How To Organise Your Home On A Budget
Getting your home organised is often considered a very expensive endeavour, because many people think that they will have to buy special fancy boxes, baskets, bins, labels and all kinds of other organisational items, which cost a lot and are not always as useful as we think. But the truth is, that organising your home doesn’t have to cost even a penny, because you can easily use things you already have lying around to do it!
Getting your home organised is often considered a very expensive endeavour, because many people think that they will have to buy special fancy boxes, baskets, bins, labels and all kinds of other organisational items, which cost a lot and are not always as useful as we think. But the truth is, that organising your home doesn’t have to cost even a penny, because you can easily use things you already have lying around to do it. With some arts and crafts these items can even look very chic and attractive, as if you just bought them from a home improvement store. Here are some budget ideas on how to keep the clutter at bay and organise your home:
Reduce your belongings
The biggest problem with organising their home efficiently for many people is the fact that they just own too many items and they have no space to put them in. This is something normal, because we live in a consumer society and we tend to gather things over the years, but it’s also not rational to own too many things, because we can’t physically use them all and they gather dust until we decide to throw them away. So, instead of rushing to find ways to organise your excess belongings, why not try to get rid of some of them? A good way to declutter such items is something I like to call “the three-boxes rule”.
Place three boxes in the room you want to declutter and place a label on each one – “Keep”, “Throw away” and “Donate”. Start going through the items one by one and place them in one of the boxes. Then just do what the labels on the boxes say. It’s good to have such purges once or twice a year, it will both help you keep your home organised and you will have the chance to evaluate what you own. Another good method to keep the clutter at bay is the “one in, one out” – when you buy something new, you have to throw away something old or place it in the donation box.
Use what you have
As I mentioned earlier, what makes organising so expensive is not the process itself, but all the supplies we think we need to buy to pull this off. When you start organising your home, first look around and make a list of all the messes you want to contain – pens all over the desk, hairpins everywhere, you get the idea. Then you can look at what you have around the house and consider if you can use it to help you contain the clutter. Some common household items we can use for storage and organising:
- Shoe boxes
- Glass jars
- Cloth and paper bags
- Tins from canned food
- Egg cartons
- Old food containers
- Toilet paper rolls
- Hooks, clips, pins
Use shoe boxes for storage
Shoe boxes are the perfect organising means, they are neat and free, but many people still underestimate their abilities. You can use shoe boxes all around the house. For instance, they are perfect for the kitchen, you can use them to store spices, utensils, small tools and all kinds of kitchen items which can easily get lost otherwise. Smaller shoe boxes can also act as the perfect drawer divider for your closet – you can use them to organise your underwear and socks neatly, as well as belts, scarfs, ties, and many other. They are also good for storing all kinds of cosmetics, like lipsticks, nail polishers and other accessories. Shoe boxes can also save you a lot of nerves and stepping on Legos if you use them in a child’s room.
Repurpose old drawers
Almost every home has some old piece of furniture you’ve been meaning to throw away for a while, but it just sits and gathers dust. Pieces of this furniture can be repurposed to help you organise your home. The old cabinet drawers for instance, can be turned into clever hidden storage. All you need to do is get some sandpaper, paint, wheels and screws from your local home improvement store, sand the surface of the drawer, paint it, attach the wheels on the bottom and slide the drawer under the bed or the couch. You can use it to store blankets, old clothes, toys or school supplies.
Jars, cans and containers
Most of the things we buy come in jars, cans, plastic containers, and other potentially useful forms. But we throw them away soon after the goods in them are gone. However, if you need to organise small items, these jars and cans are the ideal choice. Once you clean them and decorate them a little, you can keep all kinds of items in them, like pens, crayons, sewing materials, hair accessories, and a lot more. And decorating these items is easy, you just need some paint or some patterned paper and glue.
Store cords and cables properly
Cables and cords are one of the biggest sources of messes in every home. We have many cables around our houses, and they often tangle, gather dust on the floor and manage to trip us every day. There are many easy and budget ways to organise your cables, for instance you can use a shoe box and some old hair ties. Just punch a few holes on both sides of the box, drag the cable from one side, roll the excess, tie it with the hair tie and put the other end through the other side of the box. This way your cables won’t tangle, and they will stay clean from dust. You can also use toilet paper rolls, they act as great cable ties.
Manage the paperwork
We live in a digital world now, but there are still many homes which are cluttered with old newspapers, magazines and all kinds of paperwork. Most of us don’t have the habit of controlling these things and we just let them pile up with time. But keeping your paperwork organised doesn’t cost anything, it mostly requires some simple rules and a good routine. For instance, you can have a rule to throw away papers and magazines which are over 2 months old. You can keep your mail contained to 1 container near the front door. There are many useful organizing habits you can embrace to make everything around your home better.
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