We don’t realize how important it is to stay organized until our lives has completely fallen apart because we can’t find the remote. In 2019, let’s all make it our priority to keep it together both at home and at the office. Seriously, it’ll make basic everyday tasks infinitely easier.
Home, Clean Home
Sleep Tight and Tidy
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Sleep sets the foundation of your entire day. If your room is a mess, chances are you’re going to bed anxious and waking up tired. Identify the areas of your room that tend to get most chaotic. Clothes everywhere? Same. If folding them and putting them into drawers sounds too tedious, roll them up tightly (making sure to first smooth out any creases), and place them in Walmart’s Neatfreak Hanging Shelf Closet Organizer. T-shirts on the right, shorts on the left, or some such.
What used to evoke images of a messy backstage theater production is now a chic and practical way to organize your clothes. Hang your best and brightest items on Econoco Rolling Garment Rack, opting to roll it out of the way when you need more room to sing into a hairbrush and pretend you’re Britney Spears in the Toxic video.
A nightmare thing that once happened to me is that I shut my clothing drawers so aggressively that every loose bottle above them came crashing down. Had I stowed them tightly in Overstock’s 360 Rotating Makeup Organizer, that wouldn’t have been the case, since I could have caught them all in one fell swoop like a wide receiver in the end zone with 30 seconds left in the fourth quarter. There, just saved you a lifetime of headaches and spills.
Keep Your Kitchen Organized
Food fuels our minds, so make your most important decisions over your morning eggs and toast. The Pottery Barn Daily System Kitchen Set is the perfect way to map out your entire day, month and year, while organizing both your thoughts and kitchen knick-knacks that mysteriously seem to accumulate over the years. It’s equipped with two bulletin boards, a calendar, key hooks, a filing system, pen compartments, and a black board without giving your kitchen too much of an office vibe.
My plants are my children, so you bet I love a good hanging succulent. But better use of that space is a hanging shelf like the H&M Hanging Wire Basket, which allows you to display all your delicious produce that don’t need refrigeration like onions, bananas and avocados. It’s a far better option than piling them on top of the fridge out of sight until they rot.
Make Room in Your Bathroom
How is it that bathrooms tend to be the smallest rooms in our homes, yet in them we require the most products? Instead of playing Jenga with your various shaving creams and deodorants in that microscopic medicine cabinet, make use of the wall behind your toilet. Hide your clutter in the IKEA Hemnes Bathroom Shelf Unit up top, and your better-looking grooming items like perfume and cologne on the display shelf.
The goal of showering is to get clean, and if you have piles of half-opened products collecting mildew around your bath tiles, you’re probably getting out a lot dirtier than when you got in. Some people like shower caddies that hang directly from your showerhead, but sometimes you don’t want your products soaking directly under the faucet. Customize the OXO 4-Tier Shower Caddy to fit neatly within the corner of your shower, organizing products by category on each shelf. (No thanks to that one time I accidentally shampooed with sea salt scrub).
Organize Like It's Your Job
Your Desk Needs Love Too
Most industries have gone digital-first, but we somehow end up collecting piles of miscellaneous paper on our desks. A filing system is crucial in retaining your sanity—even if said paper on our desks truly falls into the miscellaneous/how-did-it-end-up-here category. Eccolo Marble Collection File Folders make it easy to organize your stuff with labels like “For later,” “Documents & such,” and “Big plans.”
The thing about most offices is that we have limited lateral movement yet lots to go before we hit the glass ceiling (this sentence works on both a literal and figurative level). If you can swing it, the Crate + Barrel Tate Bookcase Desk is narrow and minimalist with a handy set of cabinets above. The negative space is a great place for either your computer or a Wayfair Luxe Organizer Whiteboard Wall Decal to hang memos to yourself and passive aggressive notes to your coworkers to stop stealing your lunch from the fridge, Sheldon from accounting.
Keep a Rolodex
Business cards might seem a little ‘90s, but you never realize how much they come in handy when you desperately need the name and number of that guy from the networking event who has that one connection to that one VIP. Grab the 96-Card Black and Gold Rolodex Business Card Book, which acts as a menu of important people. In that same vein, be the guy this year that always has business cards on hand because it’s basically the classiest, timeless move. I like the Hermes Small Manhattan Card Holder designed in a faint whisper of an “H” so your prospective clients know you’re not here to play.
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