Your bedroom should be a haven, a place where you can relax and unwind, a cozy and comfy place. Too often, it ends up being the place where you hide your messy self, stashing stuff from the living room and dining room which your guests see. But even though you and your spouse may be the ones who see your bedroom, you are important enough to deserve a clean, organized private space. Try our 7 top tips for bedroom organizing!

1. Start with your bed

The biggest thing in any room ends up being a focal point for attention. In your bedroom, that’s probably your bed. Keep it clean and neatly made up and you are halfway to a peaceful bedroom.

The Best Way to Clean a Bed

2. A place for everything, and everything in its place

There’s a reason this advice has been around for centuries: it works. Research shows that clutter makes people feel stressed. A bedroom must be relaxing so you can get the restful sleep that is so important for your health. That means that clutter is a problem in a bedroom.

Once your bed is made, gather up all the objects that are hanging round your room. Sort them into groups on the bed. Some of the groups you might find in your bedroom:

  • clothes
  • jewelry
  • luggage
  • books and magazines
  • electronic devices
  • cosmetics
  • lotions and skincare products
  • medications
  • toys
  • ornaments and decorative objects
  • cleaning supplies
  • wrapping paper
  • notebooks, pens, and other stationery
  • cups and other dishes
  • food

Whew! Some of these items pretty obviously belong in other rooms, and you may see things you could happily give away or throw away. Get those items out of your bedroom immediately. Try not to get too involved with them — for example, you can carry the four coffee cups into the kitchen and put them in the sink, but don’t do the dishes. Get back to the bedroom as quickly as possible.

Now figure out where each object really belongs. If you want to keep candy bars in the drawer of your nightstand, go ahead. Just put all of them in that drawer, nearly organized so you can easily find them when you want them.

3. When that place is full, you have enough

If you have one drawer in your nightstand and you decide that you need to keep those candy bars, a jar of lotion, some hair accessories, a manicure kit, and notebooks and pens in that drawer, it’s probably full.

If you still have some notebooks and pens sitting out on the bed, consider whether it would be useful to have some in your kitchen drawer, too, or in your home office. If you really just use them for journaling first thing in the morning, you might need to get rid of some. Keep your favorites and let the others go to your Donate or Trash areas.

The key is to let the space you’ve chosen determine how many items you get to keep. If you can’t follow that rule, it’s a hint that you chose the wrong place. Rethink it.

4. “Have nothing in your room that you do not believe to be beautiful or know to be useful”

William Morris said that, and it’s still great advice. Sometimes we have things that we don’t really love, but still have trouble tossing. Often these things — stacks of old greeting cards, odd socks, musical instruments we never play — end up in the bedroom.

Remember why you have them, honor the memories they hold, and then be ruthless.

5. Beware of phantoms

Sometimes we keep things that don’t fit into our lives because we imagine that someday they will, or we can remember when they did.

Do you have all the equipment and materials for cross stitching because one summer you planned to take it up…and didn’t? Would someone checking out your bedroom believe that you are really into aerobics because of all the workout gear you own…but you never actually work out?

These objects might make you feel like you are ready to plunge into that hobby, business, or cause just as soon as you have time. But on some level they also probably make you feel like a failure.

Give these things to someone who actually does cross stitch or goes to the gym regularly. They will be so happy, and you will feel relieved.

6. Keep flat surfaces as clear as possible

Flat surfaces like the top of your nightstand and dressers can easily become clutter magnets. Arrange decorative objects on these surfaces in Instagram-worthy vignettes and then stop.

That is, you can put a vase of flowers and a lamp in a corner of a dresser, but don’t add a pile of bills and a pair of shoes.

7. Identify space hogs

Sometimes we have items that take up more space than they need, and we don’t even realize it. If you have heavy wooden hangers, for example, but your closets end up stuffed, you can change them out for narrower wooden hangers and give your clothes some room to breathe.

A heavy dresser with empty space in the drawers could be replaced by a smaller shelf that fits under your hanging clothes in your closet.

Sometimes a good look around the room will show you items that are taking up more space than you really want to give them.

 

Try out these tips. You’ll enjoy your bedroom much more once it’s organized. It’s also easier to dust and vacuum with everything organized.