Organizing Your Bedroom: Strategies for the Top Two Problem Areas

By Certified Professional Organizer Stephanie Boyd

There are tips, articles and blogs for organizing on a large scale virtually everywhere. Closets, garages, kitchens are the most popular. But, what about simply organizing your room?

Here are the top two clutter zones I often find in bedrooms and tips on how to tackle them:

Clutter Area: Bedside Table

This space is quick to clutter; the reading material is often the culprit. The top drawer also tends to become a holding ground for just about anything.

Solution:

Address the tabletop first. This is likely where reading material issue begins.

· If it’s been there for over a month move it – to the recycle bin, trash, shredder, or somewhere where you won’t forget to read it.

· Consider that if it’s been sitting here for over a month this may not be the best ‘to read’ holding place. Maybe another area of your home would make more sense.

· Reserve this space for books and magazines you are currently reading, or the next one on deck.

· Clear enough space so your table lamp and alarm clock are easily accessible.

· Move books you’ve finished to a bookshelf or pass them along to a friend.

· If you don’t have one already, put a small wastebasket in your bedroom. You would be surprised, or maybe not, by how much clutter is really just small, ready-to-toss things with nowhere to go.

Tackle the drawers next.

· Take everything out, purge and sort.

· Decide what should be there. Less is often more.

· Provide structure to the drawer – drawer dividers aren’t just for the kitchen and bathroom.

· Drawers can be used for current reading material too – this allows the top surface to remain clear. Try it out…you might like this approach.

Finish by clearing the additional drawers, shelves or cabinet that are underneath.

· Resist the urge to use this space to store things that don’t belong in your bedroom.

· Use baskets or bins to contain the categories that remain.

· Look around the room. Is there clutter somewhere that could nicely fit on or in this newly organized table? Can those weights in the corner fit on the bottom shelf instead?

Clutter Area: The Clothes Chair

Most of us have something like this in our rooms – a place for the clothes we take off. It is often a chair, bench, ottoman or even the end of the bed!

Solution:

Go through the pile and be honest about what’s in it and why.

Is it mostly dirty clothes? If so, move your hamper right next to the chair so clothes have a higher likelihood of going in it.

Is it clothes that aren’t quite ready for the laundry yet? If so, take a few intentional minutes to think about a better habit for handling this type of clothing. For instance, your habit could be:

1. Clothes come off at night

2. Dirty ones go into the hamper

3. Ones to be worn again get set on the chair, because let’s face it, it’s late and you’re tired.

4. In the morning, or every Saturday morning, hang them up in a dedicated spot in the closet. Create a small hanging place for clothes that are prime for a second wearing. This way, they don’t get too wrinkled or buried on the chair, they don’t pile up and they are not just put back into the closet as if they were never worn. There’s a special place, just for them.

Practice your new habit: clothes off - set on the chair overnight - hang up - repeat

Repetition creates the habit.

Clearing clutter from your room resets the tone, feel, and energy of the space and puts you one step closer to creating a peaceful sanctuary in which to rest.

For more tips and inspiration follow us @storebysteph on Instagram and Facebook.

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