Organize and do it as cheaply as you can….

Chrystal, a great friend over at Surviving a Teacher Salary agreed to write  a guest post for us today, I love her ideas and thought you guys would like, them, too…

I am forever wanting to keep things in my house organized, which seems highly unlikely with small children running around!! And I would absolutely LOVE to buy expensive cutsie organizing bins and such but we certainly can’t afford the extra expense! Many of those “cute” organization baskets run $10 EACH! Yikes!!

So I thought I would share a few ways that we have inexpensively been able to organize (well, at least semi-organize!) some of the stuff in our house!! One of my favorite places to find nice organizational bins is the Dollar Tree! (*note- NOT all “dollar stores” are $1- I recommend the Dollar Tree!) ALL their stuff – bins included- are only $1! The bins below I bought for my kids play kitchen to hold all of their play food. Total cost- $2 ($1 per bin)

I bought these 3 storage containers for our computer desk to hold all of our extra cords, stamps/envelopes, CD’s, etc. Total cost- $3 ($1 per bin)

These bins below I got very lucky- I found these on clearance at Sam’s Club….they ended up costing me about $.50 EACH. That’s even cheaper than the Dollar Tree! I used this to separate out all of our medicines since we coupon and buy things in multiples. I have a box for: “Topical Meds”, “Oral Meds”, “First Aid”, “Baby Safety”, “Travel Sized”, “Vitamins”, “Toothbrush/Floss/Razors”, etc.   Ok, so maybe I’m a little obsessive! 🙂 BUT before I had all this organized it was a MESS and I could never see what we actually had!

Another idea is old filing cabinets (many times you can find them on the side of the road). I mostly use these in my garage since old ones often are rusted. These are great ideas for storing extras like household supplies, gardening supplies, extra laundry materials, outside decorations, etc

This one was NOT an inexpensive organizational method! I had saved my money for 2 years to buy this bookshelf that I was drooling over at IKEA! BUT buying this has had made a HUGE difference in organizing our movies, books, & toys. As you can see we’ve put our movies, books, games, and toys here. You can also buy those fabric drawers to slip in the cubby holes, but they are usually not cheap. The cheapest ones I’ve found were $5 each from IKEA. This was a big family splurge for us! 🙂

This was a garage sale find for $2! When I used to buy newspapers every week this is how I organized my coupons. I no longer buy papers (I buy my coupons online) so this is now used for other things I want to keep organized like crafts and things

I am sure there are MUCH better ways to organize things, but considering that everything above (other than the bookshelf) cost a grand total of $11- that’s an awful lot of organization that can be done to straighten things up!!