Organize your home to save a little time every day
Do you need to organize your everyday life? If you haven't done so, click here to receive advice from other organized parents. And don't forget to download the free app Coorganiz, to easily share your calendar, useful documents and the important things to do.
What if you could save a few extra minutes every day, just by applying some home organisation tips.
As every good home-organiser will tell you, it only takes a few simple organisational points to save some precious minutes in your daily routine.
Considering how over-busy our days are here at Coorganiz, we thought that a few seconds in which to take a breather wouldn’t be too much to ask.
So we went out hunting for tips from some home organisation professionals!
Here is some of their easy-to-apply advice:
- No more hunting for keys:
Install a key locker or board in your hall. Little hooks inside a cupboard door will do the job, and hang up your keys when you get home. Car keys, children’s keys, key to the garage… What counts is that you won’t have to search for them hysterically or in a daze (up to you) any more.
- Everything you need close to hand:
keep all the things that you use most often close to hand, and only those things. “It takes discipline”, says Marie, “but it genuinely unclutters your mind and your cupboards.” Everyday coats and shoes in the hall cupboard and the others put away in the wardrobes.
Do you think this is already your case? Take a closer look at the contents of your cupboards… It’s nice to have a choice, but let’s face it; we tend to use the same things all the time.
This method can also be applied to:
Everyday plates and dishes, beauty products, household cleaning products and clothes.
- Group items that are used together in the same place:
this is perfect for sheets, for example. Make sets for each bed with the fitted sheet, duvet cover and pillowcase(s). You might as well store them together, with the fitted sheet and pillowcase(s) tucked inside the duvet cover. It is tidy, easy to stack and saves time finding the matching parts of the set. Also remember to store your duvet covers inside out because it will make putting the duvet into them so much easier. Simply place your hands inside the duvet cover as far as the upper corners, catch the corners of the duvet with them and flip the cover over – 2 minutes tops and applicable from the age of 8 years and upwards… just watch.
- Other recommended combos:
In the bathroom: a toilet bag for morning and night-time beauty products, one for hair products, with hairbrush, elastic bands and slides, sports bags or activity bags that are put back together as soon as the clothes are dry (no need to tidy them elsewhere, put them straight back into the bag for the next lesson/session).
- Set up a laundry circuit:
Odile, a tidiness advisor (we didn’t make that up) suggests having the family sort through their dirty laundry, putting their washing into one of two baskets (light and dark). She also recommends programming the washing machine to operate at night and timing the dryer so that you will be there when the cycle ends at a moment when you have time for folding and hanging up shirts, which will save you a lot of time ironing.
Install a letter tray in your hall or on your desk and sort through it once a week. Except for postcards, of course, which you are allowed to read! What? You don’t get cards every day of the week! And if you’re feeling in the mood for a major overhaul of your archiving system, now is the time to read our article on how to organise your papers.
- The final piece of time saving advice is – empty your cupboards!
A well-organised home is an uncluttered one, focussed on the essential. Odile is insistent about the time savings in maintenance (no knick-knacks = less dusting!), and if you still need convincing, read the best-selling book The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up to learn how to concentrate on the essentials and sort through all the contents of your home.
There you have it – everything you need to know!
Don’t forget that you should also post all of the important recurring information (door and alarm codes, bin collection days, maintenance instructions) in the shared documents of the Coorganiz app so that every member of your family community has all the information once and for all, and can act independently accordingly.
Now that your home is organised, you will feel so much better, and with those extra 10 minutes you have saved you will finally have some time to yourself!
And to save even more time, read:
