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June 14, 2016 By Abby Lawson 24 Comments

10 Organizational Systems that Are Essential for Every House

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After living in our house for seven years, I feel like I finally have systems in place for all of the major elements in our home... just in time to move and start all over again. 🙂

Because I don't want to spend another seven years figuring out systems in our new house, though, I tried to look at our current home and pinpoint the essential organized areas that keep it running smoothly so that I know what to focus on in our new space.

And since it would be awfully selfish of me to keep my findings to myself, I thought I'd share them with you in case you're looking to get more organized as well!

If you want to get organized but don't know where to start, this helpful post talks about 10 essential organizational systems that every home needs to have! It's genius! Click through to the post to read more!

This post contains affiliate links. For more information, see my disclosures here.

Get organized in just 7 days with this free challenge! Click through to enroll!

The 10 Organizational Systems that Keep Our House Running Smoothly

1. Paperwork

If you are like us, you have oodles and oodles of paperwork that enters your house on a daily basis. It never stops! There was a point in our lives where we really struggled to keep up with the inflow of paper because we were lacking a solid system.

And then we went paperless. And it has been the best thing we possibly could have done.

If you want to get organized but don't know where to start, this helpful post talks about 10 essential organizational systems that every home needs to have! It's genius! Click through to the post to read more!

our favorite scanner

Basically, Donnie is in charge of scanning any incoming paperwork that we may need to reference in the future. He then files it digitally in a system we have set up in Evernote, and then we can discard the paper originals. We don't have any filing cabinets stuffed full of bills and medical records; everything is digital. You can read more about how we manage our paperless system in this post.

Just when we thought we had the whole paperwork thing under control, though, our kids went to school. I have never seen so much paper come home in my entire life. Eeek. Once we realized how much paper they were bringing in the door daily, we realized that we needed a system for that too. After a little trial and error, we found a way to minimize their paper clutter, display their proudest pieces, and file some of our favorite items for future perusal. I explain our system for handling kids' school paperwork in this post.

If you want to get organized but don't know where to start, this helpful post talks about 10 essential organizational systems that every home needs to have! It's genius! Click through to the post to read more!

2. Schedule

One of the other areas that Donnie and I quickly learned that we needed a system for was organizing our schedule. It only took a few double booked appointments for us to realize that we needed to get on the same page, and fast.

The easiest way we've found to do this is to utilize a shared Google calendar. We both add pertinent appointments to the digital calendar, and both of us can access it from our phones and computers. This way before we schedule anything, we can easily check to see if there are any other events that would interfere and we avoid the double booking problem.

If you want to get organized but don't know where to start, this helpful post talks about 10 essential organizational systems that every home needs to have! It's genius! Click through to the post to read more!

Since I am a pen and paper girl at heart, I also keep a paper planner that I use on a day to day basis for my own notes, time blocking, goals, and plans.

3. Kitchen Supplies

Now let's get down to our "stuff." The kitchen, as they say, is the heart of the home, and it is also one of the first areas that can become unruly on the organization side of things! With so many gadgets, utensils, appliances, and pieces of dinnerware, cabinets and drawers can fill up fast.

If you want to get organized but don't know where to start, this helpful post talks about 10 essential organizational systems that every home needs to have! It's genius! Click through to the post to read more!

acrylic organizer | contact paper

The number one thing I've done to combat this is to purge ruthlessly. I got rid of items I had multiples of. I ditched anything I wasn't using often. I threw away or donated any specialty gadget whose purpose could be met by something else (for example, my grill or oven could take the place of my George Foreman grill, so it got the boot).

If you want to get organized but don't know where to start, this helpful post talks about 10 essential organizational systems that every home needs to have! It's genius! Click through to the post to read more!

storage containers | mint bin | magic bullet

After purging, I was really intentional about how I filled my cabinets and drawers, placing the items I used most often within easy reach and the pieces I use more sporadically up higher. You can take a tour of all of our kitchen cabinets and drawers in this post.

Get organized in just 7 days with this free challenge! Click through to enroll!

4. Food

While we're talking about the kitchen, the food also needs to be organized! I store dry goods in my pantry, which we made more functional with ALGOT shelving (now called BOAXEL) from IKEA. Once the shelving was in place, I used a combination of baskets, risers, and storage containers (with labels!) to organize the food in the most efficient way possible. More details about our pantry can be found in this post.

If you want to get organized but don't know where to start, this helpful post talks about 10 essential organizational systems that every home needs to have! It's genius! Click through to the post to read more!

storage containers | spice jars

Our refrigerator is the second piece in the food organization puzzle, and though it is small, we've found ways to maximize the space using carefully chosen bins and specific placement for different types of food items. I wrote all about our organized refrigerator in this post.

If you want to get organized but don't know where to start, this helpful post talks about 10 essential organizational systems that every home needs to have! It's genius! Click through to the post to read more!

5. Clothes

Clothes are another thing that can easily take over every drawer, closet, and extra nook and cranny in the house! I feel like we finally got our clothes under control when we applied the KonMari method, first purging everything that we didn't absolutely love, and organizing the remainder. Donnie and I share one small-ish closet in the master bedroom and organize our clothes by type:

If you want to get organized but don't know where to start, this helpful post talks about 10 essential organizational systems that every home needs to have! It's genius! Click through to the post to read more!

We use the filing method for our folded clothes to keep our drawers neat and organized. You can see a step by step explanation of how I fold our clothes this way in this post.

If you want to get organized but don't know where to start, this helpful post talks about 10 essential organizational systems that every home needs to have! It's genius! Click through to the post to read more!

Since we have two boys, hand-me-downs are another thing we have to keep organized around here. I use plastic drawers and a labeling system to keep all of the different sizes straight, and you can snag my free printable labels in this post.

If you want to get organized but don't know where to start, this helpful post talks about 10 essential organizational systems that every home needs to have! It's genius! Click through to the post to read more!

similar drawer

6. Coats and Outerwear

We live in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania where we experience four (sometimes fairly extreme!) seasons, so we have coats and jackets in just about every weight to accommodate the unpredictable weather. We each keep our go-to coat of the season in the mini-mudroom we created on the main level of our house:

If you want to get organized but don't know where to start, this helpful post talks about 10 essential organizational systems that every home needs to have! It's genius! Click through to the post to read more!

All other coats are stored in a nook in the basement, which is right beside the door we use most often to enter and exit our house for easy access. I keep a bin for gloves and hats in this nook as well, so we can easily find what we need to bundle up in the winter. More information about our coat storage system can be found in this post.

If you want to get organized but don't know where to start, this helpful post talks about 10 essential organizational systems that every home needs to have! It's genius! Click through to the post to read more!

7. Office and Craft Supplies

For the first few years that we lived in our house, I didn't have a dedicated space for my craft and office supplies, and it drove me bonkers! Since I was trying to squeeze them in anywhere I could, they inevitably ended up all over the place and I could never find what I needed. A few years ago, though, we rearranged some of our spaces and I finally got an office of my own! I use a combination of open shelving + storage baskets to hold the majority of my supplies:

If you want to get organized but don't know where to start, this helpful post talks about 10 essential organizational systems that every home needs to have! It's genius! Click through to the post to read more!

silhouette | laminator | baskets (similar) | bins | bookshelves | cube unit

I also have a few drawers to hold smaller items like paper clips, hole punches, sticky notes, etc.:

If you want to get organized but don't know where to start, this helpful post talks about 10 essential organizational systems that every home needs to have! It's genius! Click through to the post to read more!

And finally, my closet holds most of my craft supplies (and extra pillows, of course!):

If you want to get organized but don't know where to start, this helpful post talks about 10 essential organizational systems that every home needs to have! It's genius! Click through to the post to read more!

clear bins | cream bins

8. Toiletries

I've tried a few different under-the-sink organization methods, but our current setup seems to work the best for our needs. I use small plastic drawers to hold the majority of the items under our master bathroom sink:

If you want to get organized but don't know where to start, this helpful post talks about 10 essential organizational systems that every home needs to have! It's genius! Click through to the post to read more!

And a combination of various bins to organize everything under the guest bathroom sink:

If you want to get organized but don't know where to start, this helpful post talks about 10 essential organizational systems that every home needs to have! It's genius! Click through to the post to read more!

More details about our under-the-sink organization can be found in this post.

9. Seasonal Decor

I am not even a huge seasonal decorator (other than Christmas-- then I go all out! 😉 ), but I still have several bins of seasonal decor that we store in our garage. As I've said with many of the other areas, the biggest thing I do is purge these bins on a regular basis. There is no reason to store items that I'm not going to use. I also use labels to tell me what is in each bin so that I can locate what I need quickly, and you can snag those in this post.

If you want to get organized but don't know where to start, this helpful post talks about 10 essential organizational systems that every home needs to have! It's genius! Click through to the post to read more!

10. Toys

Finally, this area my not apply to every single house, but if you have kids (or pets!) toys can be one of the most challenging things to organize. My kids are currently 7 & 4 and I feel like I've tried about every system on earth to organize their stuff! We still have days when the house feels overrun with toys, but for the most part, we are able to keep them organized with 1) frequent purging; 2) labeled bins for smaller toys:

If you want to get organized but don't know where to start, this helpful post talks about 10 essential organizational systems that every home needs to have! It's genius! Click through to the post to read more!

storage unit (similar) | bins (similar)

And 3) open shelving for larger items:

If you want to get organized but don't know where to start, this helpful post talks about 10 essential organizational systems that every home needs to have! It's genius! Click through to the post to read more!

I used to keep these large toys on the floor, and they drove me bonkers. The open shelves were exactly what we needed to keep the big toys organized, and I tell the Cs that they can only have the big toys that fit on these shelves, so if they get something new, something old has to go. #meanmommy 😉

So those are the 10 main areas where intentional organizational systems have been absolutely essential for us! Now, there is not one perfect organizational system that will work for every family or every house-- I'm sure some of ours will look similar in our new house and some will be quite a bit different! But if your goal is to get organized, hopefully this list can help you get started and know which areas to focus on to help make your home run as smoothly as possible.

Are there any other areas you would add to my list? I'd love to hear about them in the comments!

Get organized in just 7 days with this free challenge! Click through to enroll!

Have a wonderful day!

Abby

This post contains affiliate links. For more information, see my disclosures here.

Filed Under: Organization Tagged With: home organization, organization, organizational systems, organized, systems

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Comments

  1. Sarah says

    June 14, 2016 at 8:04 am

    Love your posts! I'm working through our home as well and getting organized slowly but surely. I'm a board game nut and have a huge closet full of them. Couldn't help but notice it looks like the boys have two versions of Chutes & Ladders but can't tell what the second one is. This is such a minor thing, but we are looking to get that game for children that come to our house when we have company. Which version do your boys like best? Thanks Abby!

    Reply
    • justagirlabby says

      June 14, 2016 at 9:45 am

      You have a good eye, lol! They have the classic version and the "Super Hero Squad" version. I would say they play the Super Hero version more often, but the classic version might be more boy and girl friendly. 🙂 Hope you're having a great day, Sarah!

      ~Abby =)

      Reply
  2. Suzi Whitford says

    June 14, 2016 at 8:36 am

    Love all these tips! One thing that I additionally do is arrange my clothes in my closet by color. It looks like a beautiful rainbow and takes a bit of anxiety away when I have to choose what to wear. Because I'm normally in 'color' moods 🙂 And also, as a stay/work from home mommy - I have an outfit for each day of the week. It makes my morning routine smoother 🙂 Thanks for sharing!

    Reply
    • justagirlabby says

      June 14, 2016 at 9:45 am

      Love that, Suzi! Thanks so much for sharing!

      ~Abby =)

      Reply
  3. Tale says

    June 14, 2016 at 1:19 pm

    It's so inpirational to see all of this in one post! I'm working my way through my own home now, and while I have a long way to go, it's so nice to be inspired for the future. I'm really envious of your pantry, I don't have one and I find I really miss it.

    Thank you for sharing! 🙂

    Reply
    • justagirlabby says

      June 14, 2016 at 5:17 pm

      Aw, so glad they were helpful for you! Hope you're having a great week!

      ~Abby =)

      Reply
  4. Daria says

    June 14, 2016 at 5:07 pm

    I bought a scanner and I can't wait until we're paperless! It must be such a freeing feeling! I looked at my file cabinets the other day and thought "I won't need those anymore..."

    Reply
    • justagirlabby says

      June 14, 2016 at 5:16 pm

      It really is so awesome once you have the system in place! We love it!

      ~Abby =)

      Reply
  5. LA McClure says

    June 14, 2016 at 7:21 pm

    I had to laugh at your 'meanmommy' tag! I think it essential that children learn early - one in, one out. "Stuff" smothers us!

    I wish I had just ONE drawer that was as neat as anything you have.

    Reply
  6. Shandy @ HappyMeetsHome says

    June 14, 2016 at 9:31 pm

    These are such great tips, makes me want to completely organize my house! I struggle sometimes with "I might need it someday" syndrome and being attached to my kids things for sentimental reasons, but I'm trying to learn to part with things. Clutter is making me crazy!

    Reply
  7. Lauren says

    June 17, 2016 at 4:55 pm

    Abby-I so appreciate this post! We just moved from a big, open home to a smaller, chopped up home and it's challenging to find places for things. Your post has given me inspiration for some of those things that didn't have a spot. 🙂

    Thanks!!

    Reply
    • justagirlabby says

      June 18, 2016 at 11:29 am

      So glad it was helpful for you, Lauren!

      ~Abby =)

      Reply
  8. Nicola says

    June 18, 2016 at 6:26 am

    I've seen you mention going totally paperless a few times now, and my gut reaction has alway been, "But what about the things where we *need* originals?" But then I thought about it, and that's really such a tiny minority of all the documents in our flat, and in many cases originals can be replaced without too much fuss; I think my fiancé had to spend something like £20 to get his birth certificate replaced as we needed it for our marriage licence and his mum couldn't find it (something that also isn't a problem if most of your documents are digital!). I finally clicked through and read Donnie's post on the subject and it's definitely something I want to do now.

    Reply
  9. Diane + Dean DIY says

    June 18, 2016 at 7:39 am

    Great post, Abby! Thanks so much for sharing. I am sure you are encorporating the best organization plans in your new home to be built. That must be fun to start from scratch with all the great ideas on Pinterest and great places to shop.

    Reply
    • justagirlabby says

      June 18, 2016 at 11:27 am

      A little overwhelming, but SO exciting! 🙂 Thanks so much!

      ~Abby =)

      Reply
  10. Zoe @ IntentionalZoe says

    June 18, 2016 at 7:40 am

    I love the fact that you seem to use all different types of bins. Primarily clear, but you also have great use for boxes and other types of containers which really bring about the convenience and compartmentalization of a space. It's inspired me to start gathering all of my random bins, plastic containers, boxes and baskets and be more intentional with their use.

    Thanks Abby!

    Reply
    • justagirlabby says

      June 18, 2016 at 11:27 am

      Glad it was helpful for you, Zoe!

      ~Abby =)

      Reply
  11. Carole @ TootSweet4Two says

    June 21, 2016 at 7:54 pm

    I love all your tips, meanmommy! I consider myself relatively well-organized, but I'm not paperless. I'll have to think about that one! Also, I'm addicted to kitchen gadgets and have far more than I need (and use). I think that's the area I'll tackle first! Thanks for the great post!

    Reply
  12. Roenlo says

    July 26, 2016 at 7:18 pm

    Love the organization posts! Being a little OCD, I think I'm really going to try the purging to really force myself to donate / throw away unused clothes because our closet is really tiny for our bedroom. We have 2 single door closets & looking to install shelves. For now, I thought of using rattan / wicker / ottoman storage at the foot of the bed for "everyday clothes" (tshirts, jeans, shorts... Anything that's good folded) and was wondering if you could give any suggestions on organizing it in "one big box"!
    Thanks for the wonderful posts!!!

    Reply
    • justagirlabby says

      August 14, 2016 at 4:36 pm

      Hi, Roenlo! I would probably look for some bins I could use inside of the box to separate the different types of clothing. I use bins in my drawers that hold my socks and undergarments to keep them neat and tidy, and it works like a charm. I hope this helps! Have a great day!

      ~Abby =)

      Reply
  13. Gina says

    February 22, 2017 at 8:25 am

    I love the toy storage! I don't have kids yet, but I could totally see myself using something like that. In fact I have the perfect place for it. I may just have to get one now and fill it with decorations. Can always convert it to kid related storage later 🙂

    Reply
    • justagirlabby says

      February 22, 2017 at 9:07 am

      So glad it was helpful, Gina!

      ~Abby =)

      Reply
  14. Shanyesica says

    March 21, 2019 at 4:51 pm

    Wow ! This is sooo organized! Thanks for sharing.

    Reply
    • justagirlabby says

      March 21, 2019 at 8:20 pm

      So glad it was helpful for you!

      ~Abby =)

      Reply

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