If you have a messy house and want to start organizing but don’t know where to start, it can feel very overwhelming! Don’t worry – I have some tips for you on how to get started and go from messy to organized!
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Envision how you want your house to make you feel!
One of the very first things that you should do is start thinking about how you want your house to make you feel!
Don’t start with how you want it to look but how you want it to make you feel!
That will be your why! Which will keep you going when your initial excitement and motivation wear off. Because the will wear off.
And envisioning how you want your house to make you feel will help you make decisions on how to organize your things.
How to begin organizing your house?
Let’s start with establishing a few quick things to set you up for success before you dive in and start organizing.
Schedule Time
Decide when you will have time each week to dedicate to working on organizing your home. If you tend not to follow through because life gets too busy, try scheduling appointments on your phone on in your planner.
Some things to help you decide the best time to work on organization:
- Do you prefer to do little each day vs longer stretch of time once a week?
- Are you more motivated early in the day or later in the day?
- Do you work better when you are alone or with someone keeping your company?
- Do you prefer weekdays or weekends?
Quick Win
Now that you know when you will organize, it’s time to decide where you will get started. Where will you start organizing your messy house?
I highly recommend you start with a quick win. That is something that you can tackle relatively quickly and something that will immediately make an impact on you feel in your space.
Where is that exactly?
That is completely up to you!
Here are some things to help you decide:
- What space in your house do you find the most frustrating?
- Which clutter do you see most often?
- What room in your house do you use the most?
- What types of items find tend to gather in your dumping area?
- Which area of your home does not function the way you want it to function?
One space at a time
The key to success is not to concentrate on all the mess in your house at once.
Take it slow! Concentrate on one space or area at a time.
You can even do one shelf or one cabinet at a time!
If you try too much too fast, it will quickly make you feel overwhelmed and lead to giving up. But if you take it slow, you will start seeing results!
And seeing the results will help you keep going. Before you know it, your home will be transformed.
And so will you.
RELATED: How to keep your house clean and organized while working full time
Three Steps to Transform and Organize a Messy House
Now that you have plan, let’s talk about the three steps of the transformation.
Step 1: Declutter
When you are trying to get you messy house in order, you need to start with decluttering the space. Get rid of anything that is no longer serving you or you no longer like.
Oftentimes, we tend to jump into organizing or cleaning. Believe me, I have been there myself!
But if you don’t start with getting rid of clutter you will end up back with a messy house really fast.
So step one is to remove the clutter from the space you are tackling!
Make decluttering simple by sorting your things into keep, donate, and trash piles. And if you are really unsure if you are ready to let go of an item, put it in a separate container and store it away to see if you will miss it. Or, keep it for now, and you can revisit this time you are going through your space.
Step 2: Clean
Once you declutter things from an area, go ahead and give it a good clean.
If you are tackling the messy closet, wipe down the shelves.
If you are tackling your home office, dust, clean surfaces, and vacuum.
You don’t have to deep clean each space but I recommend you have a clean slate before moving on to step 3. That way it will make a much bigger impact and you will have the feeling of accomplishment that the space is both clean and free of clutter.
Step 3: Organize
Now you are finally ready to organize!
It will be much quicker not that you have less things and the space is clean. It will be easier to figure out how to organize your things!
Think about it!
If you would have started with organizing as your first step, you would have ended-up with an organized mess.
And a few months later, the organize mess would turned back into a messy house.
This is the step where you can start looking into organization bins and containers to help improve functionality of the space. Make sure you group similar items together and also that every single item has a home!
One of the common pitfalls when trying to organize a messy house is starting organizing too early.
And it’s only natural! We want to see our things neatly organized 🙂
But if you declutter first, clean second, and organize third, you will create a much more functional space. And one that will be functional long term and not for only a few short weeks.
Bonus Step!
The key to making sure your house stays organized and does not go back to the messy state, is to put systems in place. What we are talking about here is home management!
Create a home management binder for your house where you will keep track of your home routines and systems!
RELATED: How to Create a Home Management System
Remember it’s a Marathon and not a Sprint!
Depending on how messy your house is right not, it might take a while to get it to a place where you feel like it’s organized. But I promise your results will be long lasting if you take the time to go through the process of organizing a messy house.
You will be much more happier with the results in the end!
