Quick Tips: Using Your Laundry Basket Around Your Home
source: FloydSlip
The following guest post is from Marci at Overcoming Busy:
I have a secret weapon to fight clutter at my house. You probably have one or two of your own and don’t even know it yet! This weapon is so powerful I can use it in any room and it can give an almost instant room transformation.
What is this awesome secret? My laundry basket!!
The laundry basket is not just for laundry. Oh no! I do keep one in the laundry room for the laundry, but the other basket is all over the house. I use it in the living room, in the bedrooms, in the toyroom… Basically, my laundry basket is my clutter collector. When I am cleaning an area of the house and need to de-clutter, I just put the items that don’t belong in the room in my laundry basket. After the cleaning is finished, I just take my basket and deliver the items to the appropriate rooms. That way, I’m not putting away just one item at a time or filling up another area with clutter while I’m cleaning.
At the end of the day, one of the last things I do before going to bed is take a quick trip through the living room and kitchen with my laundry basket. I throw whatever does not belong into the basket and deliver the items to their proper rooms on my way to bed. This also works great when we are expecting company. Instead of making everyone’s life miserable trying to keep the house tidy, I just make a breeze through the house right before company arrives, throw the clutter in the basket and stash the basket in the laundry room to be dealt with later. This keeps everyone much happier.
My goal is to keep life simple, not busy. Visit me at overcomingbusy.com.
Mandi here: We also use laundry baskets for this purpose (although I’ll admit we have a few more than two!). I find that it’s a great tool for cleaning, decluttering and straightening because I don’t have to walk back and forth between rooms several times.
Do you use laundry baskets in this way? What other things do you use to help you in your decluttering and straightening?
[...] You probably have several of them already in your home ready to be used! Head on over to Organizing Your Way,where I am guest author today, to discover what it is! var addthis_pub = ‘notsobusy1′; var [...]
You are right, I do need more than 2 baskets! I am in the market for a “prettier” basket to keep at the bottom of my stairs so through out the day I can throw stuff in that goes upstairs instead of making 500 trips a day.
Marci’s last blog post…De-cluttering secret weapon
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This is such a great idea! I’ve done this before, with any container that was handy (and empty) but it was always done in a last minute attempt to clean up…it was never a planned organizing activity. I can see this being a 5 pm ritual, daily. Thank you!
Kirwin’s last blog post…Consultation with the Pantry
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Oh my word, this is brilliant! I am going to try it right now!
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When I moved last year, my laundry basket was my savior. I didn’t have many boxes and quickly ran out of plastic bags, but had gotten in my head I was going to move my entire apartment to my new condo in two days… thus, there was a lot of unloading and loading of my laundry basket. It’s still going strong too
Rebecca’s last blog post…Spring Cleaning Giveaway – iPod Shuffle!
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I LOVE this tactic! I, like Mandi, have more than one laundry basket for this task, but it is such an inexpensive and efficient way to declutter our home! Great post, Marci!
Amy’s last blog post…Menu Plan Monday
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Yay for laundry baskets! I use my laundry basket for this purpose all the time! It streamlines clutter collecting and I love it!
Brianna @ Heart(h) Management’s last blog post…Prizing My Husband
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I’ve used laundry baskets for moving too, like Rebecca. I’ve also used them for storage. We had a lot of stuff in storage @ my inlaws house until we finished some renovations and could put it back in its place @ our house. We had several laundry baskets storing oddly shaped things like cleaners and nonbreakable knick knacks.
Also (I can’t believe I am about to say this to the internet) we don’t have bedroom furniture right now (I mean we have a bed and a small table for a nightstand & that’s it..no dresser, chest or anything) so we have a lot of the smaller sized laundry baskets to hold our clothes until we get furniture. I’m using one for shoes too rather than have them in a big pile on the floor.
Lori’s last blog post…Happy St. Patrick’s Day!
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I use the laundry basket to clean out my car when it gets unmanageable. I just quickly throw in everything that needs to go into the house and empty the basket there. Works wonderfully when your kids have 7 winter jackets there or the 10 pairs of shoes they’ve kicked off or the stash of toys that got there each trip. Now my only question is why haven’t I been doing this in the house? Evidently the idea has been a good one for the car. Why not the living room where those same jackets, shoes and toys seem to accumulate?
Thanks for the seemingly obvious idea that just was totally oblivious to me.
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Great idea! We use an extra laundry basket in our closet for donations. I throw clothes, toys, household items you name it in and when it’s full I sort through and donate or freecycle the items. Make it so much easier to give things away and de-clutter at the same time!
Kristen’s last blog post…reflective friday
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[...] stop by anytime. That doesn’t mean I may not do a quick run through the house with my laundry basket or do a quick wipe down of the bathroom. Those things take just 10 minutes and then I can enjoy [...]
[...] I highly recommend the laundry basket clean-up method, having a laundry basket sit in both places isn’t exactly practical or beautiful [...]
[...] And as it turns out, I’m not the only one who uses a laundry basket like this. Organizing Your Way has some more tips for decluttering with a laundry basket. [...]