How to Add Balance to Your Home, Get Rid of Clutter & Stress Less
Don’t organize so your boss will feel better. Don’t organize so your kids appear tidier. Don’t even organize so your pool guy doesn’t judge you. Use these organization hacks for the backyard, home office and the kids’ rooms to give you a little piece of mind no matter what hat you’re wearing today.
Home Office
Wooddale Builders 2015 Artisan Home Tour home office shows off neat and uncluttered beautifully.
Get a paper shredder. If for nothing else than peace of mind and white noise. You may have gone paperless already (another way to cut down on clutter and stress: convert as many bills and statements as possible to be delivered to you digitally), but that doesn’t mean that credit card companies and your bank won’t still be sending you private information in the mail.
In 2014, a whopping $16 billion was stolen from over 12 million people through identity fraud in the U.S. alone. That’s a new victim every two seconds! You don’t have to be one of them. Paper shredders are a cheap and effective way to up your level of security without spending a ton.
Hang a giant whiteboard and a calendar on the wall in your office or a communal space like the kitchen. This takes up zero floor space and helps you keep important dates at the forefront of your schedule instead of relying on your phone alarm to go off on the day of the event. Having ‘the writing on the wall’ also keeps you more accountable for sticking to commitments.
Another simple thing you can do: get rid of your wires. It’s mental clutter and you don’t realize how much it can affect your mood and productivity. Even iPhones are chargeable wirelessly now, finally catching up with the Androids, and wireless printing is essential, especially for laptop users. But if you can’t go wireless you can still help quiet mental chatter by simply and cheaply labeling and organizing all your chords for various devices with these hacks from Pinterest that put old plastic bread bag tabs to surprisingly good use.
In the Back Yard
The amazing backyards by James Barton Design Build has a place for everything built right in.
Summer barbecues can leave you with an overflow of left behind sunglasses and pool floaties and you don’t want to be tripping over pool toys to check the pH balance. Keep chemicals and kids separate by organizing all those pool toys and maintenance equipment with accessories specifically designed to stand up to the elements poolside.
And if you have a brick or stucco home, or just a large backyard, you’re sure to get use out of this hose butler from Gardeners.com. It’s a standalone hose holder that not only looks elegant with a vine motif, but is sturdy enough to hold 200 feet of hose and make gardening all over the yard much easier and more organized.
The Kids’ Rooms
After spending many months in hospital, Eli loves his new dream bedroom created by the BATC Foundation last year.
Getting creative and crafty with storage solutions for the kids is a great way to involve them in the process of organizing and cleaning (talk about a great habit) as well as saving money. Since kids’ toy collections and wardrobes change and evolve as they grow up way too fast, look for storage that can change and grow with them, that doesn’t cost an arm and a leg. This stuffed animal swing is a great example of a DIY project to try: it’s cheap, easy to make, and can change its purpose once the stuffed animal phase has passed.
Get crafty and go green with all kinds of storage ideas for repurposed milk jugs, coffee containers, and dozens of other items you probably throw away on a regular basis. You can invest in your sanity and their future at the same time by busting out the glue gun and getting creative. Teach them about the value of organization, saving money, and helping the environment: that’s multi-tasking at its finest.