5 ways to organise your home this January

I recently started watching Tidying up with Marie Kondo on Netflix, have you seen it? She’s the Japanese tidying expert and best-selling author, having written four books on organising. I don’t think it’s the best show (but perhaps I’m missing a lot from not reading her books…) – some of it I found a bit obvious; take all your belongings out of the cupboards and go through what you want and don’t want, isn’t that what everyone does when they have a big sort out? Some of it was a bit airy fairy; thanking the belongings you’re throwing out and so on. And I think once you’ve seen one episode, you’ve kinda seen them all as they run on the same formula – Kondo showing up at someone’s disarrayed house and overseeing them tidying. Actually, it’s more about how the act of tidying helps people make sense of their lives and their (sometimes discordant) family relationships in the home. Tidying here is calming, cathartic and clarifying. If it helps people be more mindful of all the stuff they own and how it impacts their mindset in the house that can only be a good thing.

Criticisms aside, it did get me in the mood to tidy, firing up the motivation to tackle those crammed cupboards that you stuff everything into, close the door and hope it doesn’t all fall out the next time you open it.

January seems to be a time for tidying, perhaps even more so than in the Spring. The glitz, glamour and general fuss of Christmas has been packed away for another year, leaving things looking a bit sparse around the edges and in need of a re-style. Maybe it’s the piles of washing that got neglected over the holidays, perhaps it’s the dust that’s gathered when we didn’t have time to clean, or the numerous presents that need to find new homes. But maybe it’s also about the need to feel in control at the start of a fresh, new year. We make goals and resolutions, editing our lives and hopeful intentions into neat to-do lists, so it makes sense that we would want to do the same in our homes.

In today’s post I’m sharing my tips for decluttering and organising your home this January. It’s all about taking it step by step, for me if I tackle just one cupboard at a time that’s a satisfying achievement. And oh how satisfying it can be. The trick is to sort by category, so here I’ve chosen the kitchen, the linen cupboard, books, the wardrobe and your shelves.

1. Sort through your kitchen cupboards
This might sound just a tad sad, but clearing out my kitchen cupboards is one of my favourite things to do – it’s one of my finest procrastination techniques! I put a podcast on, pull everything out and sort away to my heart’s content. It doesn’t require much mental effort (unlike tidying papers or the like) and then when you come to cook and everything is in its place it makes the whole thing so much simpler.

Probably the best place to start is the food cupboard. It’s amazing how messy they can get; when you’re in a daily rush, it’s easy to stuff things back in any old way, forget what you already have in there and keep buying the same thing over and over again. Not to mention the layers of flour dust and grease that seem to magically appear on every surface (there’s always seems to be a stray spaghetti somewhere too).

The key to tidy kitchen cupboards is being able to easily see everything. If I was designing a kitchen again and had all the space in the world, I’d probably go for big drawers over bottom cupboards (and no top cupboards) so you can pull them out and see all your utensils and food supplies in one glance. But I have a tight, compact kitchen that requires Tetris-like manoeuvres to keep it all in order.

I like to use glass jars for all my food stuffs (I buy them from Homesense and IKEA). It means you can instantly see what you’ve got in your cupboards, not to mention it is cleaner as you don’t have a pile up of packets and packages spilling everywhere. You can save space by piling them one on top of another and it instantly makes your cupboard look neat and ordered. You could even get a label maker to label them. A zero waste store has also recently opened near me so I’m hoping to take these there to stock up on grains and pulses, and do away with plastic altogether.

Make sure to wipe the shelves before putting everything away again and clean the bottom of any sticky bottles. Group similar items together and put what you use the most nearest to hand. I use drawer dividers from IKEA to separate lids from pots and maximise the useable space in a cupboard. You can also get perspex stands for shelves that allow you to stack items such as mugs more easily.

And then that leads us to the dreaded spice rack. (How many of us have spice jars 2, 5, 10 years out of date?!) These IKEA drawer inserts for spices have changed my life (or at least the way I use my kitchen). Instead of having to pull the whole cupboard out to find the nutmeg or whichever obscure herb a recipe needs, they’re all laid out in a drawer in neat rows. If you want to go one step further you could decant them all into brand-less glass jars, like below, and write the name of each herb with a marker pen. You can read more about how I organised my kitchen here. See my shopping picks below.

 

2. Edit your linen cupboard
There’s nothing quite as lovely as a pile of neatly folded, fresh laundry in the cupboard or drawers, smelling of cotton and all things clean. My linen closet though is more often than not all creased and stuffed into overflowing drawers. Every so often I’ll go through it, take old, faded pillowcases and frayed towels we don’t use anymore to the recycling bank, and put back only what we need (which isn’t about 20 white pillowcases that are all the same).

You can use cedar blocks to help deter any moths and cotton bags to store away delicate items. I like to dry lavender from the garden and store it in a pouch in the drawer to stop it getting musty and savour that lovely, fragrant smell. Then when you go to make the bed the bedding retains that sweet, satisfying scent.

Maintaining your linen cupboard is also about looking after your linen properly – Arket’s beautiful, mild and biodegradable wash with organic ingredients should see to that. Invest in quality bedding and linen that will stand the test of time and not need replacing so often (see my post on the best places to buy linen bedding here).

3. Organise your books
How do you like to arrange your books – in piles, by author, by colour or (bit controversial this one) with the plain backs showing? Carefully curated bookshelves can add an element of personality to a space, showcasing your passions, hobbies, likes and loves. Styled in the right way, they can add colour, texture and interest without necessarily appearing cluttered or chaotic.

I like to style larger art books in neat piles to showcase their lovely spines. You also lean some of the ones with the most beautiful covers against the wall on a shelf, it often seems a shame to hide the best bit of a book amongst all the others. They then become a piece of eye-catching art in their own right. For thinner books, pamphlets and magazines, I use vintage wire trays picked up at a flea market to organise them in piles. I don’t have any proper bookshelves in the house, preferring to keep the walls simple and clean, but if I did, I’d keep similar heights of books together. At the moment all my novels and paperbacks are in a cupboard in the home office upstairs. Instead of colour coordinating books by shade or having some sort of logical ordering system, I like to style them by eye, making sure the colours are evenly distributed across the shelves. So there’s not too much of one colour together and everything looks balanced and easy on the eye.

Organising your books and styling your shelves is also about editing your collection. Some people send a book to the charity shop as soon as they’ve read it, others prefer to keep every single thing they’ve read. I’m somewhere in the middle – I’ll keep the things I really enjoyed even if I may never go back and read them again. But I’ll pass on anything that didn’t give me any joy – that’s neither useful or beautiful. I know you should never judge a book by a cover but when it comes down to it, that has a huge impact on what a keep and what I throw. (Ok, I admit I store the really colourful books that I sometimes can’t bear to part with in a cupboard upstairs, this bar trolley in the living room’s just for the best stuff!).

4. Declutter your wardrobe
I could probably write a whole blog post on the wardrobe, for some it’s almost like a whole room in itself. But I really think that having a tidy setting to retreat to at night helps you unwind and sleep better. It’s a bit like when your desk is tidy, you’re more likely to be more productive and motivated. That means having a place for everything so you can close the doors and drawers, and enjoy (or at least have the illusion of) order and serenity. You don’t want to climb into bed at the end of the day to see a pile of mess by your side, leaving things like bedside tables free of objects will bring a greater sense of calm to a space.

As with most types of tidying, I like to start by pulling everything out at the same time – it helps you see just how much stuff you’ve got and how much space you have for it. Then sort into three piles: to keep, to sell, for the charity shop. Question what you really need and if it brings you happiness. I heard a clever tip on the radio today – store your hangers in your wardrobe the wrong way round, then when you wear something on them, turn it the right way round and you’ll soon see the things you’re not wearing.

Upgrade all your odd hangers with a matching set – your wardrobe will instantly look smarter and like it’s curated with intention. That said, don’t have too many hangers in your wardrobe, you’ll just be inclined to buy more stuff to fill them.

Good storage is the secret to an uncluttered home. Use storage boxes and baskets to separate different items in your wardrobe; vacuum pack bags for seasonal clothes out the way, old shoe boxes for storing accessories in groups, bigger baskets for bags and shoes. I like using the big Aesop cotton bags they give you wish purchases for things like belts, hats and gloves. Perspex boxes or wire trays are great because you can easily see what’s inside them.

You can read more about my wardrobes here.

 

5. Give your shelves a re-style
Shelf faffing is one of my favourite things to do to refresh my home. A simple swap around and a few quick changes can give a new feel to a space. And it’s like shopping in your own home without spending any money. I’m always moving things around to change up the look. My display shelves in my home office for example are like a living mood board; at the moment I’m really drawn to forest green colours and muddy tones, instead of painting a wall or doing something more drastic, a few pictures, postcards and plants add that quiet pop of colour. Before it was blush pink and terracotta hues.

I’ll do another post with my tips for styling shelves, but they key is balance and making it look artfully undone and not too styled (like you haven’t spent hours carefully positioning each object). Cluster objects of different heights together and group items in odd numbers not even, so things appear natural not contrived. I like things to be positioned asymmetrically so shelves appear more relaxed and informal. The space between objects is as important as the objects themselves, have a bit of negative space to give pieces breathing room. You want them either overlapping or apart, if objects are just touching next to each other they can look a little funny to the eye. Most of all, have fun with it and play around – your shelves should be a reflection of you and all the things that make a house a home.

I hope that’s got you motivated and in the mood to organise your home this January. Lots of people ask me how my home is so tidy – I don’t have children and I’m generally quite a tidy person, I guess it’s just part of my personality. But also I find an ordered home help soothe my wellbeing in the space; I feel calmer and more relaxed when everything is in its place. It’s easy to get overwhelmed with the year ahead and everything yet to achieve but a quick tidy can do wonders to get you off on the right track.

All images Cate St Hill