Home Organization Ideas During Social Distancing

Since we are all spending much more time than we are probably used to (most of us at least) in our homes right now I thought today I’d share some project ideas you can tackle to make the most of this extra time at home.

I am seeing plenty of friends on social media attack their closets, organize their cabinets and clean out their garages. These are things we typically get excited about in January then forget soon after, but why not use this time to give your home some extra attention? Plus, the feeling of accomplishment helps outweigh some of the sadness we are all feeling each time we turn on the news, and for many of us organizing helps reduce anxiety (or maybe that’s just the way it works for me?)

If nothing else, our homes have become even more important to us these last few weeks as we shelter in place. Their purpose as a refuge is apparent more than ever, so it’s a good time to make them more comfortable and useful by taking on a project or two as you have time.

To start with, this is a great time to get some home organization systems in place if you aren’t already using them. Since I tend to use a visual list to keep myself on track, I like to write things down instead of having to remember them. I use these inexpensive clipboards from Amazon with some blank paper on them to jot down lists–I keep one for groceries going, another for blog related projects and posts and another for a calendar. It reduces my stress to have less things to remember day in day out. I keep them on my desk but used to hang them on the wall in my former office (more here).

Another strategy to stay organized and plan projects is to use a Bullet Journal, which is the same sort of concept but instead you keep all the lists in a notebook. You can read my post on how to create one of those here. I use a pretty notebook to track everything from party planning to home projects to blog post ideas, the sky is the limit as far as what thoughts you can keep together in one place.

Kids are home from school in most places and these chore cards Christy came up with are a great way to have your kids help out by cleaning while learning to manage cleaning tasks independently. You can easily implement a system of working on one card per day, then reward them with screen time.

Once you have spiffed up all your closets and organized your kitchen cabinets, you can take your home to the next level by working on creating a gift wrapping station like I did last year. I now keep everything in the drawers of the TV armoire in our room, but if you don’t have that space you can use an under the bed bin or even add a rack to the back of a door if you are really tight on space. The key is to get all your gift wrapping in one space, including cards, ribbons, tissues and supplies and be sure to include tape and a pair of scissors. The next time you have to wrap a gift on the fly you will be so glad you did this!

There may never be a better time to get a system in place for meal planning then right now, especially with items still in short supply. Last fall I shared how I handle this task for our family of five in this post here. We’ve been providing two-week meal plans (Here) and (Here) with included shopping lists to help keep things simple. These seem to be popular so I think we’ll do some more in the coming weeks.

Organize photos–I shared a few months ago that I knocked out our last two years of photos and created books for our family over the holidays. It didn’t take that long and you can even do it while binge watching a show. I used Chat Books but several companies can do this same thing for you. I wrote more about it in this post with organizing ideas HERE.

If you are like me and laundry is never-ending, this would be a great time to make your laundry room more functional. You can see mine here, or you can do a more simple project like add labels to glass jars to hold products. This is one of the projects I hope to get done soon.

Deep Cleaning–I am probably not the only one making disinfecting a priority almost on a non-stop basis right now. Several weeks into this quarantine, I am running low on lysol wipes so I have been using my Wagner/HomeRight Steam Machine more. We’ve covered how useful this machine is multiple times, but now might be the time to invest in one. These clean surfaces using high-temperature steam instead of chemicals so they are less toxic and highly effective against surface germs.

If you just want a small project, then just tackle a drawer or two. You don’t even need fancy supplies, you can see how I use small tech boxes in my desk drawers to keep small items organized in this post here.

I realize this only applies to a small segment of our readers, but I also wanted to quickly share if you have a graduate (as we do) this year, I just received my son’s graduation announcements from Minted (gifted). While they make me feel a little emotional since we don’t know if they will be able to have a graduation ceremony, we’re keeping it all in perspective. For that same reason, I wanted to make sure we had a keepsake announcement and of course, Minted always does the best job. These are a nice change from the traditional formal school ones as I think they give you more of a feel for the student. (Minted is offering 15% off sitewide today with the code TWELVE FYI!).

So what projects are you working on? My goal this week is to rehang the art in our family room (we moved things around with our new cabinet) so now I have to fill and patch all the holes I made in the wall.

Stay healthy friends!

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