Spring cleaning is coming I don’t know about you, but the hardest part for me about getting (and staying?) organized, is just getting started! I’m not the most organized person in the world, so I couldn’t resist snarking a tiny bit about some of these. Okay, a lot. And yes, I am totally judging a pin by its picture. But just because organization is a foreign concept to me, don’t let that stop you! To hopefully jump-start your way into the serene, hyper-organized life you’ve always dreamed about, where there’s a place for everything and everything in its place, we’ve put together a list of 20 easy-ish ways to (literally) get your shit together.

 

1. How to clean and organize…your cleaning closet? I have serious questions about this picture. Who keeps their board games in their cleaning closet? What kind of maniac needs 17 spare rolls of paper towels, all hanging neatly at the ready? And why are three still in the plastic wrap, but the rest are not? What if I have more or fewer than the 24 cleaning products that the shoe rack hanging on the door allows? What if my ironing board doesn’t complement my mop bucket? WHAT THEN, PINTEREST!?

 

2. Apparently, there are people who, when they need a shovel, don’t have to dig it out of the pile of crap in their shed. Who knew! This is a cool idea for people who have the wall space, and need their pitchforks handy on a constant basis.

 

3. Need an inexpensive way to organize your many, many hats? I know I do! I have so many hats, it’s driving me nuts, and I simply won’t be happy until I hang them up on a hanger with shower curtain rings, then hang THAT on a fancy hook.

 

4. At first glance, I thought hey! Cool idea! Then I thought, how’s the kid going to get his or her stuffed toys into the top few rows of that organizer? Seems to me like if you want to use this one, you’re just tricking yourself into picking up your kid’s toys for them. Unless you want your kids perched on ladders with armfuls of stuffed toys. Which you probably don’t.

 

5. I’m not gonna lie, I kind of like this one, minus the weird stack of tiny disposable cups for rinsing. Where do you even buy those? Do you steal them from the dentist? What do you have against re-usable cups? Are you supposed to pour the mouthwash out into the little cup, swish, then rinse, or are you supposed to just pour the mouthwash directly into your mouth like a savage? Hell with it, let’s put the mouthwash in a decanter and accompany it with a shot glass. That way, we can pretend we’re having a very minty nightcap.

 

6. Do you have 24 tanktops, but only one hanger? Do you have 24 extra shower curtain hooks lying around? Then wonder no more how you will hang your vast collection of tank tops! I bet the hat lady above is responsible for this one.

 

7. Hang your bags of frozen food from the bottom of your freezer shelf with heavy-duty office clips! I feel like only a crazy person would do this. Like, for real, if I opened someone’s freezer and saw this, I’d be scanning the rest of the freezer for human heads.

 

8. I WANT THIS. But do you know why I can’t have nice things? Because I don’t have six tidy frying pans in incremental sizes, or a few pots with lids from a matching set. Hell, no. I have 47 hand-me-down assorted pots and pans of wildly different sizes with 62 lids that don’t fit and don’t match and every time I want to use one, it’s on the bottom (science will never explain how this happens to be the case every single time), and then when I try to pull it out, everything in the cupboard comes crashing down onto my bare feet, and oh, the hell with cooking, I hate this, I give up.

 

9. Feeling whimsical? Then why not put your detergent pods in an old-fashioned candy jar! After all, it’s not like there’s already a huge problem with children thinking these are candy, then eating them and getting sick.

 

10. Here we go – a dozen non-boozy ways to use a wine rack in every room of your house. Because you don’t drink wine, but you’re obsessed with the racks, and absolutely no other storage solution will do. I had to click through on this one – they’ve got balls of yarn, office supplies, bath towels, craft stuff, succulent plants, tiny handbags, herbs, rolled-up magazines, and shoes stuffed into wine racks. It’s GODDAMN MADNESS.

 

11. For when you absolutely, positively have to store your impressive array of mustards, and they must all be UPSIDE DOWN for some reason, only a cut-up egg carton will do.

 

12. Ahh, we’re getting warmer. Too much shit? Check. Dollar store? I like what I’m hearing. Store your bras by hanging all of them on the wall in plain sight? Umm…no. Not even if all of my bras were pretty. And I assure you, they’re not.

 

13. It’s cute, but I feel like it might be a little bit overkill to have a tiny labeled charging station, complete with its own frigging landscaping. Is this what organized people do? Can this be right?

 

14. Ooh, a little hand-painted mailbox you can mount in your laundry room to store all of your pesky lint in! How delightfully twee! I love throwing things away twice! You know what I have in my laundry room that accomplishes much the same thing? A trash basket.

 

15. This is actually kind of cool, I think. I’d do this. And if you open your kitchen window, it becomes the world’s most horrible wind chime.

 

16. I feel like this is a really good idea, for people who know how to properly fold fitted sheets. Is there a pretty solution for those of us who wad them up and swear at them?

 

17. I feel like if you’re that bothered by having shoes on the floor, why don’t you just put them in your closet? I mean, seriously, if you were that bothered, wouldn’t you be WAY more offended by installing a shoe rack that isn’t really a shoe rack someplace where it doesn’t belong? It just looks like you installed your coat rack four feet too low when you were drunk, then said “eh, fuck it. Shoe rack.”

 

18. Yes! Because hanging four colorful buckets on your wall takes up FAR less space than simply putting these 13 items in a drawer.

 

19. I like the IDEA of something like this, but I don’t have four wooden spoons, I have 37 spoons of all materials and sizes. I don’t have ten or so neat little bottles of spice, I have five dozen little bottles of spice – half of them cinnamon, for some reason – crammed haphazardly into a cupboard, along with a bunch of those huge Costco-sized spices. I don’t have *A* tidy little vegetable peeler, I have a kitchen gadget drawer that you’d be lucky to find a cheese slicer in before you lost a finger to it.

 

20. I love this. It’s gorgeous, and appeals to my obsessive nature. But isn’t a lot of what they’re calling “storage hacks” just tricking you into spending $400 on pristine tubs and jars, and then taking an item out of the storage container it’s already sold in, and putting it in this new, different container? How is this easier/faster than reading the labels on the box? What if you take a liking to a different kind of cracker, and there’s no jar for it? Do you just say “nope, no room!” and throw them away? And why do you enjoy taking eight times as long to put away groceries?

Have fun getting organized! I’ll be over here, swearing at my fitted sheets.

Emily Parker is a musician, writer, and avid reader who started Bucket List Book Reviews, the ‘1,001 Books to Read Before You Die’ project. For Sweatpants & Coffee, Emily hopes to inspire the reading of the classics by a whole new audience by only reviewing the really good stuff.

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