13 Simple Ways to Organize Your Home & Simplify Your Life

Today’s post is all about simple ways you can organize your home to help simplify your home and your life. Focusing on clearing the clutter first. Then organizing what’s left in a way that’s easy to set up, simple to maintain and sure to make your home and your life easier to manage!

The goal of organizing is making your home easier to manage. So you can spend more time living and enjoying your life, instead of just cleaning up after it!

Here you’ll find 13 simple ways to organize your home so it’s easier to manage, functions better and makes life easier overall!

Organize your home to simplify your life

Benjamin Franklin said, “For every minute spent in organizing, an hour is earned.”

Having an organized home not only helps keep your home tidier and easier to keep tidy. But it also means you’ll save yourself time and stress when you can easily find what you’re looking for when you need it. And easily put things away when you’re done with them so your home stays organized too.

Organizing your home is all about finding ways to make your home function better and be easier to manage. And in turn, helping your days run smoother.

Keep it simple

I’m a big fan of organizing your home in a way that’s simple to set up and simple to maintain. Keeping things simple makes it more likely that you’ll be able to stick with it and stay organized with minimal time and effort required.

All of the ways to organize your home in today’s post are simple to set up and use. And many of the organizing tips don’t require you to buy more “stuff” either!

Avoiding clutter in the name of organization

It’s easy to convince yourself you need to buy things to get organized. You might think you need more or new bins, baskets, containers, etc.

But buying organizing products isn’t the solution to getting organized. In reality, adding more “stuff” to your home, even when it’s stuff to help you get organized, can sometimes end up making your house feel more cluttered and more difficult to manage in the long run.

First, if the containers and bins you’re buying to get organized end up holding and hiding clutter, they aren’t helping to simplify your home or your life. They’re just giving you more places to hide clutter.

Second, sometimes organizing products can actually end up becoming clutter themselves if you don’t really need or use them. Or at the very least are simply more “stuff” in your home you have to take care of and maintain.

And finally, organized clutter is still clutter. If you’re organizing things you don’t regularly use, need or love, you’re not simplifying your life, you’re just organizing clutter.

Even organized clutter will still end up making your home more difficult and time-consuming to manage.

Focus on clearing the clutter first, then organize what’s left. Not only is organizing easier when there’s less stuff to organize. But you also won’t have to work so hard to make everything fit in your space when there’s less stuff.

And another bonus is you’ll even end up saving yourself money because you won’t need as many – or any at all – new organizing products!

13 easy ways to organize your home

With that said, let’s get to it! Here are 13 easy ways to organize your home to help make your home easier to manage and your life simpler!

1. Have less stuff

I’m sure you knew this one was coming, but my favourite way to get organized is to have less stuff that needs to be organized!

When you have less stuff, it’s faster and easier to get organized. And because you have less stuff to organize, you can have simpler organizing systems because you don’t need to find space for as much.

Clearing the clutter and getting rid of anything you don’t use, need or love is one of the simplest and quickest ways to create a better functioning, more organized home.

Before even starting to organize your home, always declutter first. Get rid of anything you don’t truly need or want so you have less that needs to be organized. And so you don’t end up organizing clutter.

Clearing the clutter first will save you time, energy, space and even money when you start organizing. When you have less stuff to organize, you can buy fewer, or even no baskets, bins or other organizational products. You won’t end up wasting money organizing clutter you don’t even use, need or love!

2. Give everything a clearly defined home

The next way to organize your home and help it function better is by giving each item you’re keeping a clearly defined home. Decide on a home or spot to keep each item you’re keeping.

When everything has a place to “live” in your home, it’s easier to find things when you need them. And it’s easier to put things away after using them. Helping your house stay tidier and more organized.

Again, when you clear the clutter first, it’s a lot easier to give everything you’re keeping a clearly defined home. Having less stuff means fewer things to find homes for. And also lets you avoid having to cram too much stuff into the space you have available.

3. Store things where you use them

Another simple way to keep your home more organized is to store things where you typically use and need them.

Not only will it make it easier to find what you’re looking for when you need it. But it also increases the likelihood of things being put away after you’re done with them.

If you want your home to stay organized and tidy, it’s important to make it really easy to keep it that way. It takes less time and effort to put things away in their spot when their spot is easy and convenient to access.

For example, if you like reading in the living room, you’re more likely to put your book away if its spot is in the living room. If its spot is upstairs in your bedroom, you might end up leaving the book on the coffee table instead of putting it away.

It might not seem like a big deal for each individual item. But when it’s happening with a lot of items in multiple rooms in your home, you can see why things get messy and disorganized.

4. Make it easy to put things away

Along that note, when you’re organizing, do your best to keep things as simple as possible.

When it’s quick and easy to put something away in its spot, you’re more likely to put it away. But if there are a lot of barriers keeping you from putting something away, it’s less likely you’ll consistently put it away. Leading to clutter, mess and general disorganization.

For example, if you can simply open your bathroom drawer and put your everyday makeup inside an open basket in the drawer, it’s easy to put it away every day. And you’re more likely to put it away regularly.

But if you have to open the drawer, move some products, lift up one container, then open the lid of another and put your makeup away, you might be less likely to put your makeup away consistently. And it’ll end up sitting on the bathroom counter adding mess and visual clutter instead.

Any organizational system that’s overly complicated or requires too many steps to keep up with will likely be too difficult to maintain in the long run.

The fewer barriers and steps you have to take to maintain your organized spaces the better!

5. Work with your natural habits and tendencies

Another important thing to take into consideration when organizing your house is to find ways to work with your natural habits and tendencies rather than against them.

For example, if you tend to drop incoming mail on the table in your entryway when you walk in the door, having a complex filing cabinet in your upstairs office might not work for you.

Instead, a basket on the entry table, or a simple filing system hanging on the wall beside it to keep paperwork contained, organized and easy to find when you need it might work better.

It’s important to be realistic about what will work for you. Instead of trying to force a system that’s too complicated for you, or doesn’t work with your habits and tendencies.

6. Use containers and dividers

Now that you’ve decided where you’ll keep things and what kinds of organizing systems will work for you, it’s time to organize the spaces in your home in a way that will help you home function optimally.

It’s often helpful to use containers and/or dividers to break up larger spaces. Giving each item or category of items a clearly defined home.

When you’re organizing spaces like drawers, shelves, cupboards, closets, etc. use containers or dividers to divide and define the space so you can have a clear spot for each item. This way it will be easier to find what you’re looking for. And know exactly what goes where when putting things away.

It also helps prevent spaces from becoming clutter catch-alls, where you shove random items you don’t know what to do with.

For example, instead of having a large “junk drawer” of random items, use shallow containers to store each item or category of items you’re keeping in that drawer and clearly define what goes where.

Not only will it be easier to find, use and put away the things you need. But it will also help prevent the drawer from collecting a bunch of random items you didn’t know what to do with.

7. Use what you have

Using containers to divide the spaces you’re organizing doesn’t mean you have to buy a bunch of expensive containers and dividers. Use what you already have first, before buying more “stuff” in the name of organization.

For example, boxes and containers from food items like cereal boxes, fruit, etc. can easily be repurposed as containers to divide drawers and cupboards. Boxes from electronics make excellent drawer and shelf dividers too!

Don’t be afraid to think outside the box and use a little creativity to see what you can make work. You can even use paint, decorative paper or wrapping paper to dress up upcycled boxes and containers to use when organizing.

8. Give yourself defined space limits

Another great thing about using containers to divide the spaces you’re organizing is that it can also give you a clearly defined space limit for different categories of stuff.

You get to decide how much space you’re willing to devote to a particular category of stuff. Then that space limit keeps you from accumulating more than you will use, need or enjoy.

For example, if you love knitting, you can decide how much space you are willing to devote to yarn storage. When that space is full, it will remind you to use up what you have before buying any more.

9. Label

Another really simple way to organize your home and help it function more smoothly is by labelling the spot where each item lives.

It can be as simple as labelling the space with washi tape and a permanent marker. Or using tags, labels, label makers, etc. to label where each item or category of stuff belongs.

Not only do labels make it easy for you and others to find things. But even more importantly, it makes it easy to put things away where they belong so your home will stay tidier and more organized in the long term.

10. Reduce visual clutter

Reducing visual clutter doesn’t necessarily mean your home will be more organized, but it can help it appear tidier, less chaotic and less overwhelming. Especially if you’re someone who notices and doesn’t like a lot of visual clutter.

Again, aim to keep your organizational systems as simple and easy to maintain as possible. But choosing to use more hidden storage as opposed to open shelving, or storing things in more visible places, may work better for you.

The only caveat to this is making sure you’re not hiding clutter behind closed doors and calling it organization.

Just because you can’t see the clutter all the time doesn’t mean it’s not still there, negatively impacting your life. Clear the clutter, then decide if more open or less visible organizational systems will work better for you.

11. Remove packaging to reduce visual clutter

Another easy way to reduce visual clutter is by removing items from their packaging to simplify and streamline how your organized spaces look.

The kitchen is a great place to remove packaging to reduce visual clutter. Try taking food items out of their packages when possible and storing them in simple containers instead.

Not only does decanting food items save space and reduce the visual clutter that packaging creates. But it also makes it easy to see and keep track of how much of each item you have.

12. Get rid of your clutter collecting spots

When you’re organizing your home to help it function well and become easier to maintain, always keep an eye out for any spot or organizing system that has become a clutter catcher.

A clutter catcher is a spot that quickly and easily seems to collect clutter and become disorganized, messy and no longer functional.

Notice what kind of clutter these spots are collecting. Then see if you can come up with an alternative or better way to handle those kinds of items to keep them from causing clutter in your home.

13. Do daily resets to keep your home organized

And finally, the last tip to keep your home organized and running smoothly is all about maintaining the organizational systems you set up.

No organizational system, no matter how well thought out and designed, will work to keep your home organized if you don’t make the effort to maintain it.

The good news is, with simple, well thought out organizational systems, maintaining them shouldn’t be very difficult.

The easiest way to keep your home organized long term is to do quick daily resets to put things away where they belong and prevent clutter and mess from piling up.

A reset isn’t about deep cleaning your home. Instead, it’s about taking a few minutes to put things away, do some quick surface cleaning and make sure your organized spaces are still working well and in good shape.

Taking a few minutes at the end of each day to reset your spaces is a great way to not only keep your home tidier but also make sure it stays organized too!

Organizing your home: 13 simple ways to create a better functioning home

I hope today’s post gives you some ideas of simple ways you can organize your home. And help it function more efficiently too.

Organizing doesn’t have to be complicated, expensive or difficult to maintain. Just the opposite in fact! There are plenty of ways you can organize your home simply, frugally and in a way that makes keeping your home organized easy!