Sophie Explains

I love finding new ways to stay organized in my home. Especially now that a lot of us, myself included, are working from home due to COVID, creating a clean and tidy space helps us stay focused on work.

Here are three easy home organization tips I’ve used in the past few weeks that have made a big impact on my apartment’s appearance and helped me stay productive while I am at ‘work.’

1. Scan Loose Papers
   1. Pull out all of those old car documents, receipts, and utility bills that are sitting in an unused drawer and sort them into two piles.
      1. To Keep – Important documents like signed apartment leases, job contracts, certificates, etc.
      2. To Toss – Three-year-old receipts for items you will not be returning, utility bills that you’ve already paid, out-dated documents, etc.
   2. Recycle and/or shred all the items you can toss.
   3. For the Keep pile do the following:
      1. Scan all the import documents and save to your Google Drive or Dropbox.
         1. If you do not own a scanner, an easy alternative is to download a free phone scanning app such as CamScanner or just take photos using your phone. You can then save them directly onto Google Drive, or you can first email them to your Gmail account.
         2. Tip: Make sure to name each document something easy to remember. Eg. <2020 Signed Apartment Lease> so that you can use the search function in Google Drive effectively when you need to find these documents.
      2. For things like utility bills that you get monthly, log-into your online utility account and set up paperless billing and automatic payments.
   4. When everything is saved and organized, get rid of the paper copies!!
      1. Tip: There are some documents we need to keep (i.e. birth certificates, documents with wet signatures, etc.), be sure to keep and store these in a secure location.
   5. Going forward, try to minimize the amount of paper you keep. As soon as you get a receipt or document you want to keep, take a photo right there with your phone, save it, and get rid of the document.
2. Use Thin Fabric Clothing Hangers
   1. Recently I replaced all of my old plastic, college-era hangers with uniform, slim hangers. The ones I bought were on super sale at a department store, but these Amazon hangers are similar. It is great to upgrade your hangers for the following reasons:
      1. Uniformity: Especially if you have an external closet, it looks so much more professional to have all the same hangers and puts the focus on the clothes.
      2. Space: The thin hangers save a lot more space than the thicker plastic versions.
      3. Quality: Using high-quality hangers will help keep your clothes looking their best and not sag in the wrong places. This is important for keeping blazers and suits wrinkle-free!
3. Clear Containers for Kitchen Storage
   1. Our apartment has very little built-in kitchen storage, so we purchased affordable, external shelving units to store our non-perishable pantry items. Recently, I re-homed some of our commonly used foods into uniform, clear plastic or glass containers.
      1. Suggestions of items to store in clear, sealed containers:
         1. Grains – Oatmeal, rice, pasta
         2. Non-perishable Toppings – Dried cranberries, nuts, croutons
         3. Snacks – Pretzels, trail-mix, crackers
      2. Benefits to clear containers:
         1. Easy to See – When making weekly grocery lists, or deciding on a meal, the clear containers make it easy to see what you have at your disposal and what you need to purchase.
         2. Uniform Look – The plastic containers look much more uniform than a bunch of plastic bags and boxes.
         3. Easy Access – I even started unboxing all my eggs from their cartons and putting them into one large tupperware in my fridge. This easy access and visibility in the fridge has been really useful!
         4. Freshness – A good clear, sealed container will keep your snacks fresher than with a bag-clip.

I hope that some of these simple tips inspire you to create a more organized home. When your home is organized and tidy it helps keep your focus on more important things!

Let me know if you have any simple organization tips that you felt made a huge impact on your home! You can find me on Facebook and Instagram.