Four Home Organization Ideas (Starting at Just FIVE Minutes to Do!)

With everyone in our family being home way more than usual over the past few months, making every space in our house work for us has become more important than ever. I’m loving that I’ve been able to use some of my extra at-home time to do exactly that, knocking out several projects on my organizing to-do list including a couple I’d been meaning to do for years! Today I’m shariing four of those projects with you ranging from a super quick 5 minute fix to help tame cluttered kitchen countertops to adding extra storage space in our bathroom, organizing my old photos, and whipping our cluttered utility closet into shape! Ready to see? Let’s get to it starting with a super quick one (which just might be my favorite)… (post includes affiliate links; full disclosure statement available {here})

1. Store Your Most-Used Spray Bottles So They’re Quick to Grab! (5 minutes)

I hate countertop clutter but in a busy house with kids some clutter is inevitable. That doesn’t mean though that I’m not going to fight the good fight to keep as much crap as I can off the countertop and hidden away. 🙂  When I found {these spray bottle hooks} I thought they were absolutely genius! I put three of them on the inside of a cabinet door under our kitchen sink and hooked my most-used spray bottles on them:

Now instead of them cluttering up my countertops they’re hidden away but still SUPER easy to grab whenever they’re needed:

They truly are a five minute fix because there are no tools necessary – you just clean the spot you’re going to put them on, stick the Command strips on the back of the hooks, and press them on (they’re easy to remove at any time too!). My middle glass bottle is pretty heavy but I’m two weeks out from installing my hooks and they’re still holding strong! 

 

2. Add Stylish Extra Storage Space to Your Bathroom (30 mins)

It’s been over FIVE YEARS that this simple project has been on my to-do list – I’ve been wanting to add a functional yet stylish storage piece to the empty space  above the toilet in my girls’ bathroom:

I was originally thinking about adding an open shelving piece but realized that the things that I want to store in this spot aren’t anything pretty that I’d want to have on open display. I found {this mirrored cabinet} – it was the perfect combination of style and function at a reasonable price:

Tell me that those three little baskets that came with it aren’t the cutest! One of them holds extra garbage bags for the bathroom trash can while another is the perfect spot for my oldest daughter to put her daily contact lens packs that we mail back for recycling (and were previously always littering the bathroom countertop…):

Hanging anything at our house, no matter what it is, typically takes at least an hour but the cleat system on the back of this cabinet made it so easy (from unboxing to being completely done it took us 30 minutes). 

You simply screw the cleat onto the wall (it doesn’t have to be exactly centered so you can make sure you’re getting at least one hole in a wall stud) and then lift the cabinet on top of the cleat. Definitely a quick but impactful project to add to your list!

3. Organize, Digitally Copy, & Store Your Old Photos (45 mins/album)

Talk about a project that I’ve been meaning to do FOREVER! I have a ton of prints in old photo albums that I’ve wanted to convert to a digital format and then consolidate for storage (because even once they’re digital, I might still want to take out the prints from time to time to look at them 🙂 ). I tackled these piles of photo albums we store in our family room bookcase – you can actually only see a portion of them in this pic because there are some stacked behind the front row too:

I especially wanted to get the photos out of those albums in the middle that have the old type of album pages with a sticky back and plastic sheet covering the page – I’ve read that those degrade your photos over time. I enlisted my oldest daughter and we each took one album at a time, removing all of the photos from the album, throwing out any not worth keeping (I had so many photos that were five different angles of the same thing) and then putting them into {these photo storage cases}:

Each album took up anywhere from 1-3 of the smaller labeled cases depending on the size of the album and how many photos I got rid of. On average, it took me about 45 minutes per album which is actually longer than I expected! Of course a chunk of that time was me enjoying looking at all of our old photos (so many good times and memories in them!) and it’s the perfect multitasking job as you’re also watching TV or listening to a podcast.

For this project I bought two large handled cases similar to {these large photo keepers} that each contained several smaller containers for the photos. One case is sorted by theme (albums from trips, etc.) and then the second case includes photos from albums that were organized by year. To create the labels, I used {this DYMO labeler} which worked beautifully:

Now I can simply take both of my photo cases to a local store that will convert them to digital prints for me, placing them in digital folders labeled with the same names as what I have on my printed labels. All of the albums in this cabinet are ones that we don’t look at very often (I haven’t tackled our wedding album or albums of the girls yet – those are stored somewhere else) so I’m not going to put these photos back in the albums once they’re digitally copied – I’m going to store them as-is in these cases. But even if you’re looking to keep your photos in an album but want them digitally scanned too, these cases work well for organizing them and consolidating them for scanning. If you want to look at other size options for similar photo cases, you can do that {here}. 

What use to take up the ENTIRE top shelf now only takes up about 1/4 of the space – that’s some pretty precious real estate for storage that just got freed up! That totally means that I have permission to buy some more pillows, right?!… 🙂

While I was at it, I also sorted and organized the contents of the bottom shelf using a trio of {these stylish square woven baskets} that are the perfect size for the space! And I should mention that the baskets, the photo organizers and everything else I used for all four of these projects shipped right to me from lowes.com for free – love that!

 

4. Organize Your Utility Closet (1 hr)

Our utility closet in NC is TINY and an odd triangular shape so once our ironing board and a broom and a couple of mops were put inside there wasn’t room for much of anything else. Yet look at all of that wasted space:

I took everything out, brightened up the inside with a coat of white paint, and added some organizational features from Lowes that allowed me to fit SO much more inside:

My biggest space saver was an {ironing board & iron holder such as one of {these} that can be hung over a door or mounted on the door or a wall with screws. Not only was I able to free up space in the closet that hanging my ironing board left behind but now I had a spot for our iron too (and yes, I promise the door does shut – it’s just the perspective of the photo that makes the iron look taller than the door 🙂 ).

Since I now had a better spot to store all of my cleaners and other bottles, on the top shelf I now had space for a few rolls of extra paper towels and a fabric bin that holds my clean mop heads. On the right wall I installed {this plastic bag holder} to corral extra plastic shopping bags for reuse or recycling. Then to make use of the awkwardly narrow back wall, I hung two tassel baskets} (from Lowe’s) by the handles with {these hooks} and put my most frequently used tools in the top basket and sunscreen & bug spray in the bottom basket so they’re super easy to grab when needed:

These baskets are almost too cute to hide in our closet – love them! 

On the left wall of our closet I hung three of {these broom grippers} to hold my broom, wet mop, and dry mop:

And finally my favorite part of our made-over closet – I took {this rolling laundry cart} that’s typically used in the narrow space between your washer and dryer and used it to hold my cleaning products:

Since it’s on wheels, it’s super easy to roll out and access anything on it that would otherwise be harder to reach:

So what do you think – did you find an organizing project that you might like to tackle? If whipping your home into organized shape is something you never seem to get around to, start small. Once you get that sense of accomplishment after tackling a quick project, you might surprise yourself that you’re itching to knock out something bigger!

Thanks as always for stopping by and have a wonderful weekend (I’m pretty excited about the beautiful weather we have on tap for ours)!

XO,