Autumn Cleaning Challenge : Challenge 3 – Bedroom Organisation
This Autumn Cleaning Challenge is about making your bedroom space more organised, and more appealing to sleep in. We look at taming your closet, organising your drawers – and how to fold t-shirts – and all about “zones”.
Welcome to our third post in the Autumn Cleaning Challenge series. In this post we’re looking at organising and decluttering your bedroom
First Things First: Declutter Your Closet
There’s no point in organising your bedroom if it’s full of clutter and stuff you don’t need.
Take a leaf out of Marie Kondo’s book “The life changing magic of tidying up” and be ruthless with the clothes in your wardrobe and any other items that don’t “spark joy”.
Do you think that you need to keep all of your clothes? Why not try the “backwards clothes hanger” trick? This is where you turn all your hangers around so they are facing the “wrong” direction, when you wear an item you turn the hanger around so you know that the item’s been warn. This will take a few moths to work but by the end of the year you should be able to tell what items you are no longer wearing.
For more closet organising techniques watch the video below
If you have a relatively tall wardrobe or aren’t storing too much in the bottom you can use drinks can ring pulls to double your hanging space:
And more more storage ideas check out this post at One Good Thing By Jillee.
Sort out your drawers
This is one thing I did ages ago thinking “I’ll try it but I bet it doesn’t work”, but almost a year later I’m still using this technique and it’s saved so much space! What am I talking about? Stacking your t-shirts (and shorts etc.) vertically rather than piling them up on each other. This way you can fit more in a drawer and you can see what shirts you have.
Here’s a picture of my t-shirt drawer I took in January:
All of my clothes drawers are organised like this now. If you want to know how to fold your t-shirts up super easily then watch this video which shows you how:
Following on from vertically storing your t-shirts, I’d highly recommend getting some drawer separators for your underwear drawer, it’s made a huge difference to mine! I can now find things really easily and it just looks so much nicer. Take a look at the before and after shots (apologies for the underwear!)
I couldn’t find any separators that ran to the height of my drawers so I made my own out of cardboard, alternatively you could use shoe boxes cut width-ways and length-ways. This post from Apartment Therapy has some nice images showing how to cut the dividers or your can see another post from them with examples of various types of drawer dividers
General Storage Solutions
This post from Popsugar has some great ideas for different storage solutions such as using a set of shelves as a headboard, or swapping out bedside tables for full dressers.
If you are able to, utilise the space under your bed. You can get a variety of storage solutions from simple bags to carts that roll out on wheels (affiliate link). You can use this to store your clothes out of the way but have access to them if needed. If you’re going to be storing clothes for any length of time (like swapping out your summer for winter wardrobe) then make sure you pack your clothes away in a vacuum bag (affiliate link), this not only saves space as your clothes are compressed a fair bit it will also protect them from dust and damage too. If you want to make your own under-bed storage then Martha Stewart has some advice on how you can build your own rolling unit.
Create “Zones”
The great website Home Storage Solutions 101 has a great idea about creating “zones” in your bedroom. Essentially, a zone is an area that serves a particular purpose for example you may have a dressing zone, make-up zone and dirty laundry zone. This helps you keep items in their place so you can find it easily – it’ll also help you save precious time in the mornings too.
More Furniture Doesn’t Necessarily Equal More Storage
If your bedroom is chock-a-block full of furniture you may not be making the most out of your storage space – or you may have too much stuff! Mother Earth Living has some good ideas to determine if you’re overdoing it on the furniture front, or have too much “stuff” in general.
Kids need to be organised too!
Don’t just sort your own rooms out, get your children involved. When you’re organising their rooms though, don’t do it from your viewpoint, get down to their level so you can better understand where things need to go.
Over To You
Do you have any tips for organising your bedroom – particularly if it’s a small space? How about your drawers, are they neat and tidy or are there things lurking in there you probably haven’t seen for 10 years?
Let us know in the comments or shout me on Twitter
Other Articles In This Series
- October Autumn Cleaning Challenge: Introduction
- Autumn Cleaning Challenge: What Needs Cleaning When [Infographic]
- Autumn Cleaning Challenge: 17 Cleaning Hacks To Make Your Life Easier
- Autumn Cleaning Challenge: Challenge 1 – Office & Desk Organisation
- Autumn Cleaning Challenge : Challenge 2 – Cleaning And Organising Your Kitchen
- Autumn Cleaning Challenge : Challenge 3 – Bedroom Organisation
- Autumn Cleaning Challenge : Challenge 4 – Bathroom Cleaning & Organisation
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