8 Storage Tips to Organize Your Home

Do you have to take a deep breath whenever you look inside your drawers, which have become a dumping ground for all your odds and ends? Maybe your disorganized pantry is causing you anxiety at dinner time. These eight simple storage tips will help you clear clutter, find things faster, and switch up spaces from fuddled to functional. 

1. Prioritize and Make a Plan 

If shambolic storage is a theme throughout your home, tackle one project at a time rather than doing a home-wide storage reconfiguration all at once. This prevents you from being overwhelmed and allows you to focus more effectively on one task at a time.

Prioritize storage solutions in areas featuring daily clutter or those that are becoming unwieldy. If a pile of towels falls on you every time you open the door, consider spending an hour or two tackling linen closet reorganization. The next week, you could work on organizing your kitchen.

2. Stack It Up and See Everything

It’s easy to forget about that spare tub of baking soda hiding at the back of the cupboard. Formulating a storage strategy where you can see everything you stack—and positioning the most-used items so they're the easiest to access—means you’re less likely to lose sight of handy home supplies. This will save you from heading out to buy something when you don’t need it, adding unnecessary clutter.

3. Divide Your Drawers

If you’ve got a junk drawer where all your miscellaneous mini items go, you’re probably constantly rummaging through a heap of pens, paper clips, and other paraphernalia. A top organization tip is to use adjustable dividers to minimize mess, optimize space, and make it easier to find things. 

Dividers don’t just work for junk drawer reorganization. Separating drawers containing a jumble of socks, toiletries, or tools creates more purposeful, easier-to-maintain sections.

4. Gather Cleaning Supplies in a Caddy

Use a caddy rather than organizing your cleaning supplies in a long row under your bathroom sink. These keep everything tidy and together, and their portability means you’ll have all the multipurpose essentials at hand, whichever room you’re cleaning. 

You could opt for a large caddy on wheels to store in your utility cupboard, or a couple of mini handheld models to organize under your kitchen sink and in your upstairs bathroom.

5. Maximize Vertical Space

When you have limited storage, it pays to make the most of any empty vertical space. Expandable shelf risers to organize your kitchen cabinets let you safely stack more plates and make them more easily accessible. 

Adding floating shelves for pots and pans above the kitchen sink is a contemporary, minimalist storage solution. It’s ideal in a small kitchen, as it is less bulky and more budget-friendly than upper cabinets.

6. Select Double-Duty Furniture

When choosing a new sofa, window seat, or bench, combine comfort, style, and functionality by investing in one that doubles as storage space. This cost-saving solution provides large hidden compartments or drawers ideal for tidying away spare cushions, blankets, out-of-season clothes, and other bulky items.

7. Label Items and Maintain a System

Who doesn’t love a label for helping to organize their life? Grab a stack of sticky notes to categorize the jumble of items you want to sort through when decluttering your closet. Purchasing a label maker is also worthwhile when you want to itemize the containers in your pantry, the bins in your refrigerator, or the toolboxes in your garage. A label system keeps the entire family on the same page about where things go and where to find them.

8. Hire Professional Help

Hiring a local home and garage organizer makes sense when you're short on time or just feeling overwhelmed by the sheer scale of reorganization required to calm the chaos. The average cost to hire a professional organizer is $520. However, this can be a worthwhile investment when you receive customized storage solutions that help maintain order around your home.