Are the shelves in your home spilling over with odds and ends? Do you struggle to find a pair of matching shoes or earrings, let alone a single bobby pin? Perhaps you’re simply tired of tripping over smartphone chargers and endless lengths of cords and cables.
Get rid of the chaos once and for all with these 24 incredibly clever organizational tips and tricks to bring order to your living space!
1. Binder Clips in the Freezer
Sick of rooting around in the back of the freezer looking for the peas? Grab a few binder clips and use them to attach the bags to the freezer shelves. It’s a little tricky to keep the bag sealed whilst putting it on the rung, but practice makes perfect. In the long run, you’ll save time and space, and look super organized to boot!
2. DIY Pan Organizer
Get your pots and pans in order with a nifty holder. With adjustable rails for both large and shallow pans, this DIY knock-off of a fancy version can be made for a mere $26 or less!
3. Magazine Rack for Pot Lids
Once your pans have their set space, you’ll need somewhere to store the lids. The walls of a cupboard are the perfect place, and they’re often underutilized. While you can invest in a dedicated lid holder, why not save your dollars and give a new lease of life to an old magazine rack?
4. Magnetic Strips in the Bathroom
Magnetic knife strips look good in the kitchen, but they may be even more useful in the bathroom. Attach the strip to the wall and use it to hold bobby pins, tweezers, nail files, toenail clippers and much more. For a neater look, hide it inside the bathroom cabinet. Never lose another hair pin again!
5. Create a Family Charging Station
Calling all smartphone addicts – this is a must-make! Keep your family’s phones and tablets (not to mention the cords and adapters) together when charging with this fabulous charging station. The compartments are perfect for different sizes and types of devices and the cords are kept out of view as they run out through the back and into the wall.
6. Cardboard Tubes for Electrical Cords
Do you have a dedicated drawer packed full of entangled electrical cords, chargers and cables? For a more functional approach, start collecting empty toilet tubes. Once you have one roll per cable, neatly coil each cord and place it inside an empty tube. Add some colored tape and a label so you can keep track of what’s what.
7. Cutlery Organizer for Toothbrushes
As one of the most germ infested things in the home, toothbrushes need special care and attention! Give your family’s toothbrushes the space to dry out between uses (and stop them touching off one another, potentially transmitting bacteria) by placing each one in its own section of an unused cutlery organizer.
8. Soda Tabs to Double Hanger Space
Maximize the space within your closet with minimal effort. Take the metal tab from an empty can of soda or beer and use it to attach one hanger to another. It’s also an ingenious way to keep your favorite outfits together, so you get a few extra minutes in bed in the morning!
9. Hidden Storage Books
This clever trick looks great, and hides away all the chaos you don’t want guests to see…think messy cables, toys, keys and more. Take some old hardcover books, remove the pages and attach them to a box to form a secret crate shielded by some interesting titles. Scour thrift stores and yard sales to find book covers that match your color scheme for a cute and functional look.
10. Under Table Baskets for Cables
Even the tidiest of rooms can look chaotic when there’s a mass of cables trailing along desks, floors and around corners. It’s also an accident waiting to happen. Keep yours bundled together – neatly and safely – by cleverly attaching a small wire basket to the underside of desks and tables.
11. Tension Rods for Household Cleaners
Keep your arsenal of household sprays to the front and center of your cleaning cupboard with a few tension rods. Just insert the rods across the inside of a cupboard and hang up your spray bottles. This brilliant idea effectively doubles your storage space and ensures you can deal with spills and stains without delay.
12. Garbage Bags on Rollers
The space under the kitchen sink is probably one of the smallest and dampest storage spaces in the home, which is why organization is key here! While positioning tension rods for your cleaning supplies, why not add a couple of rollers to hold your garbage bags? Where space it at a premium, the inside of the cupboard doors is an ideal location for this handy hack.
13. Toiletry Shelf over Door
Make space for supplies and keep things out of reach of little ones by installing a shelf over the bathroom door. The shelf should rest on top of the door molding, which will help support the weight, while providing a professional finish. Perfect for cleaning solutions, toilet paper, extra toiletries and soaps.
14. Mason Jar Organizers for Kitchen or Bathroom
Proving that canning jars aren’t just valuable for food preparation, why not build a few of these shabby chic Mason Jar organizers from reclaimed wood, jars and hose clamps? They’re ideal for storing all manner of beauty products or jewelry in the bathroom, or culinary tools and odds and ends in the kitchen.
15. Suspended Ladder Laundry Rack
Just when it seems like the laundry room can’t get any more jam-packed, this fantastic idea comes along. Taking up no floor space whatsoever (and costing less than $10), this drying rack is made by suspending an upcycled ladder from the ceiling with chains, and attaching shower hooks for hanging smaller laundry items.
16. Shoe Ladder
It seems that ladders have all sorts of surprising uses inside the home. Outside of the laundry room, they look pretty good housing shoes. High-heeled shoes hang off the rungs of a traditional ladder whereas stepladders are better for flats and sneakers.
17. Wooden Wall Crates
Keep an eye out for old wooden crates at the farmers’ market and snap them up! They’re functional in so many areas of the home – but they look incredible when painted and attached to a wall. Use the extra space they create to store shoes, bags, plants, photos, books and just about anything else you can think of.
18. Six Pack Craft Caddy
Pair your love of beer and crafts by transforming an empty six-pack holder into a cute caddy to store your crafting supplies! If you’re not a crafter, consider using it to keep your pens and pencils, make-up brushes, cosmetics, or even lightweight tools for the home or garden.
19. Pantry Labels
Possibly one of the best organizational tools a foodie can have is a label maker (or at least a paper and pen!). Clearly marking all of your bulk bin buys will ensure you never mess up a recipe again by mistaking the flour for baking soda! With clear labels, all of the produce will be visible and easy to grab. Chalkboard paint makes for a cute pantry tag, although these printable pantry labels are really useful too.
20. Magazine Holder as Corner Shelf
With the demise of the printed magazine, here’s a clever way to put your empty magazine holders to good use, whilst adding some extra organizational space to your home. Flip the holder sideways and secure it as a corner shelf! Just the right size for housing keys, change, gadgets, sunglasses and more.
21. Framed Jewelry Holder
If your necklaces tend to exist as one big ball of entangled chains, or you can never find the second half of an earring pair, it’s time to get organized with this ten-minute project. Staple chicken wire to the back of an empty photo or mirror frame and hang your accessories. While it works best with earrings, chains and bracelets can be displayed with the addition of little hooks.
22. Shower Curtain Rings as a Scarf Holder
The usefulness of these handy hooks is greatly underestimated. Scarf aficionados can keep their collection under control by sliding a number of shower curtain rings onto a single wooden hanger and threading the scarves into the loops.
23. PVC Curling Iron Holsters
Keep your curling irons and hair straighteners out of sight by attaching PVC pipes to the inside of vanity doors. Use one to hold the tongs and one for the cord. Once the irons have cooled, simply pop them into the pipe. The next time you need to use them, you won’t need to worry about untangling the cords first!
24. Put Matching Sheets in Pillowcases
The super organized out there will love this quick tip for preventing matching sheets from getting lost in the linen closet. Just tuck the sheet set inside one of its pillowcases, and then stack according to bed size, or by the room you use the sheets in. Simple but brilliant!