Today I’m sharing 6 quick and easy ways to organize your whole house because the ultimate goal in getting organized is having a picture perfect home that looks like it could be a page ripped from Better Homes & Garden’s, right?  Wrong.

The reality is that your home will never look picture perfect for more than five minutes, maybe two minutes if you have kids or pets.  And that is OK: Perfection is not the goal, but function is.

To get truly organized, you really need to be rooted in reality.

How to Organize Your Whole House

Here are some easy ways that you can organize your whole house, but first, you need an organizing reality check!  Ask yourself the following:

What do I really want from life?

After you’ve answered this big picture question, continue on in the process and take a hard look at various spaces to organize your whole house.

And by hard look, I mean you have to be completely honest.  

Perhaps even brutally honest.

In your closet:

Be realistic about what fits and flatters you now.  Not what will fit you when you lose 5 or 10 pounds.

Do you have outdated clothes in your closet?  Like stuff you’ve had since high school?

Listen, they are not coming back into style soon enough for you to continue to hang on to these items.

Aaaaaaand they probably look like they’re your high school clothes, but no one is ever going to tell you that….

So just let them go!

In your child’s room:

Have clothes or toys or books your child has outgrown?  
Your child isn’t going to ever fit into that cute shirt ever again.  
Donate it, save for hand me downs or if it’s really special, you can keep in it in a memory box.  
But not every thing your child touched can fit into the memory box, so you’ll have to be selective.

Need a way to not get overrun with hand-me-downs? I have just the solution for that with this printable kit!

Don’t know how to organize kid memory stuff either?

Get it all in one place, nice and tidy with this printable organizing kit.

You’ll have all of those precious memories in one safe place in minutes!

In the kitchen:

When’s the last time you used that fancy gizmo you thought would be a time saver in the kitchen (but actually isn’t worth the space it takes up)?  

More than a few months ago?  Let that item go.

Similarly, when’s the last time you went through your spices?

If they no longer have a strong aroma, it’s time to let them go as well. If they don’t smell like anything then they won’t be adding any flare to your dish.

Label what you’re keeping to make them easy to spy when you need them!

In the bathroom:

What beauty items are you actually using?  

Toss any item you haven’t used in the last three months.

What would you never use?  Pitch it!

Collect the remaining items together and sort in baskets or bins.

Then add labels to make it easy to see what’s what!

In the craft room/garage:

What projects are you still interested in working on?  

Get rid of anything that exceeds your interest or skill level.  

Donate to a school or church.  

They’ll love to have your cast-offs!  

Or maybe have a garage sale?

For all rooms:

Why are the things in that space still there?

Remember the big picture: 
How do the items fit in with what you really want from life?  
Are they going to help your home stay organized?

Do the items bring you closer to your ideal life or are they keeping that ideal out of reach?

If the answer is closer to your ideal, then any questions about what to do with the item have been answered.  

Find a home for the item within your space.  If the item is pushing you off of the path, then it is time to let the item go.

Over to you…

What kind of clutter have you been holding on to for “someday?”  Let me know in the comments below.