Housecleaning Tips for Organized Living

Start a Regular Purging Schedule

• Disorganization sets in, and housekeeping gets harder, when your stuff starts to build up. Keep this from happening by setting up a regular schedule for purging your home of things you no longer need, want or use. One way to do this is to divide your home into 12 sections and go through one each month. This way your entire home is purged annually, and no one area has time to get overwhelmingly filled with stuff.

Merchandize Your Closet

• Clothing stores arrange their merchandise by type, style and then color. Organizing your closet the same way gives it a neat appearance and makes putting together an outfit a breeze. This type of closet maintenance also gives a place for each item of clothing you own, making it easier to put things away and keep track of what you have and what you might need to buy to fill out your wardrobe.

Organize Your Recipes

• A small, attractive filing cabinet tucked into a corner of your kitchen is one way to organize your recipe collection. Start a file for each type of recipe and simply slip new additions into the proper folder as you gather them. This keeps your recipes from cluttering up drawers or counter space. It also reduces the need for you to hold onto an entire magazine because you want to try a single recipe.

Before and After Pictures

• If you have children who are assigned chores, you may run into the problem of your idea of clean and their idea of clean not meshing. To make sure that they know what a completed chore looks like, take pictures of each room when it is properly cleaned and organized. Store the pictures in an album that your kids can reference so that they know when clean enough is really clean enough.