Organizing

A tale as old as time: you find yourself with the luxury of space—a shelf, a closet, a garage, a basement—and then you observe yourself slowly but surely filling it. Suddenly, there are piles and heaps and plenty of shame. One hardy soul managed to turn things around, creating a garage that’s a joy rather than embarrassment. Let’s all get inspired to clean up our own messes!

My husband and I recently replaced our dresser, which spurred an event which I’ll be referring to in the confines of our relationship history as “The Great T-Shirt Eradication of 2018.” You see, between us, we own many, many tees. We could, as a couple, each wear a different shirt every day and maybe make it until Independence Day without doing laundry. At least, that was the case before “The Great T-Shirt Eradication of 2018.

Getting rid of clutter just feels good. And while there’s absolutely nothing wrong with doing something for our own well-being or for the benefit of our homes, Earth Day has us feeling a little green at the moment.

I don't have a fortune to customize the cabinets from top to bottom — just a few dollars here and there to maximize my kitchen's storage potential.

Even if you're not so sure the tiny life is for you, you can borrow these smart organizing strategies.

Back in the day (maybe sometime in the ’90s, depending on where you lived) you used to have to separate all your recycling. Paper in one bin, glass and plastic in another. Then single-stream recycling, as it’s called, came along and helped even reluctant residents jump on the recycling bandwagon. So today, without a thought, we can toss all our recyclables into a single bin.

I hate to invoke the “two types of people” trope, but I think it rings especially true here. There are two types of people in the world: Bullet journalers, and bullet journalers who haven’t started yet. I admittedly am in that second camp. I was even drinking the bujo haterade when the trend first came along. Technology offers so many advantages over pen-and-paper recordkeeping.

If you’re dealing with organizing a small space, it’s highly likely that at some point, you’ll be hitting up your nearest IKEA. And thankfully, the Swedish retailer recently released a real workhorse of a system for diminutive dwellings. We’re expecting to see this one thing in many a cramped kitchen very soon. The sage advice when you’re short on floor space is to maximize your walls. And the new KUNGSFORS series is definitely here to help with that.

This year, we’re on a mission to help you tackle spring cleaning on your time. Each weekday until April 13, we’ll guide you through a plan to clean and organize different areas of your home, but you’ll have the flexibility to choose exactly what to work on and how long you have to dedicate to the job. Sign up with your email so you don’t miss a spot!

We all know the benefits of making the bed every morning. Along with tidying up your bedroom in a pinch, this neat ritual helps set an orderly tone for the rest of your day. Clearing off your coffee table every day can be similar. As one Apartment Therapy reader put it: “Clearing off the coffee table is the making-the-bed of the living room!” Take a few minutes to clean up your coffee table each day, and you’ll enjoy a clearer mind and set the tone for a cleaner living room.

In every home I’ve ever lived in, the cabinets under my kitchen sink have devolved into terrifying, damp caves of old cleaning supplies, trash bags, and other objects I’m not sure where else to store. Often, there comes a point I simply don’t want to open the doors and see what’s waiting for me inside. This reticence can have far-reaching effects.

Anyone who has downsized before knows that the process can be daunting. What do you keep and what no longer fits into your life? How do you make your smaller home function as you need it? Will you ever feel comfortable again? And if you’re downsizing because all of your assets have been repossessed by the government since your business manager never filed your taxes and ran off with your money, well, that can make the process even more difficult.

Great ideas are often hiding in plain sight, in places you don’t expect to find them. Take cult beauty purveyor Glossier’s pop-up at Rhea’s Cafe in San Francisco. If you follow the brand on Instagram, you’ve likely seen photos of the blush-and-green restaurant takeover. While some might be smitten by the retro-mod styling vibes or the rows of cosmetics and skincare, there’s something else of note we’re borrowing for our own vanity. Let’s take a look.

Also: why you should never call it a "junk drawer."

We’ve all been there. It’s almost springtime and after a long winter spent indoors, you’re ready to get your home nice and clutter-free for the warm weather season. Unfortunately, sometimes instead of successfully clearing out the clutter in our homes, we simply wind up organizing stuff we shouldn’t keep in the first place. While catchall storages bins and closet organizers might seem space-savvy, they often end up helping us hoard things we should be getting rid of.

What’s the easiest target when decluttering fever hits you? The closet, of course. It’s probably overflowing with clothes you haven’t worn since college or things you’re not sure why you even bought in the first place. And sure, there are plenty of cliches out there about when to get rid of clothes.

It's smart — before you dig in on your spring clean — to minimize the stuff that needs to be cleaned and cleaned around.

As if the stylish and affordable home furnishings weren’t enough of a reason to love IKEA, the store made it their mission to create a streamlined recycling process for their customers. Along with their chic assortment of recycling bins for sale, the Swedish super-retailer offers several convenient ways for customers to recycle their old stuff—think: glass, batteries, furniture, and more—while they’re shopping. Don’t believe us?

If you have a disastrous closet, but are bound and determined to get it in shape this spring, let the following four transformations be major inspiration. Whether it’s a sliver of space, or a full on walk-in closet, there’s an organizing solution out there for you. See how these four people (with very different set ups) maximized their storage and made their lives more efficient. Katy’s issue definitely wasn’t space.

“I have so much closet space I don’t even know what to do with it,” said nobody ever. I mean, even president Obama has a closet-space shortage, so for those of us wishing for just one more little nook to stuff our things in—we’re not alone.

Sometimes your stuff gets in the way of, well, life. Whether it’s not being able to find your keys when you’re already running late for work or missing a train because you took too long digging through your purse for your transit card, searching for everyday essentials can have a major impact on your daily routine.

Do you have too many pairs of shoes? It was a trick question! Of course you don’t! You just have to get a little more creative with how you store them. Part of this creative process is deciding whether you want to hide or display your footwear. For example, I have some amazing pairs of shoes that I love showing off, but then there are the dirty sneakers, the old Teva sandals, and the “too-loved” everyday flats that don’t need to be celebrated.

In my family, everything happens in the kitchen: work, bill paying, meal planning, arts and crafts, homework, evening gardening. Oh, right — and cooking and dining, too. Even though those are the main purposes of the space, so much other gear can creep into the kitchen it seems like sometimes there’s no space at the kitchen table to eat, or on the kitchen counter to prep food!

We all have our home vices, don’t we? Taryn, our Lifestyle Editor, for instance, went on a “Green Clean” journey to reduce her dependance on paper towels last year — a move that made me take a good hard look at my own wasteful practices in and around my home. I’m pretty good about remembering to bring my reusable bags to the grocery store (and when I forget, I always try to return the plastic bags to the recycling bin at my local Publix on the next trip).

Cleaning and organizing strengths and pitfalls for each type, as well as suggestions for how to tackle homekeeping and embrace your unique personality,

This is one of the most inspiring types of projects: it was done for approximately $100, it includes a detailed budget breakdown, it is neither glamorous nor thrilling, both the before and the after photos were taken in the same artificial light, and it hugely improved someone’s quality of everyday life. May we all tackle similarly approachable yet satisfying projects! Let’s explore. It’s so much brighter now! Well done, Old House To New Home.

We love a good sneak peek inside a celeb’s home via Instagram. If you’ve been following This Is Us star Mandy Moore lately on the ‘gram, you’ve seen an eyeful of her newly renovated pad, and recently, we got a look inside the pantry. While Moore and fiancé Taylor Goldsmith moved in last month, final touches are still in the works on the mid-century space.

The pleasure of a perpetually less-cluttered house is worth the possibility that I might need to buy something again, someday.

Stress can kill you, so it’s important to indulge in self care and relax on a regular basis. For some, that means meditating or taking a bath, but for relatable human Kristen Bell, it means scrolling through images of organized spaces. Bell shared on her Instagram Story this weekend that browsing organization porn is her favorite Saturday morning ritual. And we totally get it. Her drug of choice? @lifeinjeneral. And we can see why.

One of the most common questions we see around Apartment Therapy from readers revolves around shoe storage. No matter if they have a small space or a sprawling home, there never seem to be enough space for shoes (at least in a way that looks good and is easy to maneuver). Of course, baskets throw in a closet or near the front door is a fast and cheap fix, but who really wants to dig through a dirty tangle of tennis shoes and boots every time you’re running out the door?

At $46.99 and a mere 12 inches deep, the EKBY ALEX is one of IKEA’s best examples of sleek, minimal furniture that lends itself to an impressive array of uses and customization options. With two drawers and a surface that can be used as a shelf or table, the EKBY ALEX maximizes storage in small spaces like only our favorite Swedish pieces can.

When it comes time to choose bedding for your home, you’ll find plenty of options. From solids to prints, synthetics to natural materials, designer brands to bed-in-a-bag sets — but before you make any of those decisions, you must first figure out which type of bedding you want. And this is where we delve into one of life’s little mysteries: the difference between coverlets and other kinds of bedding.

A well-organized refrigerator is a many-splendored thing. Not only is it easier to navigate—not to mention, look at—a tidy fridge helps you keep a watchful eye on all your chilled foodstuff. So you won’t run the risk of finding an expired gallon of milk or worse, moldy leftovers two weeks too late. However, motivating yourself to clean out and organize a messy refrigerator is a whole other task entirely.

Clearing clutter out of our physical spaces, and therefore out of our lives, has the power to refresh the space in our heads. While this alone makes any time a good time to declutter, there’s something about this time of year that puts us all in the mood to cozy up, buckle down and start over.

We’re in the home stretch! All the heavy lifting and vital lessons are behind us. Both the month and the Cure wrap up tomorrow, so our main focus right now is just settling in to our forever homes and forever selves. Remember when, two weeks ago, I had you strip down your living room to only the essentials?

If your bedroom closet is anything like mine (i.e. tiny and tough to manage), then you know how hard it can be to magically create extra storage space to stay organized. Sure, you may have spent most of January cleaning out your closet and home, but you still need to wear something, hence, you need somewhere to put everything you deemed worthy of keeping.

If you’re on an organizational roll right now (see: The January Cure), then you might want to swing by your local IKEA this weekend. Spoiler: there’s a coupon in it for you. On Saturday, January 27 and Sunday, January 28, IKEA is hosting its Make Room for Organization event. You can expect lots of in-store activities, like workshops, giveaways and raffles, as well as tons of storage and organizational products on sale.

Let's be realistic. Life gets in the way of our goals sometimes.

I’ve really enjoyed walking through the Cure with you all this year. It’s clear to me that every one gets something different out of this home refreshing plan. Some people enjoy the days when we get nitty gritty and deep into clutter, while others really find their groove with the more mindful days centered on experiencing and feeling at home in your home. Today’s task should hit a few different pleasure centers. We’re digging in to decluttering a hidden problem area.

I have a long history as a skincare and makeup hoarder. Perhaps it started with my mother’s proclivity for gifting me jumbo Lip Smackers sets every Christmas since I was about seven, or my obsession—rivaled only by my butterfly clip fixation—with finding the ideal anti-acne product to settle my difficult teenage skin.

10 brilliant ideas for your walls, countertops and awkward corners.

The January Cure is about sprucing up your home—but it’s also a lesson in perspective. Through these daily assignments, we want you to begin to see your home through new eyes. Today’s task is a shortcut to making that happen. The idea is to start with the room you spend the most time in and strip it down, so you’re able to reassess and refine the space’s decor.

Part of the reason that the Cure works so well for so many people is its adaptability. By month’s end, you’ll start taking your own track with the assignments we send every day, and your home will be looking and working better than it ever has before. For today’s task, though, we’re targeting what seems like everyone’s worst home enemy: paper clutter. What we’re doing today is part remedy and part prevention.

Each of us has personal feelings about cleaning and home keeping. But what remains remarkably similar across the board is the trouble spots that we all find tricky to solve. Which, by extension, means that those perpetually organized people who never seem to have the stuff explosions most of us fall prey to have found successful ways to address these very same sticking points. Nothing multiplies like paper piles.

IKEA’s Algot collection is a closet system, a modular, budget-friendly alternative to something like the Container Store’s Elfa. But like a lot of IKEA products, it’s also incredibly versatile, suitable for a huge variety of uses that go far beyond closets. Here are some of our favorite ways to use Algot shelves, drawers, and bins in every room of the house. Algot can be a bit of a lifesaver in a closetless entryway, providing drawers, shoe racks, hanging bars, and shelves.

New Year’s perpetually brings on the urge to purge, and with Mercury now out of retrograde and a pack of planets in Queen-of-the-Capsule-Collection, Capricorn, it’s a luminous moment to catch some serious stardust with your Swiffer.

Sometimes the biggest obstacle standing between you and a cleaner, clutter-free home is an unwillingness to just let go of unneeded stuff. When faced with getting rid of things, we can all turn into a bunch of hoarders at heart (“but what if I need it someday?!”). Luckily, your best weapon against a chronic case of “keep it just in case”-itis is a simple thing we like to call the outbox.

There’s a quote by French writer Antoine de Saint Exupéry that I’ve always loved to repeat to myself when I need perspective: “A goal without a plan is just a wish.” As much as you want your home to be a better, happier place, you have to understand that it takes work to get there. And not all of that work is spent on hands and knees, scrubbing showers or sorting drawers. Much of the work is just planning — deciding what to do and committing to when to do it.

Happy New Year! It’s always amazing to me what a boost your mind and body can get — in the form of renewed energy, motivation, and focus — by seeing the calendar reset at January each year. It’s the perfect time to make a fresh start, which includes getting your home primed for the year ahead. Because who doesn’t want a home that works better and looks better, too?

She's been cleaning out her attic on Instagram.

The New Year is right around the corner, and with it comes a new burst of energy that makes people want to roll up their sleeves and organize their lives. And what better place to start than our over-stuffed, bursting-at-the-seems, stress-inducing, messy closets? If you’re getting stress sweats just thinking about your own wardrobe, stick around. Ahead is a roundup of our (*picks up megaphone*) best closet cleaning advice of all time! Let’s tackle this together.

There’s no better way to get organized for the new year than picking up a cool new calendar. However, sometimes finding the right one for your unique personality (aka one you actually want to look at everyday) isn’t always easy. So to help you jumpstart 2018 in style, we rounded up creative calendars for a range of personality types. From animal lovers to the uninspired, here are the ten best wall and desk calendars for every person on the planet.

This time of year is one of influx and more, more, more. Layers of decorations, extra throw pillows and blankets, house guests, that second slice of pie — not to mention all the new items brought into the home as gifts. While everything is still contained in wrapping paper and ribbons, before the shiny new things enter the realm of official Household Stuff, take time to make some space by getting rid of these oldies you’ll never miss.

Join us for a month of daily, do-able assignments to get your home into the best shape of its life.

Decluttering—especially if you have a lot of stuff to begin with—can be an exhausting task. You can spend hours going through your things and realize you’re not even remotely close to being done with all your sorting. If you always feel totally spent when you’re done with a major decluttering session, the key might be in avoiding those giant, day (or weekend!) long clean-outs in the first place.

Update: We now know more about Marie Kondo’s upcoming TV show. The Hollywood Reporter announced Wednesday that the eight episode season will air globally on Netflix. The as yet untitled series “will focus on Kondo as she guides people who, as Netflix describes them, are at a crossroads to spark joy in their homes, transforming their lives in emotional and surprising ways.

Here’s the thing about stuff—even when we don’t need it, it’s easy to become attached to it, assign meaning to it or feel guilt about getting rid of it. Gifts from loved ones or an expensive purchase you regret but can’t return can weigh you and your home down. So, what do you do when you feel like you can’t part with anything you own—even when you have multiples that you don’t need?

It’s way too easy to let closets get out of control. After all, you can just close the door on the mess. But whether you’re getting something out or putting something away, being greeted by an orderly closet is an instant mood booster. Not to mention you actually know where stuff is can get to it! Here are ten strong suggestions for how to keep your closet in check. Keep a small laundry basket or even a paper bag in your closet to toss in clothes that don’t make you feel great.

Nothing is more fun during the holiday season than hosting friends and family for a gathering. But what happens when you love to entertain but don’t actually have a ton of room or even a proper coat closet to store everyone’s stuff? Fret not, friends—a cramped living space doesn’t have to be a problem. Here are five options to consider when deciding where to stow your guests’ things during your holiday festivities this season.

The junk drawer is a tricky little monster. Even its name makes you think it’s okay to let it get, well, junky. But a junk drawer without parameters means that every few months you’ll have to tackle a small mountain of those suuuuuper annoying little things you’ve basically just put off dealing with. For a “junk” drawer that’s really more of a useful spot for miscellaneous items in the kitchen, follow these ten commandments.

I’ve picked up the odd Dollar Tree clear plastic bin here and there for, well, I can’t remember what for now that I use them for everything. Seriously, since discovering and drooling over The Home Edit‘s Instagram feed (I even rainbowtized my apps, but that’s a story for another day), I’m clear-binning all the things. Here’s why I wish I’d started organizing with them years ago.

Wish your bathroom was more organized? Even in the tiniest of bathrooms, you don’t need to spend a lot of money to make things work. Between damage-free hooks and shelves to portable items (like a rolling cart), you get can your bathroom in shape in no time. Pretend you have a budget of $100 to get everything you need to revamp your bathroom; here’s what you can get with that to make it all happen. Let’s get shopping — hypothetically at least — shall we?

Whether you crank up the Christmas music the second Halloween’s over, or you restrain yourself and stick to fall decor at least until Thanksgiving, now is the time of year that your bins of holiday decor have come down from the attic or out from under the guest beds. Rather than waiting until it’s time to put it all back and bemoaning the amount of stuff you have that, once again, you didn’t use, go through it now.

For most small space dwellers, a tiny apartment usually translates to an equally compact closet—so finding extra storage space can be an uphill battle. Thankfully, there are still some affordable and foolproof ways to score some extra closet space at home—it just takes a little imagination.

Be it a room, a cabinet or even just a drawer, your pantry deserves a little love.

Nothing turns a happy chef into a frazzled one like rifling through drawers or disassembling the kitchen to dig out the necessary tools. Don’t let this be you at Thanksgiving. For a smoothly running kitchen — and, more importantly, a smiling cook — eliminate everything that doesn’t need to be in your kitchen before the big day.

If you’re like me, you’ve always had a growing pile of shoes in your vestibule/ entryway/mudroom. Which normally wouldn’t be an issue except that the shoes are now boots – they take up more space, they track in more mud, and they can take a bit longer to dry out after a good rain or snow. So what do you do with all of them? How do you solve the growing boot dilemma this time of year?

You can turn any crowded closet into a streamlined space without breaking your bank account.

If your preferred mode of transportation is powered by bike pedals, you might be familiar with the dilemma many bike owners + city dwellers face: Where the heck do you store a bike? Like, in a way that’s not totally revolting to the eyes? These real-life spaces have the right idea. As a rule, your best choice is going to involve some sort of wall or ceiling hanging situation. Why? Because attaching your bike (or bikes) to a solid surface will impose visual order on them.

We’re online shopping more than ever and, unfortunately, that means bringing unwanted waste into our homes in the form of cardboard boxes, bubble wrap, and other packing supplies. (A problem that gets especially frustrating when I discover the refrigerator-sized box on my porch actually just contains the single pack of face wipes I ordered).

Believe it or not, a sliver of wall space can still offer some serious storage potential. Whether it’s a short bedroom wall or a cramped bathroom corner, even a narrow foot or two of free wall space can wind up being a total storage game changer for your home. To prove our point, we’ve rounded up the smallest—but no doubt savviest—space-saving wall storage ideas we could find on the web.

Tackle your own Mount Shoeverest and try implementing an entry way storage solution that fits your needs.