I probably am one of the worst home organizers you will ever meet. Why? Before I met my husband, I didn’t have much stuff, didn’t care for having lots of it, and I seemed to always have enough space for what I had. So home organization was one of the last things that ever popped into my mind. When I bought my first house, and it’s the house that we’re currently in, I thought to myself, there is no way I will ever fill this space. It’s a four bedroom house with a large kitchen, decent family room and a good size living room/dining room combination. At the time it seemed to have unlimited amount of closet space.

Well, was I wrong. Five years down the road, and two additional occupants with the third on the way, the house is officially packed to its max. These days I look in the closets thinking to myself, how could they go from completely empty to being stuffed like this? The three-car garage is now a two-car with tons of crap in place of third. Now I have no choice, but to start getting creative and get organized!

My first project was to tackle baby room closet. With the second kid coming in about three weeks, I just need to create additional room. Since we already have a 2-year old, we’re pretty well equipped with all the baby gear. Even though the closet is fairly large, it looked extremely cluttered. The corners were packed with bunch of baby stuff and some of our stuff too. Too bad I didn’t think to snap a picture. Elyana’s old clothes that are too small for her were stuck in the corners in the bags, mixed in with the shopping cart cover, baby swing gear, baby gym, breastfeeding pillow, etc.

Being a cheapscate on top of being a minimalist, I did not want to spend much money on the project. I purchased couple of 18-gallon storage totes, since they were buy one, get one free. I made sure that the totes’ dimensions matched the closet width before I got them. And I packed them up pretty fast. In order to remember what’s where for easy find, I made labels and taped them to the side of each tote.

I also reorganized the way I store clothes for our new baby boy. We have a lot of used clothes left over from Elyana, that can be reused for a boy. I tried to get as much gender neutral stuff as possible when she was under 12 months (another perk of being a minimalist). On top of it, we got pretty good amount of boy clothes from my neighbor. So I decided to sort the clothes according to age. I labeled them as well using painter’s tape and permanent marker for easy find.

Why did I do it this way? With my first, I had her new clothes mixed in together as far as size is concerned. Many times I would forget about them completely. So by the time I would think of getting them out, they would already be too small! (Poor move for a minimalist, what a waste!)

Now the closet seems to have double the space it did with things tucked away into totes. We still have to get rid of some stuff on the top shelf, but the improvement is obvious!

Project Overview:

Complexity: easy

Expense: $6

Time spent: 3 hours for third trimester prego / 2 hours otherwise

I tried to figure out what would be a better approach for me. Many people use a computer to set reminders and tasks. But what if I’m off the computer most of the time? Then it doesn’t work! In order for me to enter a new task or a reminder I have to open up my laptop, wait for it to get online, open whatever program I use, type the task in and then set a reminder for it. Whew, just thinking about it, I know it’s not very realistic.

Another thing I tried is to use a notepad on my Iphone to type in the tasks. It takes a long time, the keypad is tiny. Don’t like that.

I also tried a voice recorder. The convenience is, I can record a task or reminder from anywhere, while driving, at the store, while running, etc..  The problem is, when I get back, I have to listen to what I said earlier and jot it down somewhere. It’s double work and time.

My husband suggested that I buy some sort of a notepad and just start writing down things that need to be done. It makes sense to me, I used to use this method before. I liked it, it doesn’t require any electronics that need to be booted up or typing on a tiny keypad, or transcribing what I said earlier. It doesn’t break, it’s cheap, easily replaceable and easy to operate.

So, while at Wal-Mart, I remembered to get a plain, college ruled, 7″x5″ notebook. I started using it by jotting down tasks that were in my head forever and the ones that popped into my mind as I was going along. I try to keep this notepad handy at all times. It’s either on top of the bar in the main area of the house or in my purse when I’m out. It’s amazing how much more I am able to accomplish when I have a list of tasks on the paper versus inside the head.

While the notebook is workable for tasks that don’t require specific timelines, it’s not very workable for appointments or deadlines. For that I actually use an electronic device, called IPhone . But I’m sure that any modern phone comes with a calendar feature nowdays. The calendar feature is great, I can program my appointments with two optional reminders. The reminder pops up on my IPhone screen accompanied by some sort of a beep, within the time specified by me before the appointment. It works, since I do check my IPhone at least once per day.

This is my system. It’s not uber complicated or expensive and the main thing is, it works for me. Thought I’d share it with you.

So tell me, what works for you?