Major Pitfalls in Home Organizing That Must Be Avoided
Organizing and de-cluttering your home is not that hard a task unless you commit the major pitfalls many people unconsciously do when organizing. Below are some of the common pitfalls you should avoid to keep your home orderly:
1. Starting to organize without proper planning.
So many people jump into organizing a room or any part of the house at a spur of the moment without adequate planning. This is a major mistake that often leads to unsuccessful organizing. Planning is really important before starting to organize things in any area of your home. Planning could include deciding your desired final outcome, how to dispose of things you will no longer need, where to start, when to do it, and so on. With proper planning, you can be better organized.
2. Buying extra storage space and other products you deem necessary for organizing things before even starting the actual work.
This is a common practice by many because shopping motivates them to organize things. But doing this more often than not results in additional clutter. The better approach is to start organizing things first and when you are done, make a trip to the store with your checklist on what things you need to buy to store and organize things.
3. Starting to organize without proper disposal plan.
Proper disposal plan is very important in organizing. If you are organizing your kid’s room and you end up with plenty of unwanted toys, you should already have a plan where to put them. Are you planning to donate them, sell them, or just keep them? The same is true when organizing your closet, kitchen and other areas in your home. Don’t start organizing or de-cluttering without plans on how to dispose items otherwise you will end up with piles of unwanted things that linger for days in your hallways.
4. Putting things temporarily somewhere.
When organizing, make a firm decision whether an item should go or stay to avoid putting things temporarily somewhere. Some people have the wrong practice of putting things away in a temporary place “for now” because they cannot make up their decision. Doing this oftentimes results to another clutter.
5. Allowing clutter to accumulate.
As a preventive measure for accumulating clutter, make sure to clear off table tops, drawers, countertops and counters regularly. You can schedule a time to do it every day or weekly. This way you can avoid having things in places where they shouldn’t be and avoid clutter to accumulate.
6. Keeping things because they might be useful to you in the future time.
When organizing and you see things that have been there for a long time that have never been used, don’t hesitate to let them go. The fact that you never knew of their existence and they still survived means you don’t need them. Don’t fall into the common trap of keeping things because of possible future needs. There’s a higher probability that you will not be able to use them.
7. Buying things more than what you need.
Another major cause of cluttered home is when you buy more things than you actually need. Many people are motivated to buy several products of the same kind like storage spaces, gadgets, utensils and the likes which they don’t really need but just because they are on sale. This often results into a collection of many unwanted or unusable things in the home. Better to have little things that you all use than having plenty of things that you don’t use.
8. Organizing without informing others of your system of keeping things in order.
After your hard work of organizing the kitchen, you might be back again to the same cluttered and disorganized kitchen if you will not inform other members of your household about your system of keeping things in order. You will have an easier job maintaining order if other members of your household will also cooperate.
These are just some of the common pitfalls in organizing your home and you can freely add some more to the list. Try to avoid these pitfalls to make your work a lot easier and make your home more organized and clutter-free.