Happiness is....being organised

I hate clutter and mess, but somehow constantly find myself living amongst it anyway. If I won Tattslotto, one of the first things I'd do is employ one of those organising and de-cluttering mobs to come round and sort us out.

*sigh* Since that's unlikely to happen, I have to take matters into my own hands. There are so many great products out there to help you keep all your stuff organised and easy to find. Unfortunately, the pricing on many of them is completely ridiculous. So in the interests of saving both money and my sanity, I've come up with a few ideas and thought I might share them.

#1 - the dreaded junk drawer

This is the kitchen junk drawer I'm referring to, as opposed to various other junk drawers you might have. Ours was a complete disaster, full of useful stuff, only we could never find it when we wanted it. That's because it was also full of complete and utter crap. Where does that come from?

Howards Storage World has these great clear acrylic drawer dividers in assorted sizes and shapes:

Perfect. Also very attractive. But: a) they don't have any stores near us; and b) these work out a little exxy when you figure out how many you need. So I hunted around the supermarket and came up with this not-so-pretty but cheaper alternative:

I think we'll be right for pens for a while....



Also sticky tape....



The smaller baskets were as cheap as chips, around $1, from memory. They may have been on special....

I basically kept the stuff we're most likely to need, threw out the junk and moved the rest to more of these baskets in the laundry overhead cabinets. Light globes, batteries, shoe laces, stuff like that.

#2 The even more dreaded kitchen utensil drawer

I'm sick of never being able to find tongs, veggie peeler, the right measuring cup and so on, just when I need them. So I applied the same principle here, with more baskets:



The idea is to sort your stuff into various sizes and then put them in appropriate-sized baskets. You have zero hope of finding a small utensil in a huge pile of larger stuff. By the way, measuring cups may not under any circumstances be flung loose into the drawer - they have to be stacked up. Mum's rule, no exceptions....

This is still a work in progress. I need to clear out the cling wrap, foil, freezer bags etc from the next drawer down and find a new home for it. Then I can spread the utensils over two drawers - it's much easier to find things when they're spread out shallowly rather than piled ten deep.

It's not brain surgery, not expensive and nothing that requires any skill. So what are you waiting for?

I'll share a few more tips as I get things sorted. I'm working on a temporary wardrobe solution at the moment. Don't hold your breath waiting for my next post though, I'm kind of busy...