Anyone who knows me knows that I am BIG on home organization. I have always been a little neurotic when it comes to keeping my house tidy. But truly half the battle is what I use to keep it organized. From pantry organization, to makeup or personal care items, to my daughters’ toys, I have got you covered for tips on how to organize things! And what better time than the start of 2024 to get your shit together? I will forewarn you. This is not a Marie Kondo “throw out things that don’t bring you joy” type of blog. This is a “I have a ton of shit, but I need to organize it, not get rid of it all” type of blog. So just know that you’re about to see real photos of inside my home where we have a lot of shit to keep organized.
If you haven’t already scoured for the best items to keep you organized, don’t worry – I have you covered. Let’s go room by room to show you how I tackle each room in our house.
Home Organization for the kitchen:
First off, don’t judge me based on just how full our pantry is or how much shit I have. That is the main reason I have to stay organized, because we aren’t really minimalists in this house.
If I don’t keep it organized, the first area to go to pot is our pantry. A lot of it is because I cook our meals the majority of the time, so I have a LOT of ingredients and pantry staples at all times. Pile that on with the fact that my kids like their lunches packed 99% of the time means that I always need basic kid snacks for easy packing.
Let’s work from the bottom up. Since my youngest is 7, I intentionally put all of the kid-friendly lunch-packing items and snacks on the bottom shelf. I can no longer find the exact bins I used, but found similar ones of the same dimension here. I filled one with apple sauce/fruit cups, one with seaweed, one with beef jerky/corn nuts, one with goldfish and chips, and one with desserts like cupcakes and brownies. Then I have all of the girls’ juice boxes lined up next to their snack bins. After that is our backstock of fridge staples like Coke and fizzy water.
I will tell you, besides hitting up the fridge for their fresh veggie and fruit, this system makes it SO EASY for your kids to pack their own lunches! Just trust me, it’s a game changer! Moving up to the next shelf, I have more snacks like crackers, chips, popcorn, etc. I used the same bins on that shelf as well.
For the next shelf, I have a lot of baking items. I got a four pack of Lazy Susan non-skid organizers. I use two in the pantry for larger baking spice containers and use two for bathroom organization under my sink! Then, I bought two spice drawer organizers. I love these ones since a lot of the labels come pre-printed for those of us with shitty handwriting. Yet there are blank ones too to add in whatever odds and ends you need.
Then, for our sauces, I got these non-skid risers. They’re so handy like this because you can see even the shortest cans for easy grabbing.
Next, I have all of our cooking oils lined up. Then I have my flours and sugars and baking materials like chocolate chips, cocoa powder, etc. And lastly is all our bougie shit (think hemp hearts, chia seeds, flax seeds, etc.) followed by pasta.
I got the flour and sugar bins here, (the Oxo brand is the best with the pop-top lids.) Then I bought the baskets for all my baking odds and ends here, and the wire shelf for the bougie baking ingredients here.
The very top shelf of our pantry houses all our cereals, bags of coffee, protein bars, and protein powders. The only home organization tools I use on this shelf are just more the same wire shelves linked above. Then, I keep all of our canned goods on the floor of the pantry in this stackable can organizer. Full disclosure – this used to be on my shelf above the kids’ snacks but we have so many canned goods, I was afraid the weight of them would take down the shelf! I feel like they’re much safer on the floor. I also line up all of our Smart Water, bottled juices, and heavier backstock items on the floor.
Other kitchen organization:
Now, I will tell you, for the fridge, I keep it organized without too many added containers, mainly because our fridge is set up for success with its own organization. But if that is not the case for you, I recommend using these to hold your canned beverages, these for snacks, and then keep your crispers organized with one holding fruits and one holding veggies. You can even go the extra mile and use these for eggs. I feel like eggs already come in the perfect vessel, but if you want that clear, Marth Stewart look, God knows I won’t judge!
Also, I have a coffee bar set up in our formal living room and got these bottles to put all of my bougie syrups in. (I also just recently bought this fancy AF espresso machine, so I needed fun syrups to make my fancy lattes!)
In the other side of my sideboard, I have all of my tea. I use these boxes to organize it all. In a perfect world, Celestial Seasonings would have their individual tea bags in wrappers denoting what flavor they are. But they don’t, so when I put that brand of tea in my tea box, I cut the side of the box out and sit it in front of the tea bags so I can see what flavors I have.
As far as cabinets and drawers, I tend to just use more wire shelves, this to hold our silverware and larger utensils, and these for our junk drawers where we keep scissors, batteries, pens, etc. Lastly, this is random AF but I love this magnetic knife strip. This one in particular is from Crate and Barrel, but I found a similar one here. I love having all my cooking and prep knives out where I can grab them easily, and then no one will accidentally cut themselves fishing around silverware drawers!
Home Organization for your bathroom:
This is another area of the home with a metric fuck-ton of tiny items. (Nail polish, makeup, vitamins and medicine, etc.) So I have loads of tips for you on how to keep it nice and tidy! Let’s start with my bathroom counter. Let’s face it, I have way more shit on mine than Vince does.
Once again, hold off on judgement. While I keep my makeup organized AF, I didn’t wipe any of it down or clean anything off just for photos, so look past the smudges and streaks. Also, the irony isn’t lost on me that I literally wear only four things (foundation, bronzer, mascara, and lip gloss) on most days, but have a shit ton of makeup. What can I say? I love variety! And am clearly a brand loyalist. (Looking at you Buxom and NYX). I got my acrylic holder so many years ago from some random website. But I found similar ones here and here for you! In fact, the first one linked is the one you’ll see in my linen closet photos coming up shortly!
I got the acrylic lip gloss stand below here. And I may love this one even more because it has the drawer on the bottom for fatter lip glosses. (My Fente ones don’t fit in my lipstick holder.)
For makeup brushes, I just use a coffee mug with my first initial on it haha! I think it’s easier than any bougie holder, plus, we all know I love my mugs!
I am one of those girls who will not remember to use the shit I have unless it’s physically sitting right in front of me. And since I still have yet to pull the trigger on messing with my face with Botox or any of that shit, I go hard on skin care. That’s when this wire rack comes into play that just sits on my bathroom counter. I found this exact one at Home Goods years ago but here is a similar one.
For nail polish, body care, hair care, and medicine, I keep all that shit organized in our linen closet with our extra towels.
Probably my favorite bathroom organizational tool is this stupid nail polish acrylic shelf. It’s a riser and once again, makes it so easy to see my nail polish colors. I also put everything in the order of the rainbow. (ROYGBV for life fuckers! Blame my retail manager background.) You’ll notice coming up that I also organize clothes, shoes, and jewelry in ROYGBV order. If you don’t know what the fuck that is, it’s an acronym for red, orange, yellow, green, blue, violet.)
This is for comedic relief. Back when I had hair extensions a couple years ago, I had all this special extension hair care. I had labeled metal bins with a dry-erase marker. One for first aid supplies, and one for hair extension care/and glitter and hair chalk for my kids when they have crazy hair day. My husband saw how I labeled it and added his own two cents. It cracked me up so much, that I never erased it. I found these ones that I like even more because they come with cuter little labels so you don’t need to use dry-erase marker.
Closet organization:
I fell in love with our master closet the minute we toured the model home. It’s massive, but I still know how to fill up every inch of it. I use these wire racks so that I can double-layer my heels. And then I also have these shoe racks on the floor for my boots. All of my athletic shoes and slip-ons are on a big rack like this one.
As you can see below, my nicer heels line the top shelf of my closet and are just sitting on the same wire shelves I’ve linked before. I ROYGBV those too haha!
The other key to closet organization, is to organize your clothes in a way that make sense to you. For me, I go from tank tops to t-shirts to long sleeved shirts, to sweatshirts, to heavy sweaters. The lower bar has all my pants on it going from work out pants to lounge pants to jeans to dress pants. Then on the other bar I have longer cardigans and jackets. Lastly, the other bar has all of my dresses. It doesn’t matter how you organize it, so long as it makes sense to you. For me, once the clothes are organized by style, I then ROYGBV those sonsabitches too!
Jewelry Home Organization:
Those of you who know me well, know that I walked in on men burglarizing our last home. They got away with a lot of my fine jewelry, so I’ve been burned on ever leaving that out. We now have a huge gun safe that is bolted to the ground and cannot be lifted or taken out without a damn crane haha! That is where I now put any jewelry that’s not just cheap costume shit. Also, I absolutely love clothes and jewelry, but I’ve never been much of a brand whore in that regard. I’d rather have 20 outfits from Vici Collection versus one nice designer one. To each his own. Needless to say, I no longer buy high-end shit since our burglary and go for the cheap crap!
My costume jewelry is also in rainbow order. (Of fucking course!) I freaking love this thing! It’s so easy to see what I have. They no longer make mine (it came from Bed Bath and Beyond many moons ago.) But this one is cute, or you can even do a mirror like this that hides your jewelry and opens up to hold all the goods! Just like my skin care and make up, if I don’t physically see it, I won’t grab for it. So I love organizational tools that allow me to see what I have easily without having to dig around in drawers and shit.
Toy Home Organization:
I have two daughters who are both obsessed with stuffed animals. Whenever we travel, that is what they pick as their souvenir to remember the trip. They ask for Squishmallows for every Christmas and birthday, and our stuffy situation is legit out of hand. That is why I purchased this zoo off of Amazon. I’m not joking when I tell you, it holds more stuffed animals than any other bin or hammock or any other bullshit gizmo you’ll see for “toy organization.”
For smaller items like Barbie playsets, Rainbow High or LOL dolls, I use these bins from the Container store. They hold way more than the kind you get at Target or Walmart because they are much deeper. They also come in a ton of cute colors or clear if you just want basic ones! Make sure you check “individual” if you just want one or two otherwise, it defaults to sending you four of the same color drawers. And for my girls’ barbie dolls, I have them in these rolling bins with lids.
For the girls’ rooms, they also each have a set of these storage cubes sitting on shelves. I got the shelves from Target. I use the foldable storage cubes to hold their tiny shit like fidget toys, squishies, and also their accessories like headbands, purses, and scrunchies. If you have boys instead of girls, the storage cubes are also good for their smaller toys like cars, action figures, etc. Also, I am obsessed with their earring holders. I got them here. It makes it so easy for my girls to see all of their choices when they’re switching out their earrings. (Their ears are pierced, so please note that this is not a holder that would work for clip-on earrings.)
Miscellaneous Home Organization:
To close us out here, I’ll share some of the other odds and ends I have to keep us organized!
For craft supplies and my kids’ art supplies like markers, construction paper, etc., I use this rolling cart. It lives in my office next to more Container Store drawers where I also keep all of my own crafting supplies like ribbon, paint, beads, hot glue guns, holiday crafts, and things of that nature. Along the lines of crafting, if your kids love to make crafts or jewelry, these little babies are a God-send for organizing teeny tiny bullshit!
I also have two random AF things that I can’t live without in my laundry room. These wall mounts that hold brooms and mops are awesome! You don’t need to take up room in your coat closet or pantry since they hang higher up on the wall. I also love this ironing board/iron holder wall mount. Your iron rests on the little shelf up top and your ironing board hangs from the hooks to also keep it up off the floor and out of your way. And while this isn’t necessarily an organizational thing, I can’t live without my steamer.
Since I am a giantess, I can’t put a lot of my clothing in the dryer for fear it will shrink up. So I line dry it on this rack, then use my steamer to get any wrinkles out. I have the exact one I linked and love it because you can expand the hanger the clothes hang on if you need to steam wider-neck items like off-the-shoulder tops. The steamer heats up in 30 seconds and honestly, it works better than any iron!
Last but not least, you all know that I decorate HARD for the holidays. I can’t even count how many times people ask me how I store it. (Currently, I have about 22 bins of Christmas, 22 bins of Halloween, 10 for Easter, 6 for Valentine’s Day, and some Summer/Fall/and St. Patrick’s Day decor bins in there too. I store every single bin in one storage closet in our finished basement. It isn’t a wide closet but it is long, so I stack ’em high. I buy all of my bins from Target the day after a holiday. The day after Christmas, all the red and green ones are on sale. The day after Easter, the pastel ones are on sale. So you never have to be a chump and pay full price for decent storage.
Once I have my bins, I label them with sharpie on what holiday decor is in them. Then I wrap anything breakable in butcher paper or old grocery bags, and have those be the bins on the bottom with the lighter ones on top.
I hope you guys can see by now that you don’t have to get rid of your shit to get it organized. As you can tell, we are not minimalists over here. But since I keep everything in its rightful place, my house never seems chaotic or like the walls are closing in on me.
I did create an Amazon storefront here so you guys can easily see every item I linked above! While a couple items were sourced from The Container Store, 99% of my organizational tools come from the mother ship of Amazon. To check out my other tips on getting refreshed for the New Year, click here. As always, thanks for reading! I hope this article helped give you some great tips on home organization!
