3 Tips for a Tidy and Organized Home | Feel Calm and Relaxed

An organized home makes you feel calm and relaxed. With these three tips, you’ll learn how to have a home that is easier to organize by limiting the items at home, investing in quality over quantity, and creating a structure and cleaning habits with the help of a cleaning schedule. All of these together bring you the feeling of calmness. When you have an organized home to work for you and with you, not against you.

I have struggled with keeping the home organized. Especially when we moved from our postcard-sized flat to a bigger apartment years back. There started to be so many moving blocks. I needed to figure out the new rhythm of day and week to stay on top of the mess.

Here are the things I have learned to have a calm and organized home:

1. Make it simpler by limiting the items

Refrain from overcomplicating your life, and limit the options to your comfortable limit. I noticed that I started to get tired of always cleaning up the things that were scattered all over the place. Slowly I began to limit the items to how much I could handle, and what we could handle easily as a family. 

Nordic homes are normally quite simply decorated and natural in style. Fewer items fit just perfectly in our lifestyle. With an intention, you can slowly limit items without being a minimalist. Find the balance. When you feel frustrated with cleaning and the unorganized chaos – you know you have crossed that limit.

Limit the amount of toys

Start with figuring out which toys are the important ones and which are extra. I followed my daughter’s play for a few days to double-check which toys were her favorites and which she barely plays anymore.

Then decide together on a place the child will keep and where they will by themselves (with help) clean up their toys at the end of the day. This needs practice, repetition, help, and reminding. We chose with my daughter a storage bench in the living room, where she could store her toys daily. Some of her other toys I stashed in an armoire to rotate them to keep her interested. The toys that do not suit in the current season in life I donated.

Many wonder how few toys we have at home and is it bad for the child. I have noticed that my daughter finds all things at home to play with as she follows me and plays in the same room where I am. So let it be books, pillows, pots, and pans – the child will not suffer with the lack of excessive amount of toys – in my opinion, they will be more creative and value the toys that they do love.

To expand the options we commonly use the public libraries’ children’s section. While visiting the library we use the puzzles and memory games to play there. With that, we have more toys and games to play with but not all are stored in our house. Check out hack number 2, “borrowing instead of owning”, on my post about money-saving hacks to get more tips on how to get things for free instead of buying. 

| RELATED: Money Saving Hacks | How to Save Money as a Homemaker

Limit the amount of books

Other items people tend to have more than enough are books. These are not always scattered around like toys, but the high amount of books or any other items at home comes with fatigue. If the home looks restless because of the quantity of items like books, you should start to focus on the quality. 

We downsized the bookshelf a year ago to a smaller one and kept only the books that we love (like the books on tea I told you about). As I did for my daughter, I made a back storage for me for the books that I don’t want to get rid of but they are not relevant for our current life to be displayed in the bookshelf. This back storage category can be certain seasonal reference books, study books, or even novels that you have already read but are not yet ready to let go. When later on you visit your back storage of books – it’s like you will be reintroduced to your old friends and it is easy to catch up.

One easy trick for bookworms is that you make yourself a clear limit with the bookshelf frames: The moment you cannot fit a book to be standing side by side neatly with the others you need to clear some space or rearrange before investing in a new one. 

You can implement the same idea, of organizing and limiting in other areas and items at home: clothes, bed linens and towels, kitchen tools, shoes, jackets… you name it. Keep the things that are currently relevant, and store the seasonal items. Donate or sell the extra.

2. Invest in sets and in quality

To make your kitchen more functional and less chaotic try to have things that nest (like food boxes and bowls) and are in the same set. If you have twelve different sizes and forms of coffee mugs and you are three in the house, you may have too many.

If you have things that nest and fit nicely together you can free up some space quite easily. Invest in quality not quantity in this one too! Many kitchen items are easy to repurpose or use in other ways. You might want to start with the inventory of your kitchen and for that, you can use my FREE Kitchen Essentials Checklist. It gives you an idea of the key items to have in a functional kitchen, and how you can expand from there when needed. To read the full article click the link below.

| RELATED: Checklist for kitchen essentials | Thrift, repurpose & save

One month ago we had this weird moment where all the glasses were without a pair. We are currently in season when many cups and glasses tend to break. Not only because my two-year-old daughter is very comfortably independent in our kitchen, but it seems that I break some (lots of) stuff too! The mixed glasses made the cabinet restless and my daughter was pondering for ages to decide which glass the milk would taste better today – I kid you not! I thrifted a set of timeless clear highball glasses and donated the miscellaneous glasses to a recycling shop. 

The restless disorganization takes up a lot of head space. With an organized home you’ll free that space for much more important things. It feels like a quite small step, but I guarantee – it moves the needle in the right direction.

3. Create a structure and cleaning habits

Start gradually using a cleaning list. You don’t need to have a gazillion running lists in your head. Use a notepad or a ready-made cleaning list to get you started. Cleaning schedules are your friends and allies, not enemies or bosses. I have talked about this before, and I really mean it. There’s a difference between using a list to feel good about crossing out all the tasks and using it as a habit tracker. When you use a cleaning list more like a habit tracker and reminder the tasks are less daunting and the list on the wall feels less demanding. Use the help of these cleaning lists to find the perfect routine for you.

Weekly Cleaning Schedule

The weekly cleaning list helps you to show what has been done, and where to focus next time. It gives you the structure of what you can clean and when. Use the weekly cleaning schedule to bring awareness to check the different nooks of the home regularly so that nothing stays unnoticed to build up years of dust.

| RELATED: Weekly cleaning schedule template (FREE)

Annual Cleaning Schedule

When you need a holistic cleaning schedule to keep you on track for the whole year, choose an annual cleaning plan. In the annual cleaning schedule, you have things that rotate, daily, weekly, monthly, twice a year, and once a year. You can easily and stress-free keep your home clean daily, weekly, monthly, and YES throughout the whole year.

| RELATED: Realistic Cleaning Schedule for Home Printable (FREE)

Quick Summary

The three main steps to a calmer feeling in a well-organized home are:

• 1. Limit the items to have fewer things to clean up and arrange
• 2. Invest in quality and use sets or things that nest to free up space (physically and mentally)
• 3. Create a structure and cleaning habits with a cleaning list that fits in your season of life

Start with small and increase within your limits.

What are your tips for a tidy and organized home?

Do you do already these three steps? What other things do you do and how do those help you in your daily life? Let me know in the comments!

Check my other homemaking posts