10 Steps To Organizing Your Home

1. Kitchen: Remove all the bits and pieces around your kitchen sink. Get a tray to hold your scrubbies and sponges. Soap should be stowed in the cupboard and keep out a decorative container of hand soap and lotion. Get a decorative container to hold all your large utensils by the stove. It makes cooking much easier and frees up space in your drawers.

2. Bathroom: Everything should have its place. Get cheap plastic storage containers or baskets and fill them with commonly used items. For instance have one for bandages, alcohol and other first aid items. Create another for make-up, and another for hair accessories. You'll love how quick and easy it is to find things when you need them.

3. Home Office: Again, grab some small containers to store all those paperclips, push pins and elastics. Hang up a board, screw in binder clips and cup hooks and use it to hold bills you need to pay, invitations, or important notes.

4. Kid's Room: For the small ones, get cheap laundry baskets to hold toys and stuffed animals. Older kids need a bookcase and desk to give them a central place to work and store their books and papers.

5. Entry: Get a small basket and fill it with slippers. Keep it right by the door so you and your guests have something to slip into after removing their shoes or wet boots. Hang hooks in your closet for all those small items such as dog leashes and keys.

6. Garage: Arrange your recycling in containers so that come garbage day it's already sorted and you just have to take it out.

7. Broom Closet: Get screw hooks and clips to hang up your brooms, mops and dustpans and put pails and cleaners on a shelf. Add hooks to the inside of the closet door to hold tools you need in a hurry, such as a hammer, screwdriver, tape measure, etc.

8. Bedroom: I tip my hat at the inventor of the jewelry box holds everything with getting the chains all tied up. In the meantime, empty out a small drawer, place some small containers (teacups and saucers work great) and use those for your baubles. The cups work great for hanging your earrings off the rims and the containers are big enough for bulky beaded necklaces or bracelets.

9. Laundry Room: Store all the soap in a cupboard above the washer. Attach your ironing board to a wall hanger that you just pull down when you need it. Get bins for pre-sorting your clothes by colors, whites and delicates.

10. Living Room: Find a pretty container or wide-mouth vase to hold your remote controls, because after all, nobody just has one anymore. Get some storage cubes or a TV cabinet to house all those DVD's and CD's that accumulate around the television.