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Thanks for visiting my blog. Hope you find some helpful hints for organizing your time and space. My passions are to help you make home a refuge instead of a crisis center, and to help you function in peace rather than chaos - at home or at work. I have switched my main blog to 1-2-3 ... Get Organized on WordPress, so please visit me there.



Friday, July 2, 2010

4 Signs that You Need to Reorganize

  
Sometimes we drift into disorganization. We organize an area, but after a while it's not working for us. Here are some signs that organizational drift is upon you:

1. It's messy. New items have been added since you organized and they don't have a home.

2. Misplaced items. Some of the things you thought you would use in the area are no longer contributing toward the function of the space.

3. Systems are not working. As you have used the systems you put into place, you've found that they need to be tweaked.

4. The storage you're using doesn't work well for what you're storing.

This was what was going on in our bedroom closet. When we moved last September, some things just got dumped in our closet. We really haven't had the time or the motivation to tackle it until now. But it was getting so annoying we had to do something!

It was getting messy, so we identified what didn't have homes. We grouped them in like piles.  

And we definitely had misplaced items - things that really needed to be stored away or gotten rid of entirely or placed in a better location. So we took those out of the closet, and placed them in the locations where they should go.

One system that wasn't working was our laundry. We had laundry baskets in our closet (our closet is very large), but it made it difficult to get to some areas of the closet. So we took out the bottom shelf in our bathroom closet, and lined up our laundry baskets there. It made a lot more sense to have them in the bathroom as that's where we take off our clothes. (I'm sorry that's probably too much information! LOL!)

Once we removed the laundry baskets and misplaced items, it created room for those things without homes. 

I have a bunch of bags, some I use often and some not so often. But I like to be able to find the one I want to use when I want to use it. So we bought some hooks (half price, total $18!) to hang them on, which makes them much more available. 



Even though it was a big project and made a big mess at first, it is so nice to have a well-functioning closet! Definitely worth the work.


More on closets:

Closet Mapping

Thinking Through Your Closets

Make it Easy to Get Rid of Things