post on another thread which really revolutionized the organization in my home. They said whenever they leave a room they take something with them that doesn't belong there. It works so well for me and yet it is such a simple idea.

I absolutely agree with clean up as you go. No matter how tired I am after a full day of work then a workout at the gym, I hang up clothes, put away shoes, go through mail, clean up after dinner and pick up the living room. It's a routine now and I never have piles to work through during the weekends.

A couple things:

I know this sounds stupid, but I went and got a really cute color wheel doorknob for the entryway door. It's so cute that whenever I walk into the apartment I stop to look at it, which means I remember to put my coat away where it belongs!

Also, my wife got an e-reader for Christmas. She has a huge collection of those ugly pulpy fantasy novels, and they were really cluttering up the place. Now, she can have as many of those as she wants, but in digital form where they don't take up physical space. We still have a lot of books, but increasingly, they are the ones that have some good reason to be left in paper- signed by the author, big art books, antiques, beautifully made books, and those few old favorites that have the creases in the spine at the best parts.

finally, having Netflix streaming on my computer, and a safe spot in the kitchen to perch my laptop has made a big difference in my willingness to wash a bunch of dishes. Sometimes, if i want to finish an episode, and I've run out of dishes, I'll start cleaning the rest of the kitchen. It takes a tedious chore(s) and turns it into some relaxing "me time" that feels more frivolous than it is.

We utilize wasted space under our bed with drawers, eliminating the need for a dresser in our small room.

http://ourhumbleabowed.wordpress.com/

I keep several plastic bins in my pantry to corral snack food. With a busy household we end up with lots of pre-packaged, convenience foods. Instead of putting all the cardboard boxes into the pantry, I have a bin for salty snacks and a bin for sweet snacks. It makes it so much easier to pack lunches in the morning! Then, when the baby was born I added a third bin for clean baby bottles.

Color coordinating my clothes. Both in the closet and in my dressers.

I have my clothes separated by type, e.g., pants, shirts, dresses, etc., then by color. It just occurred to me now I need to do my shoes this way!

Those hanging sweater organizers are a godsend. I have one that I use for folded clothes in the closet, one for shoes, and one for purses. I can fit 3-4 pairs or shoes per shelf on those things. Way better than the tiny shoe-specific ones. Whoever designed those didn't own 12 pairs of stilettos. I can tell you that much.

Also, vertical storage. I have wire shelves up the ceiling in every closet. My husband thinks I'm nuts for putting shelves on top of the built-in closet shelves, but it makes a huge difference.

I agree with clean as you go. My husband is almost military like in his cleaning (he grew up in a military home, so I guess that's why!) I grew up with hippies so cleaning was kinda...lax. He tends to do things in a HUGE way: cleaning one room from Top to Bottom. That is way too much work for me! hehe. I settled on "do a little bit every day or as you see it". If I'm in the bathroom and think the sink could use a cleaning, I take care of it (it takes one minute!) , but it doesn't mean I have to then go and clean the shower the floors etc and turn it into an hour project. If I operated on that mentatlity I would NEVER clean/organize. For me it's one step at a time.

Organize-wise I am big on putting/keeping like with like. I organize the kitchen that way - my kitchenaid is near the cabinet with all the baking items, the spices are near the stove, etc.

The container store is a lifesaver! We've been saving all year so we could put an elfa system in our closest this Feb (they have a 30% special right now!). This will be huge for us - I cannot wait! Honestly, looking into my closet right now makes me shudder....

I love to organize but can get a bit hung up on the price of all those bins/organizing items. For instance, I have shelves that could really benefit from matching boxes/files etc, but those suckers add up fast! I'm always afraid to buy just one for fear that they will discontinue the rest of the colors before I've bought them

Love reading everyone's comments...lazy susan and mason jars are a great idea!

I SO wish we had a mudroom. Knowing where to stash our bikes, raquetball stuff, ski and scuba gear is hard when we barely have room for every day stuff (and no we can't hang anything on the walls, they're plaster and crumble like mad).

We live in a colonial where apparently people used to only have ten items to hang in their closets. We live in New England and winter stuff is very hard to store.

The saving grace has been owning a duplex. In addition to being a stray cat rescue, the downstairs has plenty of space so we bought clear plastic containers and stash coats and sweaters.

For clutter we are focused on buying those pretty little drawer units and anything else that will help us sort. A place for everything and all that.

I suppose the last secret is to make it simple: I was discouraged so I took all my junk and tossed it into clear containers. Instant clean house! Now each day I'm sorting through one container at a time, most of the stuff will be sold.

When we moved to our current rental from out of state, we used a lot of copy paper boxes for packing.
When I unpacked the pantry, I used the lids to those boxes as trays to keep things from slipping through the wire shelves.
It was supposed to be temporary, but then I used a sharpie to label the trays and they work so well, they stayed. Not Martha-y, but organized and cheap.

I am a minimalist, I can't stand clutter and will force the spouse as well as the children to donate things on a weekly basis. If you haven't worn the item in over a year, toss it. If you haven't played with it in a few years toss it. New items keep coming into the home be it clothing, accessories, gifts etc.. and the one way to keep your home uncluttered is using this method.
If you all decide to keep something that is not used but is kept for sentimental reasons, I have a host of Metal Storage Cabinets in my basement that keeps things tight, dry and neat.

Going to declutter our home and add some much needed shelving to our cramped 1930's closets!

2 things:

1) My house mantra (thanks to Radiohead) is "Everything in it's right place". If I don't have a place for it, get rid of it.

2) Moving the closet dowel up about a 8-10 inches in every closet we have has given us so much more space for cubbies/bins/shelving underneath the hanging clothing.

When I'm in serious pair-down mode, If I wouldn't move with it to another place then it gets tossed. I have a lot of personal artwork that has found it's way on the walls this way, got rid of the junk I thought others would want to see in my space and just kept what I really wanted.

Ziploc bags (w/zipper, not the ones you need to pinch closed) in every size. Life changing.

I use this method for any area in my home:
Regroup things similar. Keep only what I need and love in each group. Keep the group together when storing. Discard the rest.
Easy.

Ikea shoe cabinets by my back door. I had some shoe racks back there and they just turned into a messy pile of shoes ontop of the rack, and took up a decent amount of floor space.

I just installed 2 Skar units over the weekend and they are only 7" deep so take up virtually no space, hold 12 pairs of shoes total, give me an little extra shelf area for keys/wallet/phone landing, and make the area look much less messy/cluttered since all the shoes are behind closed doors.

It also gave me the needed space to put a little bench by the back door bench so you can sit down and take your shoes off ontop of the door mat without having to walk all the way to the kitchen table to sit (and therefore track dirty snow across the floor).

Shelves. In closets, storage areas, garages. Shelves, everywhere. And the clear bins, everywhere.
Also, make it pretty. Paint the closet something fun. Line the shelves with pretty fabric. Pin things to cork which make a nice design on the wall. A little beauty can be inspiring.

Agree with trying to make a place for everything. Some place easily reachable, if it is something I need to used and not just stored.

Sometimes I've purchased organizing items (bookshelves to fit in odd places; bamboo drawer organizers for drawers everywhere) and then, awhile after it was all organized, decided that I'd be better off just getting rid of the stuff I organized. Guess it is a process. Which I'm working on (purging books to donate, then will sell the bookshelves I no longer need on craigslist.)

As someone who usually tends to move, for various reasons, I find buying organizer items that will readily fit in new places the best idea. So, being an apartment dweller, tools and all related stuff (tapes, glues, etc) are in stacking shoe-size drawers (yes, container store), so they can fit in various places in closets in various apartments, which a larger tool chest size thing wouldn't necessarily. Ditto for bamboo drawers organizers - once I get rid of all the stuff I sorted into them in bathroom drawers, I can put them to use in other drawers. Am using them in drawers in every room in the house. Can reconfigure in another apartment's drawers. I like stuff I can reuse in various rooms for different purposes.

When I don't move for years, I try to pretend I'm moving soon when cleaning - to figure out what to purge, whatever I wouldn't want to pack and move.

Bill paying system: Two folders labeled
1/15 and 16/31.

I've never paid a bill late since.

I read this organizing tip in a magazine and it has been a godsend: clear hanging shoe organizers for items other than shoes.

I've used them for scarves and sunglasses in a coat closet, for chargers and cords, for small pantry items...you name it. They are cheap, easy to find and hang, and endlessly useful. I'm sorry I can't credit where I read this -- I would like to thank the author! Here's one for sale on amazon if you are interested:

http://www.amazon.com/Honey-Can-Do-Clear-Organizer-Storage-White/dp/B001F51AHG/ref=sr_1_8?ie=UTF8&qid=1296006624&sr=8-8

I'm extremely organised but the three other people who live in this house like to destroy my organisation daily.

Love organizing! I've worked for a family that wasn't very organized resulting in getting really serious with mine. Also I try to have a green approach to organizing. These are my rules/tips:
- Everything has a place
- Not used or worn for a year = exit
- When buying something, asking myself: Is it durable (material)? Will it last? Do I need it?
- Love what you have, only have what you love (make quite some money selling stuff I wasn't really excited about having)
- Less is more; rather nothing than a mediocre version of something I would like to have
- Rather 2nd hand than new when it comes to many clothing items and interior decor/kitchen
- Avoid plastic as much as possible (Talking about a change; bulk and spices are in recycled glass jars, leftovers in Pyrex, I've never saved more food from the garbage can now)
- Shoe racks from Ikea that you hang on the closet rod; no more stuff on the floor of the closet, so nice!
- Sturdy Laundry hamper that now rolls into the closet
- Old dresser drawers for mittens, bags, cleaning supplies and stock.

I'm with Seapup (and probably others). Clear plastic boxes from the Container Store. We started using them about 6 years ago and have added more over time until they are our primary storage box in the house. We have open top ones in the closet to sort clothes. We have a stack of them with out of season clothes in the laundry room. I have a dozen or so of the shoe box size (most of ours are sweater size) in the master bathroom to corral all the haircare/makeup/medicine. We've got stacks of the bigger ones in the guest bedroom holding linens, in the master closet holding photographs and ongoing projects, and even in the kitchen cabinets corralling baking tools and spices.

A labeling gun helps. The real place that the labeling gun helped was in the kitchen cabinets. Every shelf is labeled so that anyone can find or put something away. Previously my husband would just put things back where there was space because he wasn't sure where it went. Friends over for baking wouldn't be sure where anything was or should go. I spent the better part of a week cleaning the cabinets out and organizing them with the label maker and it's been a breeze to upkeep.

And the other strange but very handy organizing fix was dedicating closet space to be the library. We have about 80feet of books (in terms of necessary bookshelf space). We're both bookworms and they're not the pretty books you necessarily want to display in the living room. He reads fantasy, I ready trashy romance. We both read urban horror. We take the loss of closet space and installed elfa bookshelves in two of the four sections of our master closet. It's very library like and keeps the books out of the public areas of our house. Yes we have less closet space but we only put out the seasonally relevant stuff.

Right now all the shorts and short sleeved shirts along with half of our jeans, and wardrobe basics (stuff that it's nice to rotate and change up) are in clear plastic boxes in the laundry room waiting for the season to change.

An interior designer whose name I don't remember wrote how to decide whether to keep a home furnishing item. If you were to see it for sale used for $50 US, would you buy it and race straight home with it? If so, then keep it. If not, then release it.

womens ski pants
I'm extremely organised but the three other people who live in this house like to destroy my organisation daily.