Home Organization Ideas: 10 Spots to Clear First, Then Organize

Don’t buy bins yet. Pick one spot, clear out what doesn’t belong there, and only then give everything that’s left a home. The 10 ideas below each cover one spot, and most fit in one 15‑minute timer. Start with the entryway or the kitchen counter: you see them every day, so you’ll notice the difference right away.

Each idea has two parts. Clear first is what comes out before you organize anything. Give the rest a home is where everything else goes. The list of spots and the time estimates are ours. The rules behind them come from Dana K. White, Marie Kondo and FlyLady, and the safety notes come from the CDC, the EPA, the CPSC and the FTC. Each one is linked where it appears.

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Three rules that make any organizing idea work

1. Clear first, then organize. Organizing clutter just gives it a nicer box. Inside each timer, use Dana K. White’s 5 steps: trash, then the easy stuff, then the obvious donations, and only then the hard decisions.
2. Put things where you’d look for them. Dana K. White’s first question is “If I needed this item, where would I look for it? Take it there now.” That spot is its home, even if it’s not where a magazine would put it.
3. One home for each thing, and similar things together. The KonMari site says that once you’ve chosen what to keep, “it’s time to designate a place for each item.” And: “Store similar items together or in close proximity to each other.”

One more idea runs through the whole list: the container is the limit. Dana K. White puts it like this: “Containers are for containing.” Her example is markers: “Markers go in this container, and no where else. Markers that don’t fit in this container can’t be in our home.” So the size of the basket decides how much you keep, not the other way around.

What you need: a trash bag, a donate box, and a timer set to 15 minutes. That’s it.

1. The entryway drop spot

FlyLady’s cleaning zones start here: zone 1 is the “entrance, front porch, and dining room.”

Clear first:

• Shoes and coats nobody wore this season → donate or put away with the seasonal things
• Junk mail and flyers → recycling, right at the door
• Things that belong in other rooms → take them there now

Give the rest a home:

• One hook per person for the bag or coat they use every day
• One small tray or bowl for keys
• Mail you keep → the paper station (idea 10), not the entry table

Time: one timer.

2. The kitchen counter

You see the counter more than any other spot, and everything lands on it. Dana K. White’s Visibility Rule is about places like this: “a visible space that I see every day but I might have stopped noticing.” FlyLady even has a game for surfaces like this one, the Hot Spot Fire Drill.

Clear first:

• Dishes → sink or dishwasher
• Paper, receipts, school notes → the paper station (idea 10)
• Things that live in other rooms → take them back now
• Medicines and vitamins → off the counter. The CDC says to “never leave medicines or supplements out on a kitchen counter or at a sick child’s bedside, even if you must give the medicine again in a few hours.”

Give the rest a home:

• Leave out only what you use every day (the coffee maker, the dish soap)
• Small appliances you use once a week → a cabinet near where you use them

Time: one timer.

3. One pantry shelf

Do one shelf per timer, not the whole pantry.

Clear first:

• Open packages that went stale → trash
• Unopened food you won’t eat → a food pantry, if they accept it
• Dates: look, but don’t panic. The USDA explains that most dates on food are about quality, not safety.

Give the rest a home:

• Group like with like: cans with cans, pasta with rice, snacks together
• New behind old. OSU Extension’s advice is to “practice the rule, FIRST IN, FIRST OUT. This means you use the oldest products first.” And: “Place the newly purchased cans in back of the same products already on the shelf.”

Time: one timer per shelf. A full pantry takes two or more.

4. Under the kitchen sink

Clear first:

• Empty or almost-empty bottles → finish them or recycle the empties
• Products you don’t use → check how your town takes household hazardous waste
• Sponges and rags that are worn out → trash

Give the rest a home:

• Keep each product in its own bottle, with its label. The EPA says: “Never store hazardous products in food containers; keep them in their original containers and never remove labels.”
• Don’t combine half-empty bottles to save space. The EPA again: “Never mix HHW with other products.”
• If young children or pets live with you, the cleaning products go where they can’t reach.

Time: one timer.

5. The junk drawer

Every house has one. The KonMari site calls it a komono drawer and says to “organize the contents of a komono drawer by category,” because small things “tend to jostle around every time the drawer is open and closed.”

Clear first:

• Dead batteries, dried-out pens, takeout menus, mystery keys → out
• Things that have a home elsewhere (tape, scissors, chargers) → put them there

Give the rest a home:

• Small boxes as dividers, one category per box. A shoebox or a phone box works.
• The drawer is the limit: when it’s full, something comes out before something new goes in.

Time: one timer.

6. The bathroom cabinet and medicines

Clear first:

• Expired medicines → a take-back site. The FDA explains where and how to dispose of unused medicines.
• Old samples and products you tried once → trash or donate if unopened, depending on what your local donation center accepts
• Duplicates → keep one open, store the rest together

Give the rest a home:

• Daily things at eye level, the rest higher up
• Medicines up high. The CDC says: “Keep medicines in a safe location that is too high for young children to reach or see.”

Time: one timer.

7. Bedroom drawers and the nightstand

None of these home organization ideas for the bedroom need new furniture.

Clear first:

• Nightstand: cups, wrappers, old receipts, things from other rooms → out
• Drawers: socks without a pair, clothes that don’t fit you now → donate or textile bag

Give the rest a home:

• One drawer per category (socks, T-shirts, pajamas)
• Fill the drawer with your favorites first. Dana K. White’s rule for clothes is “the drawer is the limit.” Whatever doesn’t fit goes.

Time: one timer for the nightstand, one per drawer. For the whole room, our declutter bedroom checklist has 9 spots. For the closet, see how to declutter your closet.

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8. Living room baskets

Home organization ideas for the living room usually come down to baskets. The trick is giving each basket one job.

Clear first:

• Magazines and catalogs you’ve already read → recycling
• Remotes for devices you no longer own, cables nobody can identify → check, then out
• Blankets, toys, shoes that wandered in → back to their rooms

Give the rest a home:

• One basket per category: blankets, remotes and chargers, kids’ books
• When a basket is full, that’s the limit (the container idea again)
• Tall bookcases and TVs: anchor them to the wall. The CPSC’s Anchor It campaign says “anchoring all furniture with drawers, doors, and shelves to the wall prevents tip-over injuries and deaths.”

Time: one timer.

9. Toys

Toys are where the container idea fits best. Dana K. White’s own example is a box of markers.

Clear first:

• Broken toys and toys with missing pieces → trash
• Toys your kids have outgrown → donate, if they’re clean and complete

Give the rest a home:

• One bin per kind of toy (blocks, cars, dolls), low enough for kids to reach
• When a bin is full, something comes out before something new goes in
• Toy chest with a lid? The CPSC says: “If the lid support does not keep the lid open in every position, you should remove the lid’s support or replace it with a spring-loaded lid support that will keep the lid open in any position.” It also says all toy chests should have ventilation holes that aren’t blocked by the floor or a wall.

Time: one or two timers. A playroom takes more.

10. A paper station

Paper piles up on the counter and the entry table because it has nowhere to go. Give it one spot.

Clear first:

• Junk mail, flyers, envelopes → recycling
• What the FTC lists as safe to shred: ATM receipts, offers of credit or insurance, expired credit cards and IDs, and prescription information for medicines you no longer take → shred

Give the rest a home:

• One tray for “to do” (bills, forms)
• One folder per year for what the FTC says to keep for a while: bank statements and pay stubs for one year, tax returns and their documents for at least three
• Birth certificates, Social Security cards, passports and wills → the FTC says keep them forever and lock them up

Time: one timer for the station, then a few minutes a week.

Home organization ideas for small spaces

In a small home there’s no extra room to hide things, so every idea above counts for more.

• Clear before you buy. You may not need that extra shelf once the spot is cleared.
• Let the space set the limit. One drawer for kitchen tools, one basket for blankets. When it’s full, something goes.
• Going up the wall? Wall shelves and tall bookcases save floor space. Anchor anything tall to the wall, as the CPSC recommends.

DIY home organization ideas with what you already have

You don’t need to buy anything to start. A few of our own suggestions:

• Shoeboxes and phone boxes as drawer dividers
• A sturdy tote bag on a hook as the donate bag that never leaves the closet
• Masking tape and a marker as labels for bins and shelves
• A jar or mug for pens, a cereal box cut down as a magazine holder

How to keep it organized

• One in, one out. Dana K. White calls it “that irritating totally logical one-in-one-out rule.” A new mug comes in, an old one goes.
• A quick reset for the busy spots. The entryway, the counter and the paper station are the first to fill up again, so give them a few minutes a day.
• 15 minutes on one zone. FlyLady’s rule for her zones: “All I ask is that you spend 15 minutes a day working on your zone for that week.”

Where to go next

Want to clear more before you organize? Our decluttering checklist goes room by room, and 100 things to declutter lists what to let go. If you’d like a plan, the 30 day declutter challenge gives you one spot a day. Short on time? See the 15-minute declutter. Not sure where to begin? Start with where to start decluttering, or how to declutter when overwhelmed if it all feels like too much.

Quick recap

1. Clear first, then organize. Don’t buy bins before you know what’s staying.
2. Put each thing where you’d look for it first.
3. One home for each thing, similar things together.
4. The container is the limit.
5. One spot per 15-minute timer. Start with the entryway or the counter.

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Sources

• Dana K. White, 5 Steps for Working Through an Overwhelming Mess (PDF), A Slob Comes Clean: https://www.aslobcomesclean.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/DASL-5-Steps-to-Working-Through-Mess.pdf
• Dana K. White, “Ooooooh. Container. Now I Get It.” A Slob Comes Clean (2010): https://www.aslobcomesclean.com/2010/05/ooooooh-container-now-i-get-it/
• Dana K. White, “How to Declutter Clothing,” A Slob Comes Clean (2013): https://www.aslobcomesclean.com/2013/12/how-to-declutter-clothing/
• Dana K. White, “The Visibility Rule,” A Slob Comes Clean: https://www.aslobcomesclean.com/2018/01/visibility-rule-important-decluttering/
• KonMari, “Simple Storage Solutions: Hikidashi Boxes”: https://konmari.com/marie-kondo-hikidashi-boxes/
• KonMari, “How to Organize a Komono Drawer”: https://konmari.com/tidying-your-komono-drawer/
• FlyLady, “Please Explain the Zones”: https://www.flylady.net/ask-flylady/please-explain-the-zones
• FlyLady, “What Do I Do with My Clutter?”: https://beta.flylady.net/ask-flylady/what-do-i-do-with-my-clutter
• Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Up and Away campaign: https://www.cdc.gov/medication-safety/php/toolkit/index.html
• U.S. Food and Drug Administration, “Where and How to Dispose of Unused Medicines”: https://www.fda.gov/consumers/consumer-updates/where-and-how-dispose-unused-medicines
• U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, “Household Hazardous Waste (HHW)”: https://www.epa.gov/hw/household-hazardous-waste-hhw
• USDA Food Safety and Inspection Service, “Food Product Dating”: https://www.fsis.usda.gov/food-safety/safe-food-handling-and-preparation/food-safety-basics/food-product-dating
• Melinda Hill, “Points to Ponder While Cleaning out the Pantry,” Ohio State University Extension (2016): https://wayne.osu.edu/news/points-ponder-while-cleaning-out-pantry
• Federal Trade Commission, “Protecting your personal information: Which documents to keep, which to shred” (2025): https://consumer.ftc.gov/consumer-alerts/2025/06/protecting-your-personal-information-which-documents-keep-which-shred
• U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, Anchor It!: https://www.anchorit.gov/
• U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, “CPSC Warns Consumers of the Deadly Dangers of Storage and Toy Chests” (2014): https://www.cpsc.gov/newsroom/news-releases/2014/cpsc-warns-consumers-of-the-deadly-dangers-of-storage-and-toy-chests