In a year when taxes are on the rise and so many people live on so little, it’s helpful to find inexpensive ways to organize. Giving up organization is not an option, so for my last January organizing resolution I’m going to give you some budget friendly organizing ideas.

#1 Baskets, bins & boxes
I’ll be the first to admit, I’m a basket junkie.  I love baskets and I use them to organize every closet, in every room of my house.  Baskets can be very pricey but since I use so many of them I have found lots of places you can purchase them very inexpensively.  The Dollar Tree has tons of baskets for a dollar or less, and even if you don’t live near a Dollar Tree you can order them online!  Here are just a few of the great baskets they sell there.

IKEA also has lots of budget friendly bins and boxes.

Click here to see all of them.

#2 Free organization
If you don’t want to spend any money to organize, you can make your own!  Here are a few great ideas for making custom organizing bins using cereal boxes and cans!

Source: Cheerful Heart Mom

Source: Pinterest

Source: The Creative Imperaive

Source: Shabby Chic Inspired

#3 Build your own
Often times the answer to organizing problems, is simply that you need more space.  Furniture and closet organization kits can be pricey which is why sometimes it’s more cost effective to just build your own.

In our home we build things all the time because we want to save money.  Here are my 2 favorite custom organizing solutions:

My daughter’s loft bed.  There is tons of storage in the stairs and she even had her own Princess Dress closet inside the playhouse!

My desk.  I couldn’t find exactly what I wanted in the stores so I designed this desk to give me tons of extra storage, and my husband built it for me.

Oh and for the record, my husband is a banker, not a construction worker… SO if he can do it you can too! {wink}

Here are some great ideas for creating more space in your closets.  All of these plans {and many more} are FREE and available at Ana-White.com.

 Find this plan here. Estimated cost $20-$50.

Find this plan here. Estimated cost $20-$50.

Find this plan here.  Estimated cost $20-$50.

You can see that organizing doesn’t have to be expensive and anyone can do it!  Even if you only have a small budget you too can have an organized home!  Hit up your local Dollar Tree, 99 Cent store, or even the grocery store and let your creative organization juices start flowing.

I would love to hear your creative, inexpensive organizing solutions, so if you have a tip please leave me a comment!

To view my other Organizing Resolutions click on the links below:

* How to Organize Paper Clutter
* How to Organize Kids’ School Work
* Teaching Kids to Clean and Organizie

The post Budget Friendly Organizing Ideas appeared first on Ask Anna.

I recently received and email from a reader that got me thinking about how important it is to include our kids in the cleaning and organizing process.  Here’s what she said,

“I just came across your blog through a Google search. I am desperately trying to find a “new” cleaning routine. I have 4.5 & 1.5 year old boys. I hate the house looking cluttered during the day with toys, food on the floor, etc. But if I wait until the end of the day to really clean, then I’m so tired and don’t get much done. In your opinion, is it more productive to clean throughout the day (even though with kids the clean doesn’t last long and has to be repeated), or wait and do most cleaning when the kids are in bed?”

After receiving her question I decided that teaching kids to clean and organize would be another great addition to my organizing resolutions!  To answer her questions I’d say “yes”.  Yes I think it’s important to clean throughout the day but I also think it’s important to clean up at night.  Let me explain.

Kids are messy, we all know that.  But the great thing about kids is that they are teachable.  If we don’t teach our kids to pick up after themselves and to be organized, they’ll never learn, so I believe it’s our responsibility as parents to teach them these tools.   So how do we do that?  Let me give you a few ideas.

#1 Teach by example
My mom taught me that when I was done “playing” with something then I needed to put it away before getting something else out.  I try really hard to live by this rule and the more I do, the better example I am for my daughter.  If leave messes all around the house then I’m teaching my daughter that it’s okay for her to leave messes all over the house.  I’m not going to lie and say I always pick up every mess right away, because it’s not true, especially when we’re working on a house project, BUT in my day to day life I try really hard to pick up after myself and encourage my daughter to do the same.

We also have a rule in our house that if my daughter leaves toys out, that I’ve asked her to pick up, then they will go in “timeout” until the next day.  This has been a very effective rule in our house because it devastates my daughter to think she could lose a toy for a day.

So throughout the day encourage your children to pick up their toys.  It’s okay to not want your house to look like a hurricane swept through, and it’s okay to ask your kids to pick up after themselves.  You are the mom but you are not a maid. {wink}

#2 A Place for Everything
It’s very important that if you are asking kids to put away their clutter, that they know where it goes.  Make sure their toys, books, clothes, etc. all have a specific place they go, and make sure your kids know where that is.  This will require organization on your part, but if you take the time to organize their toys, etc. it will make it SO MUCH easier for them to put things away in the right places.  For more ideas on toy organization see this post and this post.

#3 Get them involved
Kids love to feel like they are being included in things and they love it when you give them attention and teach them something.  Kids don’t know that most people don’t like to clean their houses, for all they know cleaning the house can be super fun!  If you give them a task and make it fun for them, they will enjoy helping you keep the house picked up and clean.

For example laundry is one of my least favorite chores, but since my daughter was young, I’ve had her helping me, and she thinks it’s fun.  I used to put her in the laundry basket and “choo-choo” her to the laundry room, along with all the clothes.  Now that she’s older I don’t do that anymore but she still helps me sort the laundry and she’s great at matching the socks!  I don’t do it all the time but I’ve also let her help me put the clothes in the washing machine, and pour the soap into the water.  She thinks it’s fun to see the bubbles and put the clothes in their “bath”.

There are lots of ways to make “boring chores” more fun when you get your kids involved!  My friend Amy, at 20 Minute Mom has some great ideas for Toddler Chores, here are a couple of them:

* Plant Watering: Have your toddler place an ice cube or two into each of your house plants for slow indoor plant watering. Outside is the place for your toddler to use a watering can!
* Fluff Pillows: Give your toddler pillows from the couch to fluff (showing them the proper motion).
* Dusting: Go to the dollar store and grab an extra dusting wand for your toddler. Show them the coffee table and the front of cabinets that are easy for them to dust.

Other ideas, that I have my daughter do, are:

* Feeding the animals
* Wiping off door handles and light switches with a Clorox wipe
* Setting the dinner table
* Wiping crumbs off the floor if she makes a mess while she’s eating
* Helping to put away the groceries
* Pick out school clothes each day
* Sort the laundry
* Fold socks and wash cloths

If you start them doing chores, and picking up after themselves, at a young age, then they’ll never know any different!  If you’re just starting out, and your child is a little older, it might be a struggle to get them started, however if you can show them how much fun it can be (the whole “teaching by example” thing), then they will start enjoying it too.

#4 Reward them
It’s important to reward children for helping out around the house.  Since you are teaching them a lifelong skill I think rewarding them is a good way to get them motivated to learn.   The rewards don’t have to be grand, it could be just an ice cream date with mom and dad, or an extra 30 minutes of watching TV.  Whatever it is make sure to tell them you are giving them this extra privilege because you really appreciate how hard they’ve been working around the house.  If you affirm them and tell them how proud you are, that they are being such good helpers, it will make them eager to help you out even more!  Sometimes my daughter will, out of the blue, tell me she’s going to clean the house for me.  She will pick up all her toys, dust for me, etc. and when I get down and look her in the eyes to tell her how much I appreciate her hard work, her whole face lights up and I can see she feels so affirmed and validated.  It’s moments like this that will motivate your children to help you out because they love seeing how much pleasure you get from them helping you out.

#5 Chore Charts & Job Lists
Chore charts and job lists are another great way to motivate your kids to pick up around the house! In our house we don’t have “chores” we have “jobs” because a few years ago my husband and I took Dave Ramsey’s Financial Peace class and in one of the sessions he talked about “hiring” your kids for “jobs” rather than just giving them an allowance.  You can read my full post on it here. Here is what Malea’s Job Chart look like.

At the end of each day we check off the jobs she complete for the day and then at the end of each week she gets paid.

Here are some other ideas I found on Pinterest for children’s chore charts.

Source: A Spotted Pony

Source: Loving our Chaos

Source: Pinterest

#6 End of the day pick up
Make sure before your kids go to bed they do one last glance around the house to see if they have any toys, etc. laying round.  In our house the rule is, “whatever is left out for mom to pick up goes in timeout for a day.” Sometimes Malea will complain and say it’s too hard to pick up her toys but my response is simply, “If you can take all your toys out, you should be able to put them away.  If you feel like it’s too hard because you have too many toys, I’d be happy to take some of them and give them to a kid that doesn’t have very many toys.”  She hates it when I say that, but it’s true, if they can take the toys out they can put them away too.  Trust me, they will learn very quickly that it isn’t really that hard to pick up all their clutter at the end of each day.

Remember the “teach by example” rule?  Yep, same thing applies here.  At the end of each day walk around the house and pick up your clutter.  I find that I am in such a better mood in the mornings if I wake up to a tidy house.  If I wake up to a cluttered and messy house, I start my day off feeling overwhelmed and stressed by all the messes that need to be picked up before the day has even gotten started!

If you follow these simple steps you will notice a huge difference in your home!  Taking a little extra effort to teach your kids how to clean and organize from a young age will HUGELY pay off when they are older and don’t have to be asked constantly to pick up after themselves!  And don’t worry, you don’t have to be perfect at it, I’m not either.  There are lots of days I forget to have Malea check off the jobs she completed that day, and there are also days I forget to ask her to pick up her toys in the evening.  But the overall concept is still in place and she knows the rules.  There are days when she picks up all her stuff without even being asked and those are the days that motivate me to keep reminding her, to keep teaching her, and to keep setting a good example!

If you’d like to check out my other Organizing Resolutions click on the links below.

How to Organize Paper Clutter
How to Organize Kids’ School Work

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I can’t believe how much paperwork comes home from school with my daughter! I was in shock the first few weeks she was in school, and quickly started drowning in it. Determined not to be “taken down” by school work clutter, I knew I had to come up with a plan. So today I’m sharing with you, a couple ideas for how to organize school work.

Peter Walsh, my organizing hero, says this about saving school work, “The first question is who are you keeping the schoolwork for – you, or your children?  If it’s for your children, get them involved in the decision making.  If it’s for you, still get them involved as chances are you might think everything is genius quality and should be saved!  Kids are usually far more practical.”

Here are 2 tips for how I decided to save my daughter’s school work.

#1 Displaying artwork
I saw an idea, years ago, to take digital pictures of kid’s artwork and then put them in a digital frame so the artwork gets displayed all the time. I loved this idea because most parents want to save every piece of their kid’s artwork but then it just gets put in a closet somewhere, never to be seen again. So when my daughter brings home her school work, any artwork get’s its picture taken. Here’s what my folder looks like in iPhoto.

After I’ve taken it’s picture, and loaded it onto my computer, the artwork gets tossed {I think I just heard you gasp}. I know it’s shocking, but if I keep every piece of art she brings home, it will add up into piles and piles of art over the years, and if I’m honest with myself I know I’ll never really have the time to go back and look through it all. I feel comfortable tossing it because I know that I have a copy of it safe on my computer and on my external hard drive. There are a few papers I have actually saved, like all of her name writing homework from when she was learning how to write her name. Those papers aren’t really something that would look cute in a picture frame but I wanted to save them to see the progress of her handwriting, and her learning how to write her name.

#2 Saving Papers

Peter Walsh also recommends “[designating] a drawer, a folio or a bin for the work you are going to keep.  The size of this container sets the limit for how much you can save. Once the drawer is full, a piece has to be discarded before anything new can be added.  One in, one out – it’s a simple but effective strategy“.

For the papers I decided to save, I purchased these inexpensive magazine holders from IKEA (5 for $1.99). Each of them is labeled and then stored in her closet.

Here are some other great ways that moms on Pinterest are storing their kid’s school work!

DaNita at Delightful Order purchased an inexpensive expanding file box and labeled each of the tabs for every grade level.  This is an easy and compact way to save school work.

Jen, over at iHeart Organizing, purchased inexpensive file boxes, like the one below, and filled them with file folder, one for each year of school.

All three of these ideas are similar, it just depends on how much room you have to store the school work.  Now that you have all these great ideas for organizing school work, it’s time to organize!  If your kids have been in school for awhile, and there are a lot of papers to go through, don’t be discouraged! It’s better to get organized late, than never.  Trust me, you will feel amazing once you’ve gone through all the school work and eliminated all the extra clutter!!

If you need a little extra motivation and would like to read the entire post about saving school work, by Peter Walsh, you can read it here.

If you need any extra help organizing bills, junk mail and other important papers, make sure to check out Week #1 of my Organizing Resolutions: How to Organize Papers.

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One of the things I know we all struggle with is paper clutter.  Why is it that we all have so many papers!?  Bills, receipts, important papers, it all adds up so quickly, and if you don’t get organized, before you know it you’ll be drowning in it.

This is the year to organize papers and get rid of the clutter!  Today I’m going to give you a few tips for how to organize receipts, bills, junk mail and important papers!

#1 Receipts
The easiest way to keep track of receipts, but not have a lot of clutter, is with a NeatDesk or a NeatReceipts Mobile Scanner.  These scanners allow you to scan your receipts into a program that organizes them for you!  Once the receipt is scanned it can be thrown away, keeping your home receipt-clutter free!

#2 Bills
These days most companies offer paperless billing, but I’m still one of those people that likes to see my bills on paper.  So after the bill is paid what do you do with it?  I have two answers for you.  If you have a NeatDesk simply scan the bill into your computer and file it away.  If you ever need to reference it again, simple pull it up and print it out.

The other option is to use color coded file folders.  Inspired by my friend over at A Bowl Full of Lemons, I purchased these rainbow file folders to organize my bills.

Here’s what they look like now that they’re all nice and organized.

I have 6 files, one for every two months, then at the end of the year I can shred them all.  I also organized our taxes and credit reports, and filed them behind the bills folders.

#3 Junk Mail
To manage my junk mail clutter I recently purchased a shredder.  It annoys me that companies send all kinds of junk mail with our account numbers on them, which means I can’t just toss them in the recycling bin.  I had a huge stack of papers that couldn’t be put in the recycling bin and it was starting to make me crazy so I bought a shredder and sliced them all up!

Now the shredder sits right next to my desk so when I open our mail I can slice up anything that has important info on it and we don’t need to keep it.  Don’t let the thought of an expensive shredder hold you back from purchasing one because there are tons of affordable ones out there!  Amazon sells them starting at only $30!  It’s totally worth it to spend a little money up front and keep your clutter down forever!

If you would like to get less junk mail all together, then you need to check out this link to Opt Out. “By opting out through the website or calling the number (1-888-5-OPTOUT) you will be removed from their pre-screening list at the main credit bureaus (Experian, Equifax, Innovis, TransUnion). You will need to provide your Social Security Number and other personal information, but don’t worry, this site is legitimate. OptOutPrescreen.com is endorsed by the Federal Trade Commission. (source)

#4 Important Papers
Important papers, such as insurance information, car registrations, birth certificates, etc., can become a huge headache if they aren’t organized well.  Years ago I purchased an inexpensive filing cabinet and filled it with file folders to organize all of my important papers.  I recently went through and reorganized all my files with the colorful file folders and now everything is labeled and easy to find.

I’m not going to lie, it is a tedious process to sort through piles of papers, categorize them, file them and then label them but it is SO worth it! Here’s how much stuff I was able to get rid of!

I seriously felt like a million bucks when I had finished reorganizing and labeling all of my files.  And now they look amazing and it’s easy to find whatever I’m looking for! {Full post on the reorganization coming soon}

If you follow these 4 tips your paper clutter will soon disappear!  You’ll wonder why you ever put up with the clutter, when it was so simple to organize it and get rid of it!  If you have questions about any of these tips please leave me a comment so I can help you, I really want this year to be the year we all conquer the clutter!

If you would like more help you can also visit my post Organizing the Mail.

Happy organizing!!!

This post contains some affiliate links, for your convenience. Click here to read my full disclosure policy.

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