I am Alejandra Costello, creative organizing expert from Color-Coded Organizing, and we
are here in Arlington, Virginia and today I am going to give you a sneak peek inside
my house and show you that organizing can be easy and can be fun.
Lets go.
I am so excited you’re here.
I am going to show you some of the coolest spaces in my house, all of which are very
easy to do and very fun.
I love this pantry.
There is so much you can do inside of a pantry.
What I have done up here is I have used these Lazy Susans to store all the oils, vinegars,
and condiments, which makes it really easy to access and find exactly what you are looking
for.
Down here I did the same concept.
I used a Lazy Susan for vitamins, spices, then some of the bigger spices.
It works perfect.
And then down here is where I keep all of my canned goods.
The perfect way to store canned goods is on a tiered shelf because you can see all of
the labels from standing outside of the pantry.
It is perfect and it makes it so easy to grab.
Down here is where I keep all of the dry goods.
Dry goods should be stored in air-tight containers.
They last a lot longer when they are stored properly.
And let me show you something cool we did.
I put these chalkboard adhesive labels on the very front and I used a chalkboard marker
to label the contents.
When the contents change you can easily wipe this off and then write the new label.
And then on the very back I cut out the nutritional facts or the recipe and I stuck it inside
this clear pocket adhesive sticker.
Down here is where I keep all the snack foods, dinner foods, and beverages.
Basically you want to keep all the stuff that is difficult to contain in drawers, which
makes it a lot easier.
So like all the snack foods, they just get dumped inside this bin.
Same thing with the dinner foods like the pastas, the grains, the seasoning packets.
And then over here is where I keep all of the beverages, like the juice packets, the
coffees, the teas.
This is one of my favorite products.
It is this tea bag organizer.
It has six different sections and you can organize the teas by type.
And then the last part of organizing the pantry is labeling all the shelves so when you get
back from the grocery store you know exactly where to put everything back.
And so I made these cute little labels for the drawers and the shelves out of a red and
white picnic print since it is the kitchen.
There is so much you can do in the pantry and these are just some of the ways I like
to organize my pantry.
Now lets go over to the cabinets.
Something I always see in the kitchens is when you open a drawer and the silverware
organizer slides back.
Let me show you.
I put this drawer divider next to the silverware organizer and it does not move.
It stays in place even as hard as you open the drawer or close it.
Now let me show you the upper cabinets.
As you can see here the kitchen is not very big, but if you maximize space you can fit
so much inside your cabinets.
Up here I used a double shelf to store big plates on the bottom and small plates above.
And I did the same thing with the bowls.
The small bowls on the bottom and then the big bowls on the top.
I hung sheet metal inside of my kitchen cabinets to take all the fridge clutter off the fridge
and into the cabinets.
So I still see the pictures and I still see the magnets, they are just not cluttering
up the fridge.
If you have a narrow corner cabinet in your kitchen, you can install a 21 inch Lazy Susan
to make everything in the back corner that is hard to access very easy to reach.
Flat baking pans should never be stacked.
Instead you should store them vertical with vertical shelf dividers kind of like this.
It makes it really easy to grab what you want and then put it away when you are done.
You have seen the kitchen and pantry.
Lets go to the home office.
This is my home office, which also serves as my craft space.
Lots of offices have paper floating around the whole office, but I am going to show you
that if everything has a home you can be more productive.
This is most of my craft supplies up here and then I keep more of it on this pegboard.
I love organizing with pegboards because they are so cost efficient.
You can paint them, you can design them.
You can add so many different hooks and store all kinds of different tools.
My favorite thing to store on pegboards are ribbon.
It pulls so nicely and then you can just cut it.
Over here is where I have my mail center.
I have a section for incoming, outgoing, processing, stuff to file, work stuff, and then coupons.
I am a very out of sight, out of mind person, so when I designed this mail center, it was
so important that I could see everything.
Over here is where I keep my filing cabinet.
I used colored file folders to store all the different types of documents.
When it comes to wrapping presents, I love storing gift wrap on a vertical organizer
like this.
A lot of times I see gift wrap in the corner of a closet and all the ends are torn or the
paper is wrinkled, which defeats the purpose of wrapping a pretty gift.
This area was designed to hold a lot of my work binders and my reading books.
I also store half of my office supplies over here, like my file folders, my note pads.
There’s filing kits for when I work with clients.
I love using stickers when I write cute cards or letters to friends or family.
I sort all my stickers by type and I keep them in Poly envelopes so they don’t get
wrinkled or torn.
I use these binder rings to hold them in place and then I just hook them on this hook.
Time management is so important when it comes to organization.
I love to track my daily chores and my exercise goals.
So I use two different types of checklists here and every time I do, every time I complete
a chore, I get a sticker and it sounds so silly, but it works for me.
You just have to find what works for you.
I keep the other half of my office supplies in these drawers.
I have lots of pens and lots of markers because I love using different colors, but everything
has its own compartment here so it is really easy to find.
I keep some of my bulky office supplies on this side like the notepads, the rubber bands,
the staplers, the flags for the binders.
If you can organize your office and find a home for everything you are storing, you can
really be more productive.
At any given time I only keep twelve magazines in the house.
I do not have any subscriptions and I only buy magazines if I see them in the store and
I know I am going to go home and read it that day.
And if I read it that day, I will put a flag on the page for anything I want to save and
then I will put it on this rack if I want to go back and reference it in the future.
I use the one in, one out rule, so if a magazine is going to go in this rack, one is going
to come out.
We are done in the home office and now I am going to show you another problem area – the
closet.
We are here in my closet and there is so much stuff that I want to show you.
Lets start with the jewelry.
I keep all of my jewelry in this pull out organizer that is built into the closet.
I have my bracelets on this side, and then I have some of my smaller jewelry like my
rings and earrings on this side.
The second half of my jewelry is over here.
I keep some of the longer necklaces on hooks and then some of the bulky bracelets get thrown
in the basket up here.
I organize all of my clothes by type.
So I keep all the dresses in one section, all the long sleeves in a separate section.
And then I use these closet dividers to mark each section.
So like long sleeve will go in front of the long sleeve section.
I love to use color-coded hanger snaps for all my clothes.
For example, for all my long sleeve shirts, I use purple snaps on the hangers, and then
all my dresses get yellow hanger snaps.
It makes it really easy to put your clothes back on the right hanger.
I reused a towel rack from the bathroom to hang all of the scarves in the closet.
It can be so easy to go green.
Bathroom cabinets can often be black holes for clutter, but if you get creative, there
is often other places to store you bathroom products.
For example, if you use door pockets on the back of the door, you could store your small
makeup or your small hair accessories.
A lot of times people have a lot of stuff in their medicine cabinet.
Luckily there is an easy way to organize it.
The door of the medicine cabinet can sometimes be magnetic, and if it is not, that can easily
be solved by mounting sheet metal to the interior door.
For example, everything that you see here is magnetic.
And all the stuff you see here is stuff that I use every day.
So like tweezers, scissors, nail clippers, Q-tips.
It makes it really accessible.
Since I live in a condo, I do not have a laundry room.
Instead I have a laundry closet, which makes it kind of difficult to air dry some of my
clothes.
If you do not have a laundry room, you can hang these clothes valets on a small wall
in your home.
So I like to create a double hang with these valets, or you can just have one long hang,
for longer garments.
This next product is one of my favorite bathroom products.
It is a shower curtain liner with storage.
It has five different pockets where you can store all kinds of stuff like soap, or brushes,
or conditioner for your hair.
It works perfect for the extra bathroom clutter that you have floating around.
A lot of people have a lot of bathroom clutter, but if you organize it the right way, you
can really maximize your space.
This is the linen closet, which is one of my favorite spots in the house.
Typical linen closets usually have the sheets and the towels.
However, I keep that stuff in the bathroom.
In this closet I keep lots of medications, and cleaning supplies, and then I keep the
sheets at the very bottom.
I love this space for two reasons.
The first one is, I love these photo labels.
It makes it really fun and really easy to find exactly what you’re looking for.
The second reason why I love this closet is, we put wallpaper on the back of the closet,
and then we created matching shelf labels with the same wallpaper.
So not only can the space be functional, but it can also look pretty.
Now that we have seen most of the areas in my house, lets go to the balcony.
We used our sunroom to create a garage to house all of our sports gear, tools, and hardware.
Let me show you around.
Over here is where we have all of our small hardware, like our nails and our screws.
And down here is where I have my battery kit.
I love this thing.
We keep all of our batteries sorted by size and they have yellow labels.
All of the nails and screws get contained in a tackle box, just like this.
Each type of screw and each anchor gets a different section.
These are my favorite labels in the house.
I used paint swatches from the hardware store, and then I used painters tape to attach the
label to the box.
Over here I used bungee cord to create a cage to house all the sports gear so nothing will
fall out, and it makes it so easy to grab exactly what you are looking for and then
put it back.
These shelf labels go with this shelving, and you can dress them up by adding cool colored
paper or cool textured paper on the background and then creating a label with your label
maker.
You have seen how I organize my kitchen, home office, closet, bathroom, and garage.
And these are just some of the ways you can organize your home.
For more creative ideas to do in your house, visit us at Color-Coded.net.
I am Alejandra Costello, organizing...I messed up.
All the nails and screws.
Was that bad?
I think that was bad?
No, it was good.
And then also my office some... whoops.
Sound test number two.
I am Alejandra Costello with org...
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Since I live in a condo, I do not have a laundry...oh.
Since I live in a condo, space can sometimes be limited.
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Instead, I have a laundry closet, which makes it kind of difficult to air dry some of the...
which makes it kind of difficult to air dry some of my clothes.
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We created matching shelf labels so you could see exactly where to find everything.
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OK.
And also if you pillow...
These are just some of the ways you can organize your home.
If you need help...
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Like, if...if you need help?
So we will come back and we will figure out if anything did not work, and we Will tweak
that, and then figure out... um.
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And then we come up with the perfect organize...
And then we come up with the perfect.
And then we come up with the perfect solution for you.