Organizing (frugally) in the New Year

Organizing (frugally) in the New Year isn’t always an easy task. Large plastic containers, boxes and baskets aren’t always the cheapest alternatives to store your items around the house but at the same time you want some semi-attractive when you set out to organize paperwork or children’s toys.

Let’s head into the bathroom to get started. A quick trip to the local dollar store will be a lifesaver for your bathroom organizing. Pick up a few small plastic baskets and a box of sandwich and gallon size plastic bags. You can quickly organize toiletries and other items under your sink in a snap for just a few dollars. Place all travel toiletries in one bag, hair accessories like rubber bands and bobby pins in another and maybe q-tips in another. Make sure to label all the bags to quickly grab the items you need.

We all have a few kitchen drawers or catch-all baskets around that house that could use a little tidying up. I always start out by dumping the basket or drawer on the kitchen table. Toss out any garbage to start, place batteries, paper clips, keys and other small like items in small plastic bags or small plastic containers. Recycle wherever you can, I’ve used old strawberry or blueberry containers to organize a drawer before and never spent a dime!

Closets also are a haven for messes and unorganized placement of clothes, shoes and other items. First things first is to set aside some time to go through your closets and lighten the load by getting rid of unwanted clothes or your unused foot bath and donating to your local Goodwill or other thrift store. An easy way to organize clothes is by color and season. I always pack away in the attic winter clothes during the summer and summer clothes in the winter. Winter coats sure are bulky in a closet when you don’t even need them. When organizing by color you can clearly see if you really need five red shirts or three black sweaters. If you need to add another bar in the closet to take advantage of space it would only cost you about $15 for the bar and the brackets. A shoe rack also is pretty low cost and if you keep an eye out at thrift stores, you should be able to pick one up pretty reasonably.

They say a clean house equates to a clear mind, so take a few hours this coming weekend and frugally organize your clutter!