24 Ways Professional Organizers Keep Their Homes Spotless
The term “spring cleaning” has never sat well with people who hate mess. For those who crave a clutter-free existence, there is no season like the present to make one’s home peaceful. One hurdle for many is just getting started or knowing the best approach.
Thankfully, there is now a huge professional organizer industry filled with dedicated, space-liberating heroes with tricks to share. We have curated some of these cleaning combatants’ best advice for transporting a decluttered existence to your living space.
1. Capitalize on Your Space
The best solution to shrinking floor space is surely the most logical — work with the space you have and don’t try to maximize too much. By letting your space dictate the possessions you own, you can find perfect harmony.
The Interior Editor has some excellent spatial harmony hacks, beginning with a valid point: “Ask yourself what do you want from your homes/spaces.” Identifying the kind of space you want beforehand will make the transition to your objectives easier.
2. Function First; Aesthetic Later
TikToker iOrganize dropped a refreshing video for a professional organizer, using her cutlery drawer as an example. She explains that she hasn’t bothered organizing her drawer because “We can find everything we need,” she explains. “Every now and then, we can purge it if it gets too full.”
3. Take Photos of the Space
“Choose one part of your home, like your kitchen counter, and take a photo of a small area,” encourages Becoming Minimalist writer Joshua Becker. “Quickly clean off the items in the photo and take an after photo.”
By completing this quick task, you can see the difference made in just one area, allowing your imagination to do the rest. I love this idea — what a motivation generator!
4. Put a Name on It
Labeling or attaching stickers to our household items may balance a fine line between orderliness and insanity. The latter probably comes when the labeling gets out of hand to include people, everyday objects, or trash items.
Pro organizer blog Sabrina’s Organizing takes labeling to a new extreme, though each one of her ideas is justified. Even labeling toothbrushes makes sense if you have a large family who all use the same-colored brushes.
5. Lazy Susans in the Kitchen
Who hasn’t had to deal with reaching into cavernous kitchen cupboards blindly while trying to find something? There is an organizing hack for bedrooms that can help alleviate this highly annoying bugbear — the lazy Susan.
It has an ironic name, the lazy Susan, considering how much time it can save busy people who don’t have time for rooting through cupboards. CabinetCoatings explains in a post how these devices are a Godsend for bedroom organizers.
6. Make Kids Your Partners in Grime
Organizing isn’t a task; it’s a way of life. Passing organizing wisdom down to your children can begin much earlier than you think.
Lex Walters-Wright of Understood shares some great tips to integrate your beloved children into the cleaning mindset. Some of these include breaking organizing into realistic chunks, creating action plans, and making a color-coding system.
7. Say Goodbye to Junk Mail
Letterboxes are the interface between our private lives and the public; unfortunately, this means sifting through endless leaflets. By installing a discreet space to discard that local menu you keep getting every week, you eliminate this problem.
Space-saving blog GippslandUnwrapped recommends going further in a helpful guide. “Place a ‘No Junk Mail’ or ‘Addressed Mail Only’ sign or sticker on your letterbox,” reads the post.
8. Use Clear Containers for Food Storage
Did you know that clear containers lead to less waste? It is logical because cloudy or densely colored containers may spend more time than necessary in the refrigerator — taking up precious space. Knowing exactly what is stored will mean less clutter in your fridge or freezer.
Nonnahs Driskill writes a guide called Get Organized Already. Her clear-container idea for dry products is genius. “Try this tip,” she says. “Cut off the cooking directions from the packaging and store the directions right inside the container.” The best news is, you only need to do this once.
9. Tidy As You Go
Any professional chef will attest that leaving a messy station behind may result in being called an “idiot sandwich” or worse. Trying to produce culinary results surrounded by a mess is impossible; what’s more, it makes kitchens unbearable.
Applying the Gordon Ramsay mentality to one’s cooking methodology will help any home chef avoid the expletive nickname of shame.
10. Put It in Writing
There are some people with a religious-like dedication to their craft. One such member of this elite is productivity enthusiast Thomas Frank, who has a scholarly approach to organizing. Frank integrates digital productivity expert Tiago Forte’s “PARA” method into his organizing.
PARA stands for Pfrojects, Areas, Resources, and Archives — the latter is a place to store unused ideas. One can use this acronym to organize pretty much anything, namely one’s home.
11. Do a Monthly Toiletries Audit
While there are other contenders for the worst clutter zone in the home, the bathroom is a close winner. Unfinished, near-empty shampoo bottles or semi-used hand towels are enough to turn a restful recluse into a chaotic one.
It doesn’t matter if you store your toiletries under your sink, says one organizing expert site: “When you have too many of them they become clutter.” One alternative to a bottle is simple liquid dispensers, which you can refill. Hooks and a heated towel rail can also work wonders.
12. Nightstands Are for Night Items
Bedtime for many usually involves fumbling about in the dark lest they wake their sleeping partner. No sleeping beauty appreciates their other half blindly rocking the nightstand, upsetting a stack of magazines.
We need things there, however. On TomsGuide, Cynthia Lawrence lists several essential-only items your nightstand should have — maybe a good caveat is the fewer, the better.
13. Go Paperless
There must be someone out there who has managed to achieve a life entirely without paper — let’s call it “letterhead liberty.” Some might argue these trailblazers have reached the equivalent of a brown belt in decluttering.
One such character is Abby Lawson, whose blog details her journey to a paper rless Promised Land. Sidenote — it might be painful if you love reading paperback books.
14. Use Some Applications
Of course, going paperless will mean using a non-paper medium for your written planning. Thankfully, organizing professional Beth Penn shares useful decluttering tools in a Clutter post.
Some ingenious decluttering apps, such as Todoist, are helping a generation of clutter-free souls. The digital age works very well for decluttercore culture.
15. Bring Your Closet A-Game
NAPO member and longtime organizational guru Seana offers sage closet-wrangling advice in her blog, The Seana Method.
Seana’s system begins with planning your space-freeing session, emptying all the closet’s contents, and recalibrating its function. Seana insists one must remove everything before deciding what stays and what goes. One can only imagine how ruthless Seana must be with her closet space.
16. Fine-Tune Your Desk
The office – or at least, the desk – should be the command center for any home. This spot is where the organizer formulates their plans.
Office organizing nerds at Ink + Volt offer one easy three-step process. Start by emptying your desk, followed by grouping into regular and non-regularly used items. Banish anything not necessary to a general office supplies store.
17. Think Up, Not Across
Square footage is to homeowners what acreage is to farmers. Some homeowners have a limited space to put everything, and therefore, must become creative.
Some organizers swear by this philosophy, which brings peace of mind to your living space. This article champions a “taller is better” mantra when considering furnishings or storage solutions.
18. Be Ruthless
We all suffer from wardrobe sentimentality – but that’s that shirt from that thing! In truth, we all know that ruthlessness is the best approach.
An entry on Balance Through Simplicity lists reasons to be ruthless, citing the Pareto Principle as an example. The Pareto Principle argues an 80/20 rule is often at play. In the article’s case, it reasons that we spend 80% of our time wearing 20% of our wardrobe.
19. Keep at Least One Clear Sanctuary
Not everybody has the time or energy to be organizer royalty. However, even those working long hours, or others with big families to organize, can make some impact on their living space.
In such an arrangement, it makes sense to focus on minimal changes, such as one spotless room for decompressing. “When you’re clearing away the clutter to make your home a sacred space it’s important to prioritize,” reads a Joe Love post. “For example, if you have little kids, go easy on yourself.”
20. Don’t Delay
Perhaps the biggest sin one can make is to kick the proverbial can down the road, delaying the inevitable. Furthermore, many of us look for clean breaks when making new starts — New Year’s Day resolutions are an obvious choice.
Anna Priesterath writes on Medium about not waiting until arbitrary days for the change; get started immediately. She quotes the 21/90 rule, whereby it takes 21 days to form a habit and 90 to make it part of one’s lifestyle.
21. Avoid Multitasking
There is a dichotomy between two sets of groups: the multitaskers and the mono-taskers (I definitely fall into the latter group). Those octopus-like humans who can seemingly glide across a lake of stress while unconsciously completing chores are legendary.
An Upwork Team blog entry discusses the cons of multitasking, which can be a disadvantage for organizing “because it puts too much stress on the brain.” Multitasking also takes the joy out of organizing, making the whole ordeal seem like an endless task.
22. Have a Command Center
In Star Trek, the Starship Enterprise has many sectors, though we always end up with Captain Kirk in the ship’s command center. Countless experts support having a centralized command area where the family can organize themselves. It’s where PostIt notes, corkboards and all family documents live.
The Spruce offers dozens of various command center ideas — some neat examples are inside a closet, at a corner desk, or a hook-based one.
23. Purge Your Purses
Many husbands (and no doubt, some wives) may bristle at being asked to “go look in my purse.” We know what is ahead: a journey into the unknown most 20th-century explorers would hate.
“Line up bags on overhead shelves,” reads a Closetful of Clothes entry. “Place the ones you use the least on the highest shelves and keep your every day bags on lower shelves you can more easily reach.”
24. Contain Your Mayhem
Home decor ideas website Diyversify has a splendid list of useful storage hacks for those who can’t contain their lives in an orderly manner. The first spot goes to under-the-stair space for the win.
People who live in reality know that total clarity just isn’t possible in a living area, but there are ways to keep your chaos under wraps. Some great organizers lack other key skills, such as folding laundry well.
