Note: this weeks blog is geared towards the master bedroom. Kids rooms and closet organizing ideas will be tackled in future blogs. And as always, we are here to give you help in person when you need it.

Ah, the bedroom—a place to unwind, relax, kick back…Our bedrooms are supposed to be a comforting space, right? When you look at your bedroom, what do you see? Is it uncluttered and inviting? Or has it become a dumping ground? It seems like this time of year I get a LOT of requests for bedroom organization help. It’s easy to understand why: most of the time the bedroom is not on the beaten path and easy to use it as a place to stuff things that don’t belong elsewhere. Company coming? Toss the extra stuff in the bedroom quickly to get it out of the way, Family helping you to pick up? “I don’t know where it goes Mom/honey, so I put it in the bedroom”…you’ve heard this before, right? If your home is small, sometimes the bedroom is the easiest place to put things, even if they don’t belong there because you don’t know where else to put it. It becomes the drop zone…Pretty soon the end result is that your bedroom winds up being anything BUT relaxing and inviting. 

Here are the tips and steps I take when helping my clients organize their bedrooms: 

Before I break out the cute bins and baskets to store stuff in a bedroom, we declutter like crazy. Items that are clearly trash need to be disposed of.  Getting rid of things is hard sometimes, I know. But I tell my clients, it’s just physics: you can either have stuff or you can have space, but not both. Keeping things “just in case” is not realistic sometimes. It’s not worth overloading space with things we don’t use all the time. This is especially true with clothes and (gulp) shoes. I often suggest to my clients that we isolate and sort items into 3 categories: 1) Absolutely love it and wear it all the time. 2) Haven’t worn it in at least 6 months but can’t bring myself to get rid of it quite yet, and 3) don’t wear because it doesn’t fit, is out of style, and I’m ready to bless someone else with it. This is also true of grooming and toiletry items (except we don’t donate those items in the last category—we toss em). Hint: keeping an inexpensive laundry basket in your closet marked “donate” is a great way to be realistic about what you really don’t want or need any longer. When it’s full, bag the items up and donate them. 

Electronics are often a big source of clutter, too. We all use them and have them in our bedrooms, but having a place to store them and charge them can be as easy as a nightstand with drawers (Hint: drill a hole or two in the back of the drawer and run a power bar or charging station inside the drawer with the cord coming out the back and you automatically have a place to charge everything. I have my Phone, Ipad, Air pods and Kindle all charging in the drawer out of sight, leaving my nightstand for whatever I am reading at night). Other items that I want to keep close at hand are right there when I need them but not cluttering up the surfaces. Small bins inside those drawers keep smaller items easier to find and makes it easier to see what you need when you need it. Hint: keep a small flashlight in your nightstand drawer. In case of a power outage you always have one handy. 

Clothes management: Get into the habit of hanging up your clothes EVERY NIGHT. I know, it’s so easy after along day to just toss things on the floor or the foot of the bed. Hint: In the morning, when I pull my outfit out of the closet for the day I bring the hangers with me and place them in a small fabric bin (available everywhere). At the end of the day I grab those same hangers and use them to rehang the clothes and hand them back in the closet. Item dirty or stained? A cute hamper makes it more inviting to toss them in and not on the floor. It can even be decorative, making it much more attractive than the old plastic one you used as a kid. Shoes that you wear all the time can easily be kept at the foot of the bed in a simple cubby system that doubles as an ottoman. Overflow shoes (those you don’t wear all the time), can be stored in the closet or on the back of a door. 

Last but not least, remember this:

Keep the extraneous clutter to a minimum with these ideas: 

 A cute large basket can fit in a corner or at the foot of the bed to store extra pillows and blankets. 

Jewelry can be organized so many different ways: there are hanging jewelry organizers,(you can even use a simple cute curtain rod to hold them)  cute vertical storage ideas, and even your grandmothers idea of jewelry boxes can work! I use a combination of hanging organizers for necklaces and a cute free-standing jewelry chest for everything else.

Books and reading materials: a small basket can hold what you are currently reading. If you are not reading it currently, it belongs somewhere else. 

Dressers are places to store things IN not ON. Make it a habit to clean off your dresser each night before you go to bed to keep clutter at bay. Small containers for items can be decorative and make things much neater, but be disciplined to use them ONLY for items that truly belong there. 

This is not an exhaustive list at all, just some ideas to make it so much easier. Your bedroom will be much more inviting and relaxing if you don’t have to shuffle everything around just to find a place to sit down and put your shoes on. 

Have any of your own bedroom organizing tips? Comment below and share them with all of us!

We’re here to help if you need it—we are patient and calm, as well as  non- judgemental. Extra hands make the job go faster!