If you have a tight schedule and few obsessive-compulsive tendencies, it’s amazing how quickly clutter can take up residence in your apartment. By assigning everything you use regularly in your apartment a storage place and creating miscellaneous or junk drawers to put everything else, you can keep clutter in your apartment to a minimum.
Drawers can be designated to store almost anything. But if you want to maximize efficiency in your life and uncover the secret to keeping your apartment well-organized, check out these tips.
Organize Drawers by Function
In every room of your apartment, organize drawers and storage containers carefully. Consider the function of the items stored in each drawer, as well as the proximity to the spaces where those contents are used. While there are different strokes for different folks, finding storage places that feel natural for your office supplies, home tools, spare batteries, and chargers will help improve efficiency in your apartment. It will spare you the hassle of constantly having to search for keys, paperclips, and chargers.
Kitchen Drawer Organization Tips
If you often eat in your apartment, chances are you use your kitchen drawers most, if not all, of the time. If this is the case, optimal arrangement of items stored in your kitchen drawers is especially important. Unless you already feel great about their arrangement, make organizing them the goal of your next DIY project. As you transform the arrangement of drawers, don’t forget to rearrange and clean your refrigerator drawers and shelves too.
Take everything out of the drawers and organize them in a way that makes sense to you. Give the drawers a good cleaning while they are empty. Pair lids and tops with the Tupperware and pans to which they belong. Set aside items you never use for donation so they don’t take up space. As you plan what will go where, make a point to store kitchen tools, appliances, and decor you use infrequently in the most out-of-the-way drawers.
When a Drawer Won’t Work, Use a Shelf
Many of the same organization tips that will help you tidy up your drawers apply to bookshelves, cupboards, and other storage furniture. Arranging open shelves differs because you have to worry about aesthetics as well as practical organization if they are open. Just like with organizing drawers, you want to group like with like. Keep your more attractive stuff on open shelves, especially dishes, containers, and appliances you use often.
Leaving open space is a nice decorative touch that can make your apartment feel less cluttered. Open space in drawers and on shelves in bedrooms, bathrooms, and living rooms also makes for great space to offer to guests. When it comes to organizing drawers and shelves in your apartment, smart storage is everything.
Miscellaneous Drawer Organization Tips
Unless you have a penchant for organization and no problem designating a place for every item that deserves space in your apartment, a junk drawer (or two) can prove indispensable in helping you stay organized. A disorganized junk drawer, however, can easily impede your efforts to stay organized. Keep knickknacks and gadgets that don’t fit into any categories ontheir own way by dividing junk drawers with storage containers.
If you ever need to do a quick sweep of an apartment counter or table space before guests arrive, sweep items into a bag and force yourself to go through it at the first good opportunity you have. Don’t let accumulated clutter cramp your drawer space.
Feel that your junk drawer is way too crowded? Designate one drawer in each room to the storage of miscellaneous items.
If you want to make your apartment feel more orderly, organize your drawers. In addition to improving the ease where you find, retrieve, and store items in your apartment, keeping your drawers organized can help you cultivate habits that make you and your apartment more organized in other ways. It’s easier to Live Life + Love Life when you feel on top of your game. Staying organized can help.
Do you have any organization tips? Share them in the comments to help fellow apartment dwellers looking to change their ways!
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View All Posts by Jason Ernst