A Yearly Home Organizing Review
The year’s almost over, so now’s the perfect time to honestly assess how your home served you over the past 12 months. The purpose of a review isn’t to make you feel guilty; it’s about gathering information so you can make smarter decisions going forward.
Get started by doing a walk-through assessment and taking photos. This will help you make note of both the good and bad, and you may be reminded of areas where you made great changes and forgot about them.
In each room or area, ask yourself:
What spaces worked well?
Forget about the negative for a moment and find all the things that are going well. Maybe you added a larger trash can to a room and were able to stop leaving empty packages on surfaces. Did those wooden coat hangers you purchased in March mean that there were no broken hangers and coats on the floor for the rest of the year? These wins prove you’re capable of solving organizing challenges and will help you balance out the negatives you’re sure to find in the next steps.What spaces frustrated you?
Be specific. Has the kitchen counter become a permanent landing zone for mail and school papers? Are the kids’ art supplies on every flat surface? Are you storing non-furniture items on the floor? Name the pain points with factual detachment. No judging!What things did you actually use?
Write a list of items you loved and used regularly versus things you forgot you owned. Be honest with yourself instead of falling into the trap of wishful remembering (you didn’t really make bread a dozen times this year with that huge bread maker, did you?). Are your decorative pillows on the floor more than on the sofa? Do you have far more reusable grocery bags than you could ever use, and do you always leave them at home anyway? This is about being honest about what you really use, not what you wish a “better” version of you would use.Where did clutter accumulate fastest?
Common hotspots are the “flat surfaces” of kitchen counters and tables, bedroom chairs, the “junk” drawer, and areas of the basement or garage. Notice patterns. If the same categories of items always pile up in the same spots, the issue is a lack of an appropriate designated home, not a moral failing.How did your storage solutions hold up?
Did designated zones maintain their integrity? Are there any areas where you started an organizing system and it fell apart? Do you have any areas where you started stuffing random items into an established category when you needed to tidy up for guests? Real-life testing reveals what actually works; you just have to look for it. Don’t just look for the failed systems, though! Make sure to include all those systems that excelled or mostly worked out.What life changes affected your home this year?
Is there a new member of your household (baby, parent, pet)? Has your job changed so you spend more or less time working at home? Does your child have a strange and growing collection that takes up a lot of space? Our homes need to evolve when our lives do.
After your review, take highlighters or colored pens and mark off categories:
Keep & Love (items and systems that made life easier)
Fix or Upgrade (storage solutions or habits that were put in place but aren’t working well right now)
Let Go (belongings you didn’t use, duplicates, or items that belong to an old version of your life)
Problem-Solve (areas that never worked right and need a system)
That’s it for now! Don’t put too much pressure on yourself by insisting it all needs to be fixed today. In the next blogs, we’ll review making a plan for your categories and tackling those plans in the coming year.
