My New Year’s resolution every year is to get more organized, but this year I’ve buckled down and have gone on a hunt for the most useful organizers I can find. If you have a similar goal for 2014, you might just appreciate my list of fantastic contraptions that can help keep you on track, organized and neat! Check out these 7 fabulous organizers and let me know what you think!
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1. Purse Organizer
This is one of those organizers that is truly a life saver. I have a massive problem with storing everything in my purse. I literally fill my purses with more and more stuff until the zippers eventually pop. If I ever ask my husband to get me something out of my purse, he brings me the whole thing and tells me there’s no way he’s digging through that thing. Because of all of this, my first priority was to organize my purse. I found a nifty little organizer that has cut down immensely on the amount of time I spend digging around my purse every day to find the things I need. Most of these have so many separate pockets in varying sizes, there is bound to be one for everything you need to store. One of the best parts, in my opinion, is that you can lift it out and easily slip it into another purse. If you tend to be someone who switches purses frequently, it is an incredible time saver! And so inexpensive!
2. Wire Racks
These awesome wire racks are good for so many things it’s unbelievable! My favorite use for them, thus far, is storing my hair products, lotions and body sprays. For YEARS my husband has complained, rightfully, that I take up all of the counter space in our bathroom, but I use so many things on various days that even when I put them away in drawers, they ultimately end up back on the counter again. Wire racks for the bathroom come in all sorts of styles and sizes, and mine have finally led to a harmonious bathroom for us. I have two sets, with two tiers. They are stacked on top of each other on my bathroom wall and they hold absolutely all of my beauty products. They are the perfect height, and they are deep enough that I can usually fit two bottles front to back, but not so deep that they take up too much space. Everything is off of the counter, yet all of my stuff is out and ready to grab when I’m rushing around in the morning, so everyone is happy!
3. Gift Wrap Station
As I’ve mentioned several times, I spend way too much of my free time on Pinterest. I do frequently use pins that I follow and this idea was way too awesome to pass up! We don’t have a lot of room in our apartment and had been storing our gift wrap in the closet…until it continually got ripped, crinkled or squished by all of the other stuff in the closet. Then we moved it to our storage facility, but it’s a little bit of a pain in the neck to have to go dig it out every time I need to wrap something; it's simply not practical. A little wrap station, however, is absolutely perfect and I don’t mind having it tucked in the corner of a room because it’s freaking adorable! I love having it on hand whenever I need to wrap a present quickly, which is most of the time because I am a huge procrastinator and always buy presents last minute. The idea is genius. All you have to do is flip over a stool, tie a couple of canvas bags to the rungs of the ladder, or make your own. That's what I did, because I wanted them to be several sizes to hold an assortment of things like ribbon, tape, markers, tags, etc… Put all of your gift wrap in the center and drape your tissue paper and/or any pre-cut pieces of wrapping paper over the rungs on one side of the stool. You can even attach wheels to the bottom. This has to be one of my favorite DIY organizers ever!
4. Can Organizer
My goal is always to save money wherever and whenever I can, so I’ve been a bit of a coupon fanatic for the past several months and have stocked up on things whenever there’s been a sale and I’ve had coupons to match up with the awesome prices. This has resulted in a serious abundance of canned vegetables and soup with basically nowhere to put them. I organized the cabinets, re-organized them, got frustrated and took everything out and tried again… and still couldn’t fit all of our cans onto the shelves in any semblance of order. So, I turned to my good friend Amazon.com and found some handy can organizers. They save SO much room in my cabinets, everything fits with room to spare and I no longer have random cans stored in various places around my kitchen.
5. Laundry Organization
I have always, and I mean ALWAYS been horrible about my dirty laundry. Since I was a kid I’ve just changed clothes and left the old ones on the floor. It’s sad to say, but I never really outgrew that. To add to that, I’ve never been someone who really uses a dresser… My clothes are on the floor until it’s laundry day, then I load everything into my hamper, wash it… and then it sits in the hamper and I dig through it every day to find what I need. I know it’s really unproductive and completely immature of me, but it’s been my habit for so long that I’ve found it incredibly difficult to break it. Laundry organizers can be made in any way that’s easy for you, and they seem to be doing the trick for me, at least for now. You can use a shelving unit in whatever format you think fits best. You can buy ones that are already made, or if you’re looking for a cheaper alternative you can do as I did, which was to buy metal tracks and brackets and baskets, and mount them on your wall. I wanted to be able to just toss my clothes into the baskets. Now that you know how incredibly lazy I am, I will tell you that this horrible habit of mine has vastly improved since I started using this new easy-make system and it makes laundry day super easy since everything is already sorted into my three baskets (whites, colors and reds).
6. Shower Storage
As I’ve said many, many times, my apartment is small. It has virtually no closet or cabinet space, so storing things isn’t always easy. To make matters worse, we have a really weird shower. It’s an odd shape, the shower head hangs at a strange angle that doesn’t allow us to hang one of those organizers over it… and the walls are textured, so we can’t use anything with suction cups, because they just fall off. The best solution I have found is a second shower curtain rod on the opposite side of the shower. You can use the shower curtain loops to hang plastic baskets of all different sizes to hold shampoos, razors, shaving cream…all sorts of things! It is the absolute best shower organizer I have ever had and it is virtually the only thing that works in my crazy shower!
7. Multi-Use
There are so many things that you can do with those cheap plastic or canvas over-the-door shoe organizers, it is absolutely ridiculous! You can obviously organize your shoes, but you can also store hair accessories, cleaning products, your belts, ties, scarves and gloves, use it as a catch-all for craft supplies and a multitude of other ideas.
Hopefully some of these organizers help you out as much as they have helped me. I’m keeping my fingers crossed that I can keep up my organizing and make this year my neatest and tidiest yet! Do you know of any organizers that are absolute must-haves?
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