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Tricks to organize the house: room by room
Order at home
The interior designer María Lizarraga emphasizes the importance of order to save time, avoid stress and achieve balance
“But I was there yesterday!” … How much time do you spend looking for the things you “lose” at home? According to the study “Order and time” by Ikea and Sigma Dos, we spend an average of 65,9 minutes each week, 2,38 days a year and 6,5 months of our lives finding objects in our home. Pens, glasses, mobile phones and keys are the things that are most difficult for us to find, although these last two objects are the ones that, according to the report, cause us more stress when we lose them.
The key to cutting this time in half is order at home, according to experts. Ordering is more than freeing up physical space, as it is about achieving a mental balance, since disorganization causes stress, generates fatigue and takes time away. Lack of time, space and, why not admit it, of desire can lead to neglecting this issue. However, as María Lizarraga, an interior designer at Ikea, assures, it is not necessary to make great efforts to have an orderly home and small gestures are enough to help organize the house and make the most of each room.
Check if you have excess things
If you have the feeling that you need to get rid of some things, do so, either by giving them away, selling them, or recycling them. “Many times the disorder is due to the fact that we have too many things and, furthermore, we have them poorly organized,” explains Lizarraga.
Sort by priorities
Everyday items should be on hand. For example, in a closet we will put the seasonal and day-to-day garments hanging and the accessories and underwear in the closest drawers, with dividers or boxes to make order easier. “Clothes for special occasions and out of season are best stored in less accessible places such as storage spaces under the bed or on the upper shelves of closets, or even in boxes (under the bed, for example) », Proposes the interior designer.
Everything in its place
To ensure that each item has its own space, it will be useful to use drawer dividers, as this allows for large gaps for what has a large volume and smaller gaps for utensils that are easily lost, such as socks or even objects still smaller, like buttons.
Use storage boxes
Transparent boxes make it easy to find items and boxes with a more attractive design can be used to store things that we use more frequently, so that even the box is a decorative element in the room, as María Lizarraga advises. Baskets can also be a good option for, for example, blankets in the living room, for those “movie, blanket and sofa” days.
Choose multifunctional furniture
There is a wide variety of furniture on the market that, in addition to its usual use, allows you to store and store things. For example, the Ikea expert suggested a footstool with storage as a good idea to keep things that are always scattered at hand in the living room, such as notebooks, blankets, cushions….
Ideas for every room in the house
In addition to these recommendations, it is possible to maintain a sense of order in the home by applying small solutions in each room, such as those proposed by the interior designer María Lizarraga.
In lobby Order and practicality can be combined with a combination of open (hooks and shelves) and closed (wardrobe) systems for storing outerwear and accessories. In this way, according to the Ikea expert, we will have the garments that we use every day at hand so that we can easily pick them up and leave them and we will leave those that we use less frequently stored and protected from dust.
By placing a shoe rack at the entrance, we can store our shoes in it every time we enter the house. In addition, it can serve as an auxiliary furniture to leave personal items such as glasses, keys or mobile on it.
In the kitchen it will be important not only to make the space visually more attractive, but also to guarantee order to better locate the ingredients and utensils that we store in it. “That will make us spend less, because we will throw away less things, we will stress less and we will have more time to enjoy at the table,” explains the expert.
Some useful solutions of storage They can be: transparent containers that show exactly the amount of ingredients they contain, baskets to group oils and sauces and dividers or dividers for drawers. This last solution allows, according to Lizarraga, to arrange the content by categories, making the most of the space and allowing our cans or jars of spices, for example, to be organized and visible just by opening a drawer.
In bedroom It is essential to achieve a pleasant environment that conveys a feeling of calm and encourages rest.
Some storage solutions for the interior of the closet allow you to take advantage of the space and keep the clothes tidy. Trouser racks, tie holders or shoe racks can be integrated into almost any space and, according to the Ikea interior designer, they facilitate accessibility to each item, keep the garments in good condition and help to find anything at a glance.
Boxes can also be a good option. It is advisable to use the transparent ones to store and have the shoes visible, for example, and the cloth or cardboard ones to store those “wardrobe background” garments that we keep for the “just in case”.
You can also take advantage of the space under the bed, where you can store bedding or clothes from another season.
El child’s bedroom it may be a separate chapter. Placing a small modular shelf with adapted boxes can serve to create a corner of order and help children to organize their toys by compartments through name tags. Even if instead of the name we use a sticker with the drawing of what they have to keep in that box, it will be easier for them to know what goes in that space. “If they have their things at hand whenever they want, they can play at any time, alone or with someone,” says Lizarraga.
To keep order in the bathroom, which is one of the rooms with the most traffic in the house and also one of the smallest, María Lizarraga’s recommendation is to combine shelves, pretty baskets and resistant boxes. Ideally, keep items for daily use on hand and store other things that are used less in higher or less accessible spaces.
If we have space, a trolley with wheels can be an ideal accessory to maintain order and to transport accessories to the bedroom or another place, for example, to care for the face, skin or hands and thus free the bathroom in case it is needed or simply because it is more comfortable for us to carry out these tasks in another room of the house.
In living room or dining room, it happens that the peculiarity of its furniture usually causes things to be displayed instead of being stored. To maintain the feeling of order, the expert advises using modular furniture, which allows combining glass doors with open shelves.