Parkdale Ave.: Thoughts on Home Organization...

On the Editor's Page of this month's issue of House & Home magazine, Suzanne Dimma elaborated on the importance of home organization. Her first paragraph ended with a sentence that I found quite poignant: "So often, if you take care of the details, they'll take care of you". In other words, it might be time consuming to organize certain areas in your home but in doing so, you're ultimately saving more time in the long run. I've always admired Martha Stewart's organizational tricks and deep down inside, I think we all wished we were a little bit more like her, but the fact of the matter is most of us (myself included) don't have time to completely re-organize our homes from top to bottom.

I think the key is targeting your efforts on specific areas which Suzanne aptly called "blind spots" where clutter inevitably accumulates. For some people it's the table in the front entrance, for others it's the bathroom floor, in my home it was a section on the kitchen countertop where items that needed to go into the recycling bin just sat and accumulated... This area on my kitchen counter became a pit stop between our kitchen and our garage. One day, I took a few minutes to assess the situation and realized the only reason junk accumulated there was because neither of us wanted to go into the garage every day. So I decided to get a big storage bin and stick it inside my lower cabinets, directly underneath this "blind spot" on our countertop. Now, instead of accumulating junk on the counter for all to see, it secretly accumulates in a bin hidden behind closed doors which we empty out once a week. A few minutes of contemplation spared me hours of annoyance and aggravation!

In keeping with the spirit of spring cleaning, I thought I would post a few neat tricks (pun intended) you may want to try in your own home.

Happy Hump Day!
Myriam