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My Favorite Home Organizing Products & Some to Avoid

Having organized the homes of hundreds of clients over the years, I know which home organizing products truly work and which ones to avoid. This post highlights the most functional products I consistently use and trust.

While there are some products out there that have stood the test of time, there are also some that I tend to remove when a client has them in place because they are not working well. I will share those as well so that you know to steer clear of them.  

Products for the kitchen:

✅Using clear bins and tiered shelves in your pantry can help you keep it neat and functional. To organize your pantry, group similar items in clear plastic bins to create categories like “snacks” or “baking supplies.” The clear material makes it easy to find what you need at a glance.

✅If you have a pantry with deeper shelving, using longer bins will allow you to utilize all of your pantry space without storing food behind other foods, making them hard to reach and more likely to be forgotten about. I have a deeper pantry, and I use these bins.

✅Labeling the bins will also help family members put things back in the right place. Use caution not to over-shop and overfill your pantry, as this is the most common cause of pantry disorganization. Examples of food categories are: Snacks, Side Dishes, Dried Fruit & Nuts, Energy Bars, etc.

✅You can prevent canned food from getting lost in the back of your pantry by using an expandable tiered shelf. This allows you to see everything you have and avoids the need to stack items on top of each other. Doing this makes everything easy to locate and grab.

✅In the kitchen, I love using expandable wire racks to vertically store flatter items like cookie sheets, cutting boards, platters, pizza pans, and even casserole dishes. It often requires less room to stand things up, and they are easier to access.

In my own home, I installed a wire rack above my refrigerator to store all of these things. When you have to lay items down and nest multiple items on top of each other, inevitably, you always seem to need to get to the bottom one.

✅Bamboo drawer dividers are great for organizing utensil drawers so you can sort related utensils together and easily find what you are looking for when cooking.

✅In spice cabinets, I often use expandable tiered shelving or lazy Susans to keep everything organized and visible.

❌There are several other spice rack systems out there that I don’t recommend. The kind that you pull down and out of the cabinet is unstable and not user-friendly.

❌I usually also remove the decorative kind that sits out on the countertop because it takes up too much valuable countertop space, requires a lot of maintenance (with all the filling of the little bottles), and makes your kitchen look cluttered.

✅If you struggle with household paper clutter that constantly piles up in your kitchen, I recommend using decorative baskets or bins to hide paperwork in. Sometimes a hanging paperwork organizer on a nearby wall will work well to keep important paperwork separated and organized (don’t forget to label). Use my paperwork management flowchart to set up a simple system for keeping household paperwork organized.

✅Lastly, if you have just moved into a new home and want to beautify and protect your kitchen cabinets and drawers, I recommend using Easy Liner removable shelf liner because it is durable, easy to install, and does not wrinkle or slide around with use.

Home organizing products for your master closet:

✅I recommend using velvet hangers for hanging clothing; they are usually sturdy, well made and the velvet coating stops slick or wide-necked clothing from slipping off the hanger.

❌Convoluted multi-item hangers require too much effort to use, so they are not too high-maintenance to be functional. Expensive wood hangers work well for men’s suits, but are not practical for women’s clothing because many dresses and wide-necked tops will slip off the wood. They are also space hogs.

❌I usually take down those flimsy canvas hanging shelves that you can purchase to attach to your clothing rod. I find that they are annoying when used frequently, and you have to sacrifice precious hanging rod space to use them.

✅I like to store items like purses, out-of-season attire, and scarves in open-topped storage bins. Storing these items vertically will make things easier to see and retrieve. Belts can be organized using a belt organizer.

✅If your closet does not have ample shelving for your shoes (builders often skimp on this), add a sturdy shoe shelving unit.

❌There are a lot of not-so-functional shoe racks out there. Avoid flimsy canvas ones, the kind with only two rods, and those with slanted shelves; shoes just slide off these kinds.

✅Over-the-door shoe organizers can also be a good way to add shoe storage, but they are best for smaller shoes like sandals, flip flops, and kids’ shoes. They are not quite as user-friendly, but a good option when space is limited.

❌One last item I do not recommend is plastic storage drawers. While they are better than nothing to use as a last resort, the drawers are hard to open, so they are not all that user-friendly.

✅Instead, I recommend using open front cubby systems in your closet. Cubbies are a great place to store your folded jeans, bulky sweatshirts and sweaters that won’t wrinkle if folded. Open-topped bins can also be placed inside your cubbies to hold smaller items.

✅For the bedroom, I like to use under-the-bed bins for out-of-season storage and  Bamboo drawer dividers to keep socks and undergarments sorted inside of dresser drawers.

✅Don’t store keepsake clothing that you don’t wear in your closet.  Get items like college sweatshirts and your prom dress out of your closet and into plastic totes.

Store these items with the rest of your keepsakes in a basement, attic, or storage room. This is a great way to free up space in your closet!

My favorite bathroom organizing products:

✅Decorative open bins are a great solution for corralling countertop items and keeping the rest of your counter clutter-free. 

✅For small items in your top drawers, use small clear containers to keep them separated and easy to locate.

✅Underneath the sink, you can use large, open-topped containers to group related products together. Adjustable under-the-sink organizers that allow you to utilize vertical space are also a great option.

❌Avoid under-the-sink organizers with pull-out drawers, as they can be a hassle to use and require you to lay down all of your bottles, which is not ideal for bathroom supplies.

For the garage and storage room:

✅When choosing a storage shelving system, stick with these sturdy metal storage units that allow you to easily adjust the height of each shelf to ensure that your storage totes will fit on them.

❌There are many types of shelving units available that are cheaply made, not sturdy, not adjustable, and hard to assemble, so choose carefully.

Final notes:

As you utilize these helpful products to create more functional spaces within your home, keep in mind that decluttering your home before you organize will have the biggest impact on keeping it organized long term. Decluttering first will ensure that storage spaces are not overcrowded, which will keep your systems running smoothly. After all, the more stuff you keep in your home, the harder it will be to keep it all organized.

Be sure to declutter and sort before you shop for home organizing products.

It’s a common and costly mistake to do it the other way around. Without sorting and purging first, you have no way of knowing what products you actually need or what size they should be.

The decluttering process often frees up containers you can reuse, saving you money and preventing you from buying more than you need. By saving the shopping for last, you ensure you buy the right products for the right spaces.

It’s also an effective strategy to save shopping as a reward for doing the harder work of decluttering first. Shopping first can kill your momentum and leave you with unused products that just add to your existing clutter.

Pro tip: Don’t forget to measure your spaces before you shop!

Still Feeling Stuck?

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