Spring Organizing Ideas

Hi all! Hope you are making the most of your May this year, semi adjusting back to a new normal life with vaccines available, guidelines lifting, and a new sense of hope on the horizon! I don’t know about you but my early quarantine days included a lot of tidying and organizing of my apartment. So now that I have officially lived with my organized home for over a year (and it happens to be spring cleaning season) I’m here to share some of my current favorite organization products!

Ikea Moppe
The first product that I love is the Ikea Moppe mini storage chest. This little drawer unit is super multipurpose — it could be used for toiletries, medicine, small kitchen gadgets, coffee/tea station, craft or art supply storage, work from home office supplies, and so much more! The drawers are a good size for holding small items and it just has a very simple and minimal design that could fit with a ton of different decor styles. I also love that its an unfinished plywood material, making the ikea hack-ability endless! It can be painted, wood stained, you can add small drawer pulls, etc. etc!

Personally, I use my moppe drawers for organizing my make up! I have a small basket where I keep my everyday makeup items for easy access on my vanity table, but all my extras are organized by category and stored nearby for every-now-and-then use. I sorted my makeup into these categories:
Scents - roller ball perfumes, fragrance samples, travel sized fragrances
Face - foundations, powders, concealers
Cheeks - blush, highlighter, bronzer
Lips - lip sticks, lip gloss, lip balms, chapsticks
Eyes - small eye palettes, eye shadows, liners, mascaras
Body - lotions, hand creams, body butters

Acrylic Tea Drawers
The next organizing vessel that I have recently added to my pantry storage and I have been loving is this clear acrylic tea bag drawer unit. I had boxes and boxes of tea stacked way in the back of my cabinets (many of which expired 5+ years ago… oops!) so I pulled everything I had out onto my counter and sorted like kinds together. Each drawer has a few dividers as well so there was plenty of room for many different types of teas. The only tea I left out was any loose leaf since these drawers are not sealed well enough to keep loose leaf tea fresh, so I left those in their original containers. But overall it vastly improved my previous Tetris box stacking system! And looks super cute :)

Labeled Spice Jars
Is there anything more magical than a well organized pantry? Maybe I’ve been following The Home Edit for too long, but I sincerely get excited about pulling everything out of my kitchen cabinets and reorganizing every now and then. And one cabinet that was a hot mess was my spice cabinet. I have extremely narrow cabinets in my rental apartment kitchen so I was just stacking random spice bottles on top of each other. And purchasing new of things I already had but hadn’t accessed in so long that I couldn’t even see them anymore.

So I decided that I would keep my spices out on my countertop for easier access but I hated the mismatched look of all the different sized containers and labels. So in order to improve the kitchen counter aesthetic (sorry not sorry), I purchased all new matching spice jars, which I love! And any extra back stock I just keep in the back of my pantry and refill the counter jars as needed. My favorite part of the new jars are these great spice jar sticker labels that I found on Amazon. I love that they are a super clean and easy to read font and I was super impressed with the variety of names that were included (they even had an Everything But the Bagel Seasoning label, which if you know me you know is very important in my life).

Notion App
My next current favorite organizational item is actually in digital form. And listen, I will be the first to admit that even though I am the type of organized where I can tell you exactly where any item is located in my apartment at any given second…I also used to have 5,000+ unread junk emails sitting in my inbox until my amazing husband who is gifted in the digital organizing world showed me the light! I’m currently loving the app Notion which is available for download on your phone, laptop, iPad, and desktop and they all sync together for access no matter where you are. Notion describes the app as “the all-in-one workspace for your notes, tasks, wikis, and databases” but it is essentially an app where you can make lists, plan meals, track habits, and keep organized all in one place.

Some of my favorite uses of the app include:
- Creating to do lists
- Meal planning/grocery lists
- Wishlists
- Notes for work, school, etc.
- Goal tracker
- Media tracker/list (movies to watch, books I’ve read, etc.)
- Travel planner
- Bucket list planner
- Rolodex of contact info
- Blog idea notes

If you’re interested in getting a more in depth look into how I use Notion, let me know and I will work on a more detailed post on how to use the app! And if you’re already into organization, give it a try, it’s a super user friendly system and so satisfying to have a whole database for your life at your fingertips.

And to round off my list of current favorite organizational items, I am a sucker for a cute storage bin, box, or basket. Probably to the point where the amount of bins I have is it’s own form of clutter. But oh well, everyone’s got something! Here are some cute ideas if you’re in the market for some new storage.

- I love these Target Pillowfort metal stackable bins — they’re definitely meant for a kid’s room or nursery but I would use them in any room of my house!
- The trendy Hay crates add a fun pop of color with a cool nostalgic milk crate vibe, I have one on my bathroom counter for all my everyday essentials
- These cool bohemian Macrame baskets come in assorted sizes and can add some nice texture to your home decor style
- These simple white plastic bins from IKEA are sturdy and fairly inexpensive and they are functional in every room of your house - from toiletries, to cleaning products, office supplies, and kitchen pantries. Add a label for maximum Home Edit vibes
- Could this tulip basket be any cuter? This would make such a great blanket basket for next to the couch or maybe even to collect all the dog toys :)

I hope these ideas have given you some inspiration if you are in the mood to do some spring cleaning. Happy organizing! Xo Rachael