Monday Clean & Organize it: Organizing your Stockpile

Our house isn’t very big for the 5 of us and 2 dogs. We have about 1800 SQ under roof and when the toddler announced her arrival we enclosed the 1 car garage and created a Nursery. So neatless to say we have NO Junk room or place to keep storage. We have to be very organized to keep the house from popping out of its seems. However you would never know walking into my house that we have 6+month worth of food, 12+month worth of laundry and cleaning supply and maybe another 12+month of Toiletries all neatly stored in the house. Organizing is a HUG thing to keep your house neat and clean.

My husband always calls me the Organizing Queen, right after the coupon queen… after all in my younger days I was the “Wine” Queen ( and that is a true story, I was the Queen of my hometown and represented my Town and it’s wine throughout Germany, will tell you that story another day J …)… I wanted to show some tips about how to organize in small spaces with you, so you, too can get the maximum out of your space.

• If you have shelving available use them, clean out the clutter, toss or donate anything you haven’t looked at in a year, almost like your closet, if you don’t know it’s there you won’t miss it and it will clear up space.
• Keep alike things together, if you are stockpiling like us, keep all the same bottles, cans etc stacked together in one place, make sure the oldest expiration is upfront

Clutter will make your house feel even smaller, hide it..lol… Before you can hide your clutter, I would suggest to go through, make sure no important documents, personal information is left behind for someone else to get it… other than that use the same rule of thumb, if it’s been untouched for a year donate it, toss it, don’t keep it. Did you even remember you had it?? Probly not, so you will not miss it…

This will clean out a lot of your clutter already, anything that you had your hart set and couldn’t get rid of, hide it. Put it behind cabinet doors, closet or even put curtains in front of it, so it will look somewhat organized when people walk into your house. I have a lot of open shelving in my laundry room, and yet I like to be organized I get overwhelmed quickly by looking at everything on the shelf, I “hide” my things with a curtain, it doesn’t have to be anything fancy, I bought some cheap material and made it into curtain. I do the same with tables, I attach Velcro to the front of the table and then add fabric so anything under the table is hidden away and no one can see the clutter J

If you like to start a stockpile but don’t wanna kick your kids out so you can have their room J why not check out other ways in your house, maybe a hallway closet that is never used or only holds junk? How about dresser drawer that are full of paperwork that no one ever looks at, a night stand, or even a Living room Cabinet… As long as you organize your Stockpile you can keep it pretty much anywhere.

Check out some of our Stockpiles to get some ideas for your next organizing project:

This is when you walk into my house, no one knows that behind that white door is my Pantry…..

Add some inexpensive shelving and you got yourself a very nice out of the way pantry…..

Here is another hallway closet, no one would guess that this holds more of my stockpile and some toiletries as well….

How about my bedroom dresser, would you guess that I have my Toiletries all in it????

Check out my Laundry room, Can you see the 12+ month worth of Laundry and Cleaning Supplies as well as probly 6+month of dog food??

Now you can see, you can organize and create a stockpile just about anywhere without your house looking too cluttered, organization is the key…. Of course Don’t buy things that you know you would never eat or use, they will just take up more precious space in your already tight space.

Next week I will show you some cool organizing tools that would make organizing a lot easier… so come back and check it out….

Do you have any tips or ideas…?? Would love to hear them….