Frugal Home Organization Tips

This whole home organizing spree was birthed by the fact that sometimes I just do not feel good. In times when I am not feeling the best I have found it helps A WHOLE BUNCH if things are orderly in the home. Organizing has never been my strong point; thankfully we do not have a lot of stuff but it still gets out of control and becomes an area of stress. I realized that this area of stress could be greatly eliminated if I would just figure out an organizing system that works for me. I did a little research watching some organizing videos and reading what others have done to help them. Some of their ideas were not practical for me, however some were a great blessing. I would like to share with you all what has worked well for me with the hopes of being able to give someone else ideas that might work well for them.

Everything I am sharing with you today has been in practice in my home for at least a month but most have been in practice for several months. I did not want to post ideas I am excited about but rather things that I was excited about, tried, [sometimes tweaked] and appreciate a lot. These simple things have made my life run a lot smoother; items are easy to find and easy to put back because they have a PLACE. Less stress, less time, less mess. I am thankful.

A discount store south of us will sometimes have older vegetables sold by the crate ... crate included. One time last year it was a large crate of cucumbers (probably a bushel?) for $2. This year it was acorn squash in the large crates and summer squash in the half-size crates for $5. These crates are GREAT!! They have so many uses and what's even nicer is they easily fold flat for storage and stack on top of each other when in use. Here I have my Food-Saver stuff in a smaller crate and that is sitting on a large crate that holds my juicer. The other small crate has juice jugs that we use for homemade ginger soda and beneath that is a large crate of misc. jugs and containers too nice to recycle yet. These crates fit right into my larger pantry shelf :) :)

In the pantry: double stacked vegetable crates.

My home management binder ... maybe I'll post about it some day.

Seriously, this is what it looks like under my sink all the time now ... except sometimes some cleaning supplies get put here instead of in the cleaning bucket. But really, this used to be a HUGE eye-sore and I would just hope no little child would open the door and have things falling out on them!!
One box holds misc lids, another rings of both sizes, another regular tattlers and the final one has wide-mouth tattlers.

Dollar boxes to keep the area under my sink looking good.

The linen closet used to be an unorganized mess. NO LONGER!!!! It is such a blessing to be able to go to the closet, open the door and know exactly where to find something even if you do not know exactly where it's at. For example, Corban asked for nail clippers a few months ago ... USUALLY we keep a pair or two hanging by the back door but they were not there ... I told him to look in the linen closet and figure it out. Easy - it's in the bin labelled 'nails'. Even he was excited about that.

Little things that used to all be piled in one big bin. Bins: $1 at WM

Organized bedding and a box just for light bulbs.

I really like the idea of having one of those fancy pull-out things that hold your pans or whatever but the cheapest one I could find was $79 at Lowes. No thanks! I saw one woman used an old cookie sheet on her shelf and I thought that was a great idea! It slides out easy to reach whatever is behind it.
The lids used to be scattered all over the shelf but not any more. I found a bin in another room that worked perfect for storing the lids in. It slides out easy and keeps the lids CONTAINED.

Cookie sheet slider

A bin for my pan lids!!! YAY!!! They used to fall out of the cabinet.

I purchase a lot of food in bulk. I used to have the bulk bags in different places all over the house and garage. What a mess ... each time I needed something I'd have to remember where it was or go look for it, take a bowl and scoop with me and then hope not to drop or spill anything in the process. This was a big cause of stress in my life because I cook a lot and found I was spending so much time and energy running after things that were not in easy reach. Now I have my most used items right on the counter top under the cabinets. I have it in my schedule to re-fill the bins weekly but sometimes I skip a week if it seems I can. This helps me to know what I have on hand and know when I need to order more.
SO EASY!

D.G. half off: air tight, BPA free bins for my bulk stuff.

Each bin has a permanent scoop of the appropriate size for what is in the bin. For example, popcorn and almonds have a half cup, flax, raisins and coconut a 1/4 cup, rapadura 1/2T, oats 1c ... and so on. All of the scoops except the one for flour were purchased at the thrift store. The flour one was made by my grandpa. Permanent scoops save time!

Here is a picture of more bulk items on the top shelf with the same brand of containers but in different sizes / shapes. This has really made it so much easier to access all my baking items. The lazy susan on the bottom is cheap ... I hope to find a higher quality one but this seems to be holding out so far (though it looks like it could crash at any time!!). And as always, I appreciate having mason jars for various items too.

More of the same air-tight, BPA free containers.

I used to have my measuring items in the baking utensil drawer but it was such a mess searching for the right one and also trying to get the drawer shut after I found what I was looking for (IF I ever found it). I had the idea to move all of the measuring items into a small plastic box. This sat on my bread box on the counter for several months and was certainly a better idea than the drawer however it still was not quite what I wanted. And then I saw this idea :) little plastic hooks and key rings to hang each item. The key rings could have been quite expensive had I not found a box of 25 tagged rings at Lowes for $2.50 or so. These are the small rings with round tags that realtors or car sales people will use. Now what should I do with the tags? I was thinking of using them as labels attached to a string.
After we all got used to things flinging around when we opened this particular cabinet, this idea has proved to work VERY well for us. And as mentioned above, measuring devices were purchased at the thrift store.

Measuring spoons and cups hung on the inside cabinet.

We often have a lot of people eating supper with us. These little baskets have come in handy in two ways. 1) It's so easy to simply take the basket out of the drawer and set it on the counter for buffet-style serving. 2) Easy to clean - I take the knives out first, clean that basket, put the spoons in that basket, clean the spoon basket, and continue rotating till everything is clean (the knives end up in the last basket that was cleaned).

3 / $1 at WM

Spices are another thing I purchase in bulk. I used to have my jars sitting nicely out on the counter. I did this for many years. A few years ago I saw that a sister had put her spice containers in a drawer; they all fit nicely laid on their side. I copied this idea when we first moved into our current house. It works great!!!
A note on the baby-food jars. We got several dozen organic plum/pear puree from the thrift store for free (wow they sure were delicious! we ate them alone or used them in baked recipes). I thought it would be nice to use these jars for spices however it was difficult to get the lids off!!! I still have the ones pictured but I hope to eventually find more shorter 1/2 pint jars to replace them.

Half-pint mason jelly jars and baby-food jars for spices in a drawer.

That's it for now. I still have a few 'hot spots' I am working on; mainly the front closet. It is beyond embarrassing. Really, you might lose a child in there if you are not careful. Maybe I'll soon have an update with before and after pictures? We'll see.

Maybe you have some ideas or tips to share? What has worked for YOU? Do you have a blog post about it? Feel free to share a link in the comment section.

7-24-13 UPDATE
I just finished cleaning out the front closet and then remembered I wanted to take a 'before' and 'after' picture. Well, I forgot the 'before' so the 'after' is useless now!! There were about 25 pairs of work gloves in there!! Whew. I didn't know we had that many people living in our house! Several coats and a few sweaters. Got rid of most of them. You see, we just seem to collect coats because people give them to us. We think "Oh, this is ok. Maybe I'll wear it ..." but then we hardly do. What's the point of hanging on to it?? Might as well give it to the thrift store so someone else can use it. None of us have many shoes so that was not an issue. Corban has one pair. He did have a pair of roofing shoes but he outgrew them so they went to the thrift store. Brianna has one pair. I have 3 - my every day shoes, my therapeutic shoes for planter plantar fasciitis (which really has not flared up in a long time) and my snow boots (I wore them maybe 3 times in the last 2 years but they are kind of one of those things that you actually will appreciate when you need them). Tylor has 3 pair as well - work tennis shoes, tennis shoes and work boots.

I put all the hats, scarves and gloves into a box. I left the boys' coats in there and put mine and Brianna's coats in my closet. It looks nice and tidy and will stay that way from now on.

Clean closet. Yay! Now what's my next project? I'll have to think about it.