A Place for Everything

by Emily B.
from Virtuous Daughters, January 2010~Volume 9, Number 10

The benefits of organizing are many! Not only will you enjoy the satisfaction of having a neat, clean home, but you will also be able to find what you are looking for, when you want it! When the house is organized, cleaning is less of a chore, and in the long run, organizing your house will also save you time and money. To start with, it is important to have a place for everything. When you’re done using something, put it back where it belongs, right away! At the end of the day, or several times a day, go through the house and pick up whatever little things are cluttering the floors and tables, picking up and putting them away as you go. This will only take a few moments, but it goes a long way towards keeping your home looking neat! Here are a few ideas for organizing which perhaps you’ll find helpful:

• Keep pens, pencils, scissors, rulers, etc., neat by using old mugs or glass jars to store them in. This will neaten up any desk or table top!
• Use small boxes—such as greeting card boxes, or those from boxed stationery sets, to organize little items such as stickers, bookmarks, hair clips, barrettes, etc. These small boxes can then be put  neatly into a drawer in your dresser or desk.
• Small boxes can also be used to organize sewing supplies. Bias tape, ribbons, elastic, zippers, lace, and other trims and notions can be neatly stored in this way. Label the boxes, too, so you don’t have to open them all to find what you’re looking for! :)
• If you have enough room and an extra dresser (picked up along the road or passed on for free), use it to organize your fabric. Some years, many people have given us fabric pieces they no longer want, and it was challenging to find a good way to organize it. Currently, this is how we store most of what we have: Fold the pieces neatly, and separate them by color. You can further separate each color into solid, patterned, striped/plaid, floral/calico, etc. Place the folded pieces in stacks, and place each stack sideways into the drawer, so you can see each folded piece of fabric. (Think of books in a bookcase flat on the ground.) This way you can see at a glance what fabrics you have.
• Are your scrapbook papers all in a jumble? You can keep them sorted by filing them in categories such as floral, holidays, seasonal, birthday, etc., or by predominant colors.
• Plastic Rubbermaid containers of any size work well for organizing and sorting craft supplies such as rubber stamps and stamp pads, scrapbook supplies, yarn, craft kits, etc. . . .
• To organize a bookshelf, sort the books by different categories: biographical, devotional/Bible study, fiction, instructional books, cookbooks, etc. You can also subdivide them by author or publisher. It helps a lot to have your books organized, since then you can find what you’re looking for quickly! :) I also keep my magazines on my bookcase, sorted by publication. Keeping them in order by issue is very helpful, too! 
• Homeschool curriculum and books that are not currently being used can also be organized by topic and/or grade. We have non-fiction books for everyone sorted by topics (weather, nature guides, biography, etc.) and then books for a specific grade (readers, for example) organized separately.
• A closet looks much neater when all the clothes of one type are grouped together: dresses together, skirts together, blouses together, and so on.
• In the process of organizing, you’ll likely come across things which you no longer use. When you put something into storage, make sure you label it! This will save time later, when you’re wondering just what is in that box! :)

Organizing is one way in which we can practice Proverbs 31:27, which says, “She looketh well to the ways of her household, and eateth not the bread of idleness.” By helping to keep our homes “decently and in order,” we’ll be learning necessary skills and enjoyable ways of making the home a pleasant place to be!