Organizing the Home- Just Bag It!

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Organizing my house feels like a never ending battle and I seem to try anything and EVERYTHING to keep it looking nice and together. As a work from home parent, having things cleaned and organized makes a HUGE difference, not only on my productivity but on my mental attitude towards how my day is going.

One area that is a struggle for us to keep organized is the kitchen! It is definitely a catch all for mail, important papers, school work, toys, my work etc. I’ve been working on a system to help organize the the mail and endless papers with my BUDY BINDER SYSTEM (post coming soon!), which includes free PRINTABLES (coming soon!) and I have a little KITCHEN COMMAND CENTER (post coming soon!) that seems to help with organizing information in appropriate files. I’ve even come up with a KIDS’ TOY CLUTTER (post coming soon!) solution that has helped with getting toys out of the kitchen that doesn’t need to be there.

But one thing I have struggled with seems like a small thing but can turn into a BIG PROBLEM quickly. Taking things upstairs. Doesn’t sound like a big deal but when you’re trying to maximize every minute of your day, traveling up and down stairs can interrupt a task that I’m working on or my thought process for a project that I’m trying to complete. And thus the clutter builds.

I have seen a lot of good ideas on Pinterest of having baskets lined up on the stairs, one labeled for each family member or utilizing your KITCHEN COMMAND CENTER (post coming soon!) as a catch all for items that need to be put away in another room. And even know I love these ideas and they turn out really nice, for me, I was looking for a solution that wouldn’t include another basket or something that would be sitting out.

I was really looking for something that could be a little more discrete, something easy to do and that I could take with me throughout the house to help get things back to their correct “home”. I also really didn’t want to go out and buy something for this purpose, I was really hoping to just use something that I already had at the house.

So that’s when I came up with the Bag System! All that is required is some sort of reusable bag (like this one) and you use it to collect any items from you kitchen (or really anywhere in your house) to pick up things that need to be put back where they belong. So for me that might be a pair of shoes that I used the day before that goes upstairs in my bedroom closet. Or some school paperwork that I organize upstairs in our office. Or one of my husband’s library books that he checked out but hasn’t brought upstairs yet.

And keeping this bag in an easy to use spot, either next to the island or in the pantry in the kitchen if I want to keep it “out of sight”, has made a BIG difference in controlling some of the clutter that builds up that I know where it goes but just haven’t taken the time yet to put it away.

At night time then I take my bag upstairs and make sure to actually put the items back in their rightful place. I have made it a habit to do that every night so that it doesn’t become too big of a project to clean out my bag and it helps me to keep up with all the clutter.

I also really like then using the bag in the mornings to help bring things downstairs that we might need that morning, like shoes I want to wear that day or a water bottle that needs to be brought back down or if the kids want some toys to bring downstairs. It just makes it easy to pop it all in the bag and carry it down at once. Because, as my husband would say, I am the MASTER of the “One Trip”!

I hope this little trick will make a difference for you and your family! Please leave a comment to let me know how this has worked for you or any other organizing hack that you have found to work well for you and your family!