How to organize your home for summer

May 16, 2012 8:40 AM by Christina Holt

Posted in Home / Organizing & Cleaning

Declutter your home

The first step to an organized house is decluttering. It’s virtually impossible to effectively organize your living space when you have too much going on.

These rooms are typically the most cluttered rooms in a home and are often the hardest to get -- and keep -- organized.

Garage
Kitchen
Guest room
Coat closet

Bedroom closet
Attic or basement
Mudroom or entryway

Decluttering rule: If you haven’t used it in the last year, get rid of it!

After decluttering these spaces and the rest of your home, donate your unused items to a charity or organization for a tax write-off or plan a yard sale to make some extra spending money for summer.

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Organize your home

Part of organizing is preparing for what’s to come. What might your house need for the warmer summer months? Will the kids be playing outside more? Will there be more trips to the beach? Long family bike rides? And what about block parties and entertaining? Here are a few things to prepare and organize you for the summer fun ahead.

10 Best IKEA products to organize your home >>

Kitchen

Get your kitchen and kitchen cabinets ready for the summer by organizing them.

Put all your glass cups in the back of the cabinet and move the plastic cups to the front.
If you don’t already have your special entertaining dishes and serving bowls in one place, designate a cabinet for all your summer entertaining needs.
Stock up on plastic tumblers or other summer kitchen essentials for impromptu meals outside or summer BBQs.

Garage

These simple organizational solutions keep the clutter to a minimum and are a great way to easily organize your garage.

Heavy-duty hooks are great for storing a canvas bag full of gardening supplies, home improvement supplies, strollers, bike helmets and folding beach chairs on the walls.
Wall or ceiling-mounted bike racks keep bikes out of the way but easily accessible.

Mudroom or entryway organization

Keeping the entry point to your home decluttered and organized is extremely important. It's so easy to use this space as a catchall, which then becomes a black hole of misplaced items.

Hang a hook for each family member to hold mom’s purse, dad’s keys, the kid’s camp bags and light jackets -- for playing outside until the sun goes down.
An entryway bench is a perfect place to remove or lace up shoes before heading out the door and a great system to keep shoes in one place.
If you have space for an entryway wall system, small labeled baskets work great for smaller items, but don't allow the area to get too cluttered.

Coat closet

Use your storage space wisely by changing up your coat closet for summer.

Hang a sweater organizer from the wardrobe bar but instead of sweaters, keep beach towels, park blankets and small baskets of sunscreen or other summer essentials inside the cubbies.
Hang a hook on the inside of the door to hang park and sand toys.
Use a belt hanger to hang your beach bags or eco-friendly shopping totes.

More on home organization

Organize your closet in 15 minutes
5 Home organizational tips for the New Year
How to organize your family in 2012

Quick tip

If you don’t have a mudroom or entryway and use your garage instead, utilize a portion of garage wall space to hang items that you grab while running out the door or items that get lost or misplaced easily. Organize shoes by assigning each family member a basket and placing them next to the door into the house.

Tags: cleaning tips organization tips summer