How To Organize Your Home: A Comprehensive Checklist

We’ve all been there. You get caught up with family, work, and other activities, and suddenly your house is a disorganized mess.

And then you find out you have last-minute guests coming to stay.

Need more ideas? Check out: 14 Genius Ways to Store and Organize Blankets and 12 Ways to Store and Organize Puzzles

Frenzied panic-cleaning the entire house is never fun, and it’s easy to feel overwhelmed with everything you have to do. Often, you won’t even know where to start!

Whether you’re cleaning your house for some sudden guests, or you just want to organize your home and you don’t know how to begin, we’ve made this checklist just for you!

What This “Organize My House” Checklist Will Cover

Using a checklist to help organize your house can be helpful because when you know exactly what to organize and clean, you can organize your house efficiently, and it’s easy to stay on track.

Here’s the comprehensive checklist every home needs, and what we’ll cover in each section:

Things To Declutter

These are items that need to be organized and put out of the way; maybe put them in a storage unit or donate if they’re not worth saving. Or, if they are really in bad shape, you might find yourself throwing these items out.

Areas to Clean

We’ll also include a list of areas you need to clean like the sink, countertops, windows, mirrors, and oven. We’ll make sure to mention how often we suggest cleaning these areas too!

Keeping Things Organized

Finally, we’ll give you some suggestions on how to keep your space organized going forward.

We’ll give you tips on how to organize specific areas of the house like your dining room, kitchen cabinets, and entryway. This will help keep clutter at bay!

You can also order high-quality customized labels to keep your house organized. You can order different styles and sizes of labels that can match different styles of rooms, truly integrating with each room.

Different materials of labels enable themselves to adapt to dry or wet environments. You can choose to stick the label permanently to prevent it from fraying or falling off over time, or you can choose semi-permanent labels for easy replacement, leaving no marks and thus making it easier to clean up.

We hope this comprehensive checklist helps make cleaning easier for you. We want organizing your home to be quick and easy so feel free to bookmark this post and revisit whenever you need an easy house organization checklist to follow!

Organize My House Checklist

When you start cleaning and organizing your house, it’s easy to feel stressed and overwhelmed. But take it one room at a time!

You don’t need to rush the process. I know I get the same way and just want the whole house to look amazing right away, but if you try that, you’re likely to get burnt out.

So just focus on one room each day, week, or however often you have time to spare. You’ll have a newly organized space before you know it!

Kitchen

The kitchen is usually the first place I start because it’s usually the busiest (and dirtiest) room in the house.

With pots and pans, cooking utensils, snacks, crumbs, and everything else, the kitchen is one room that needs constant cleaning.

The good news is if you keep up with it after the initial cleaning and organizing, all you’ll need to do going forward is a quick wipe every day and a deeper clean every so often.

Things to Declutter

In the kitchen, you’ll want to go through and declutter:

• Old food in the pantry, cabinets, or refrigerator
• Pots and pans that are scratched, broken, or unusable
• Mismatched Tupperware or storage containers that don’t have lids or have food stains you can’t get out
• Every month or so, go through your freezer and make sure nothing has been in there too long
• If your junk drawer is in the kitchen, go through it and make sure it’s not too full of, well, junk

Areas to Clean

Your kitchen has lots of areas to clean, but these are the ones you’ll need to focus on and incorporate into your daily routines.

Counters – First, make sure you wipe down your counters. Decluttering and cleaning off your counters is something you should do each night. That will help prevent any clutter or food stains and crumbs from building up. Clean the sink each night as well.

Dishes – This goes along with counters, but make sure you’re putting your dishes away after every meal or at least every night. Whether that means just putting them in the dishwasher or washing them by hand and putting them back in the cabinet, make sure you don’t let dirty dishes pile up.

When you unload the dishwasher, nest items inside each other (when possible) and put things back in the proper spot. If you’re using drawer organizers, don’t just throw the utensils back in the drawer, but make sure you and your family members are putting them in the right spot.

Floor & Appliances – Sweeping the floor each night and making sure the appliances you used are cleaned up can go a long way to make your home feel clean and organized.

Shop Kitchen Cleaning Products:

Keeping Things Organized

To keep your kitchen organized, there are a few things you can do.

Get Tupperware that can nest inside each other to save on drawer space. I also highly recommend drawer organizers for cooking utensils, silverware, and baking supplies.

Use clear bins for pantry food to organize everything and see what you have. Using bins will keep similar items grouped together and ensure nothing gets lost in the dark corners of your pantry shelves. Don’t forget to label each bin!

You can organize your pantry so that you use everything before it expires by using a label maker to organize expiration dates on containers or putting all like food together (i.e.: canned vegetables, dry pasta). This will help you remember when something needs to be eaten!

You can also check out my other posts on how to organize kitchen drawers, kitchen cupboards, or under your kitchen sink.

Keep cabinets organized by category. This will help you find what you need when cooking and prevent having to dig through the cabinets.

Having a set place for everything will make your home organize and clutter-free! You can organize your kitchen supplies so baking supplies are together, dishware is together, etc. In deep cabinets with a lot of small things, put items you use frequently at the front. Make an organization system based around the things you use most.

If you have space, you can keep all your appliances put away in a cabinet while still being accessible. This means keeping the coffee maker, toaster oven, blender, and other small appliances off the counters so you have more room. Having totally clean counters is wonderful though I know it’s not possible in some homes.

Keeping appliance cords untangled is a great way to organize as well – especially if they hang down from the counters and can get pulled off easily by tiny hands.

If your junk drawer is in your kitchen, use a drawer organizer or small containers to organize the items and prevent things from falling out. Keep rubber bands in one storage container, spare change in another, etc. Just because your drawer is full of random items doesn’t mean it has to look chaotic!

Shop Kitchen Organizing Products:

Bathroom

Your bathroom is another room that you need to clean often or it can get very dirty and gross. Here are some good ideas to help keep your bathroom clean.

Things to Declutter

In the bathroom, here are the items you’ll want to go through when decluttering:

• Old beauty products
• Expired toiletries
• Hair ties and clips that are too stretched or broken
• Old or empty shampoo bottles, toothpaste tubes, or toilet paper rolls (check the kids bathroom for this one especially)
• Go through drawers and make sure there’s no extra clutter or things that don’t belong in that room

Areas to Clean

Toilet – Cleaning the toilet might not be part of anyone’s daily routines, but it should be part of your weekly routine at least. Doing frequent, quick cleans of the toilet will keep it from getting dirty and will help prevent hard water stains from forming.

Counters – Wiping down the counters and getting any clutter off is a good nighttime habit. If you and your kids are in the habit of giving the counters a quick wipe after you’re done using it for the day, the bathroom will be in pretty good shape even if you don’t have time to clean before any last-minute guests.

Under the Sink – Under the bathroom sink can get cluttered from items you don’t use, so make sure you’re going through that cabinet and freeing it of any clutter or possible mold build-up.

Clean Showers and Tubs – Don’t forget to clean any grime from your showers and tubs! Do this when you’re cleaning the toilet and it should be pretty quick and easy to keep up with.

Wipe Down Mirrors – Bathroom mirrors can easily get smudged from fingers or water droplets, so make sure to give them a quick wipe with Windex once every week or two (depending on how pristine you like your mirrors).

Shop Bathroom Cleaning Products:

Keeping Things Organized

Bathroom cabinets or under the sink are the perfect space to organize your cleaning products.

You can store cleaning products in plastic bins or even in an old shoebox to keep them from getting messy or disorganized. Keep everything labeled so that there is no confusion on where each product goes.

You can even put your cleaning products in a small caddy so it’s easy to take out all of the products at once and carry them to the room where you’ll be using them.

Use storage containers in your drawers to separate makeup products, toothbrushes, hair accessories, and anything else in your bathroom drawers.

Make the most out of vertical space by using hooks and shelves. Hang up towels on hooks and add floating shelves to store extra towels and washcloths.

Using the walls as storage areas can help free up space in cabinets and drawers.

Shop Bathroom Organization Products:

Bedrooms

Bedrooms are the rooms that are often the most cluttered. Because no one is really in our bedrooms besides us, we often don’t feel the need to clean them up.

But cleaning up your bedroom can actually help you sleep better and feel more relaxed. It can also give you a sense of control in your life, which is always helpful to build self-esteem and confidence!

Things to Declutter

When decluttering your master bedroom or the kids bedrooms, here’s what you’ll want to look for:

• Clothes that are too small
• Items you are holding onto “just in case”
• Clothes that have not been used or worn in one year or more
• Items that are broken or unusable
• Old school work and test papers (unless they’re sentimental)

Areas to Clean

In your bedroom, you want to clean the following areas:

Lamps and light fixtures – Dust them fairly often. You may be surprised how often they get dusty! This goes for the top of a dresser or desk as well!

Closet – Clothes should be folded and stored properly in dressers and closets.

Floor – Toys should be stored properly each night and clothes should be put in the dirty clothes laundry basket or laundry room.

Bed – Try to make your bed each day – it will do wonders for making your room look clean and organized!

Bedroom Cleaning Products:

Keeping Things Organized

When trying to save space in your dresser, try filing your clothes vertically in your drawers. It can help you keep your dresser organized, so you can easily find the clothes you need, while

Use a linen closet or high shelves in your bedroom closet for extra bedding or pillows.

Speaking of the linen closet, decide if you want to organize it by color, set, or category. You may find that you like storing extra bedding by set (this is a great way to keep track of everything) or it might save you space to put all of the fitted sheets in one area and all of the flat sheets on another shelf.

Extra blankets can go on the bottom shelf or under the bed.

Once you organize your linen closet, clean it out. Wipe down all of the shelves and make sure nothing is dusty or dirty. You need to organize so that when you open up this area it is easy for things to go in their correct place but also looks great!

Use the space under your bed wisely. Get a large box or big storage containers for under your bed or your kids beds. You can then store seasonal clothes, extra shoes, or accessories. It will save you lots of space in your closet!

I would also suggest that you get a shoe organizer that can go in your closet or hang on the back of the door.

Bedroom Organization Products:

Living and Family Rooms

The living and family rooms are rooms that have a lot of traffic going in and out. They are also the rooms that have seen the best days.

If you really want a refresh, it may be time to replace your couch or get a new coffee table that has storage for remotes, magazines, and controllers.

But just re-organizing and cleaning the room will have it looking as good as new too!

Things to Declutter

In the living or family room, you’ll want to declutter the following:

• Magazines, DVDs, and books
• Video game materials or controllers
• Board games and card games
• Puzzles
• Dust bunnies (okay, so dust bunnies aren’t really something to declutter, but keep in mind that you can get tons of them under the couch or coffee table)
• Extra blankets that have been brought out during movie night

Areas to Clean

Windows – Tiny fingerprints love to find their way onto windows, so wipe those off every week or two.

Entertainment center or coffee table – Clean up the areas where you have the television or any devices. You can use a dry, soft cloth to clean these surfaces.

Remotes or controllers – With how many people are touching these surfaces, it’s a good idea to wipe them down often.

Ground and couches – Vaccum rugs or carpet and clean any crumbs or lint from the couches.

Keeping Things Organized

If you have too many items in your family room, it’s time to get them organized.

If they are in their own labeled storage spaces (i.e., the cabinet under your television), then organize away! Just make sure each item has its designated spot before putting it away.

Getting furniture that is functional as well as pretty can be super helpful. If possible, try to find an ottoman that you can store blankets in. If not, get a cute basket that can sit in the corner and hold blankets or other items.

If you find books and DVDs making your family room messy, organize them by genre. It makes it easier to find a specific one instead of searching through an entire bookcase or entertainment center.

Donate or throw out any old magazines you don’t read anymore.

If you have kids, organize their toys in storage containers that can be pushed out of the way easily so that your family can enjoy being in there without stepping on Lego pieces!

Family Room Organization Products:

Home Office

If you have a home office, it can get cluttered with papers very easily. Organize it with hanging file folders or a filing cabinet if necessary.

If you have paper clutter that is starting to take over your office, organize bills and important documents first so they do not get lost among other papers.

Things to Declutter

Here are the things you’ll want to declutter in your home office:

• Old papers you don’t need anymore
• Old and unusable rubber bands, paperclips, notebooks, pens, pencils, etc.
• Mail you don’t need anymore
• Other office supplies, such as staplers and paperweights
• Any other equipment that is broken

Areas to Clean

When cleaning an office in your house, you’ll mostly want to focus on cleaning off your office desk, since that’s the main focus of the room.

Desk – To clean your desk, you’ll want to clean off any mail and papers cluttering your desk, organize your office supplies, and organize any other equipment on the desk you may have.

Also, make sure that there is no trash or dust lying around anywhere in the room as well!

Keeping Things Organized

To organize your home office, you’ll want to organize your papers, organize your office equipment and supplies.

Sorting things by category can help you stay organized. Get a drawer organizer or small storage containers or organizers that can fit in your drawer to keep everything separated.

When you have things sorted like this, you will have more time to get work done instead of spending it all searching through your desk. It will also help you realize when you’re almost out of something!

Office Organization Products:

How to Implement Your “Organize My House” Checklist

Now that you know the spaces you need to clean and how to keep your home organized, you can get started!

It all starts with a good checklist.

If you organize the spaces in your house and work step-by-step, it will go by much faster and be more efficient.

Plus, if you have everything stored properly in each room, cleaning takes less time because there isn’t as much to clean up since things are put away.

Focus on organizing your storage and spend some time figuring out a system that can help you save space and give you that organized home you want!

It might take an entire day or week, but in the long run, the work you put into organizing now and making efficient storage spots will be totally worth it.

If you spend that time now, you’ll have more time in the future to do the things you want, all while having a clutter-free and beautifully organized home!