The Big Clean Up

By Stacy DeBroff

When I'm feeling stressed about work, the world or any number of other things the best way to relieve that stress is to tap into the control taking urge to ... organize the house!

This is not your usual "move the papers that have clustered on the dining room table to another shelf" effort. This is a top to bottom assault the reaches even drawers that long ago gained a fine, dusty patina to prove that no one had trampled there for months. 

It is sorting out to-be-filed papers that lean like the Tower of Pisa, switching seasonal clothes for my kids, finding a home for free-floating recipes torn from magazines, and the glue-stick madness of catching up on months (even years, I hate to admit) of family photos. 

Thanks to three years of research that went into "The Mom Book," as well as two years before that working hard on "Mom Central: The Ultimate Family Organizer," there's now a methodical sweep to my organizing.  

Of course, my husband and kids still stay clear as I do THE BIG CLEAN-UP, hoping not to get caught in its vortex and become enlisted as an extra pair of hands. (I wrote a whole section on Effective Delegating, of which they're only too aware, and hiding works exceptionally well as a way out).

But truly, I'm not even looking for their help. I'm doing it to exert control over the small patch of the world that is mine, and make it as orderly and predictable a state as that to which I wish the rest of our world could be restored. As a result, I'm about to share with you with you my best organizing secrets:

15 FAVORITE GET-ORGANIZED SECRETS

First and foremost, accept that some degree of clutter with a child is inevitable!

• Start with messes and clutter you see every day. So work on organizing your kitchen or family room before your hallway closet.
  
• Assign everything in your house a home. This way everyone in your family knows where to find what they need, and more importantly, they know where to put it away. 
  
  You use this principle to organize your silverware, with clearly defined places for forks and knives, or drawers for socks or, underwear. Bring this thinking to the broader aspects of your home to save many hours of searching for things. It dramatically cuts down on the clutter of items left out "for now" or "until I find a place for it."
  
• Make it a general policy to try to throw out one old thing for every new purchase that enters your home.
  
• If you have stairs, never go up or down them empty-handed. Always grab
  stuff with you that belongs to upstairs rooms and quickly put it away.
  
• Observe what things pile up in your house and where they cluster, and come up with a place nearby that becomes the official home where those things reside. Baskets, shelves, and folders work wonders for this. Designate a basket for you and your partner for incoming mail, bills, and receipts.
  
• Create working folders for discount coupons, invitations and directions, and other time-sensitive papers that clutter your counters.
  
• Keep frequently used items in places where you can reach them without stooping or struggling, and store them close to the place they'll be needed.
  
• Purchase drawer dividers for socks, underwear, lingerie, and tiny items, to keep them separated and organized.
  
• Hang hooks for your keys and purse by the entry to your home, so each time you walk in, you can hang them up immediately.
  
• Designate one place in your house for storing library books, and end a house-wide hunt when it's time to read or return them.
  
• Get rid of junk drawers, or limit yourself to just one that you clear out once a month.
  
• Things to get rid of:
  - Magazines you've been meaning to read but have
    never gotten around to
  - Expired medicine
  - Clothes you haven't worn for the past two years
  - Sunscreen that's expired or more than two years old
  - Extra paper or plastic grocery bags
  - Makeup and samples more than a year old
  - Get rid of the cookbooks that you barely use, as they
     take up unnecessary space. Cut out your favorite
     recipes first and put them in an inexpensive photo
     album to make one customized recipe book.
  - Organize your coupons by the month they expire so
     you will easily know which unused ones to toss.
  - You can stuff a dozen crumpled plastic bags from your
     grocery store inside a cardboard roll from the inside
     of paper towels for compact storage and easy  
     access under your sink.

Stacy DeBroff is author of "The Mom Book: 4278 of Mom Central1s Tips...for Moms, from Moms" (Simon & Schuster 2001). debroff@momcentral.com 

Copyright © 2002 Mom Central, Inc.  All Rights Reserved.

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