Easy Tips to Organizing Your Home: Living Room and Dining Room

If your like most people, the word "Organizing" can feel like a swear word! Always rearing its little head on your weekend To Do List. Lack of organization is reason behind jam-packed drawers and closets bursting at the seams! Most importantly, it is the reason behind a cluttered home!

Don't give up hope folks. .  We can help! Today I am going to share how to take everyday items in your home, and reuse them to help conquer the clutter. An organized home will help keep your mind clear as you conquer the New Year!

The first areas we will cover in this series is: the Living Room and Dining Room

3 Things to keep in mind as you walk through you home:

1. Ask yourself: If I were shopping right now, would I buy this item? If the answer is no, it goes!

2. Everything has MULTIPLE uses. You just have to use your noggin!

3. Everyday items, need to have everyday accessibility. Be realistic when setting your home up for effortless organization.

Coffee Table: 

Our coffee table is an antique trunk. We mounted industrial casters wheels to the bottom to allow us to use the trunk as a TV tray, easily vacuum the carpet, and quickly move it out of the way for house parties. More importantly, we use the space inside to store our photo books and extra picture frames that need to be accessed, but not frequently. If we didn't have a silver tray that lived on top of the trunk, you can bet your britches that we would use it for blanket storage!


* We picked this beauty up at an antique store for $25 because it looked worn. It works perfect in our home.*

Trays:

You will find MULTIPLE trays throughout our house. On the coffee table, dresser, in the office etc. These trays are the key to keeping small items like rogue screws, pens, loose change, hair ties and other small items safe from the garbage, yet in a collective space!

Also, the trays are only so big, which means you can only store so much stuff on it without having to " Do something" with the items. Easy collection and quick clean up! Does it get any better folks?!!

*We pick up trays anytime we see them at the Goodwill, Flea Market or Antique Stores. I don't think we have ever paid more than $5 for a tray. I know that the Dollar Store as metal trays too! *

Side Table:

I give credit to my mother and grandmother for this one! Growing up I always found it odd why they chose to store certain household items in the coffee or side tables. As I began making a home of my own, I was able to quickly able to answer that question. . . You will always find pen, paper, scissors, nail files, lighters, lotions, back scratches and other misc items in my side drawers!! Consider this our "Junk Drawer"

*I snagged this beauty for $2 at a Flea Market, just a quick sanding and re-staining was all she needed! James is the master of finding <$5 side tables! Buy used and save the difference folks!*

TV Stand: 

Just like you can use practically any piece of furniture as a TV Stand, you also can store things other than TV equipment in them! Now it may seem odd to store candles/lighters and dog stuff (Clippers, brushes, meds, treats etc) in your TV Stand. . .However back to point #3, the Living Room is where we use them the most, so it makes sense to have them easily accessible! With us being '90s babies, we tend to leverage technology, like Netflix and Google's Chromecast. This means we don't have piles of electronic equipment and dozens of movies, allowing us to have this flexibility.

*Bought this at Ikea and just changed the handles out to give it a different look.*

Dining Room/Bar:

If you can use just about anything as a TV Stand, in my opinion you can get creative with dining room furniture! We have this gorgeous Mid Century Modern Dresser as our sideboard/ server. Inside the drawers you will find, my cloth napkins, placements, baking accessories and muffin liners, disposable storage containers . Since our dresser also serves as our cocktail station, I also store wine accessories, disposable cups, cozies, playing cards and specialty syrups etc that would be used for parties.

*This was a splurge for us, I picked up this vintage mid century modern Lane dresser with glass top for $100 at a local Goodwill. Shes a bute! *

Dog Toys: 

Our dogs are like toddlers and LOVE to pull out every single toy in the house. To make for easy toy selection and clean up, we have small baskets on each floor of our home. What can we say. . .they have a rough life!

Dog Food: 

We found this white storage container at Ikea years ago. It blends into our walls, perfectly holds 2 bags of dog food, (We go through 40 lbs. every 2 weeks) yet is slim enough to easily fit in the corner of our dining room for easy feeding. We also have a DIY metal popcorn container with a chalkboard label that perfectly holds 1 big box of milkbones.