MY FIVE FAVORITE ORGANIZING TOOLS

Welcome to a new year of My Five Favorites!  Pam from Simple Details, Lisa from Shine Your Light, Kris from Driven by Decor and I are all so excited to be back with you today.  Since it's January, when many feel the need to purge and organize, we're sharing our five favorite tools that help keep us organized with you today.

We're so happy to have Erin from Sunny Side Up joining us as our guest host today.  Erin is a master organizer and has so many good tips to share with us!  She says she likes to keep all of the counters in her gorgeous kitchen cleared because she feels organized if her kitchen is clean, no matter what is going on in the rest of the house.  I like that philosophy (and need to try that tactic out!)!

*Affiliate links used in this post.

I will admit that I'm not a great organizer.  I'm good at piling-in-a-cabinet-or-closet-and-shutting-the-door.  But, that doesn't mean that I don't want to improve!  As I thought about the things that I do have organized well, a theme was pretty evident...containers!

KITCHEN UTENSIL CONTAINER

I love keeping my most-used cooking utensils in a crock or urn on the countertop.  They're easy to grab when I need them, and quick to put away when unloading the dishwasher.  I keep the ones that aren't as pretty in a drawer in the island.

BASKETS IN BOOKSHELVES

We have a LOT of bookshelves in our office, and especially when the kids were younger I liked to use baskets to store some of our books.  It made it easier to keep them tidy and I liked how the baskets added a little more variety to the shelves than just rows and rows of books (not that there's anything wrong with that!).  ;)

I also have baskets in the shelves holding blocks, cars, sewing supplies, and computer accessories.

PURSE POUCHES

Purse  ||  My Favorite Lipstick 

One thing that gets out of control in a New York minute is my purse!  I usually carry large bags, and within the last year have been keeping them better organized by using multiple smaller bags inside my larger handbag.  I just got these striped ones for Christmas and they're so cute!  I use one for a varitey of small things... sanitizer, pens/pencils, medicine, gum, and earbuds, another for makeup, another for receipts (always what piles up the most in my purse!), and the smallest for business cards and store reward cards or gift cards that I don't want bulking up my wallet.  Having everything in small bags like this makes it so easy to switch out to a different purse, too.

PANTRY BINS

Similar Bins

Another must have container for me is something that will fit well in my pantry.  I found these bins at Ross a while back and they are the perfect size for my shelves, plus black and white for a bonus!  They are so great for corralling all of the small pouches and packages and containers that accumulate, and by assigning a different category to each one it's easy to find what I need in a flash.  One has breads and tortillas, one has baking ingredients, one has sweets and small snacks, and one has nuts and salad toppings.  I'm only showing you a peek here, these shelves are overdue a little makeover or their own.  It's time for the rick-rack to go!  ;)

FREEZER BASKETS

This is by no means a new or novel idea, just one that I never put into practice until recently.  A large freezer is wonderful, but it's all too easy to pile food in and then forget what is in there.  I like to buy large packs of meat on sale and split them up into smaller quantities, but for so long all of those individual bags just floated around wherever in the freezer, sometimes even getting stuck in the wire shelves when the meat hardened as it froze.  Now... this isn't a "pretty" blog picture, but I like these simple dollar plastic baskets for storing all of the meat that I've divided up.  One for hamburger and beef, one for chicken, and one for pork.  Now, instead of digging through piled up bags of frozen meat, I can quickly get the kind I want from the appropriate basket.

And, although it's not done in the photo, I need to use my label maker on those baskets.  I have had it for years and it's SO handy to have around for labeling almost anything.  It's super easy to use, too, definitely a necessity for organizing!


What items help keep you organized?  I always need help in that area and love new suggestions!  Be sure to head over to see my inspiring friends and check out their favorite organizing tools, too!

Driven by Decor

Shine Your Light

Simple Details

Sunny Side Up

Missed any previous My 5 Favorites posts? Catch up here!

My 5 Favorite Paint Colors
My 5 Favorite Quick and Easy Holiday Decorating Ideas

My 5 Favorite Tips for Organizing Your Home

My 5 Favorite Home Decor Accessories
My 5 Favorite Ways to Decorate for Spring
My 5 Favorite Pillows
My 5 Favorite Ways to Decorate an Outdoor Space
My 5 Favorite Fabrics
My 5 Favorite DIY Projects
My 5 Favorite Ways to Use Mixed Metals
My 5 Favorite DIY Artwork Projects
My 5 Favorite Tabletop Accessories
My 5 Favorite Recipes for the Holidays
My 15 Favorite Favorites- Holiday Wish List

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