Organizing Your Rental Home

by Rebecca Green | Updated: Dec 26, 2019

Is your home a mess? Don’t worry, we won’t judge. It happens to all of us. Still, if you need some help, here are tips to help with organizing your rental home.

Declutter

Sometimes, the best approach is to avoid the problem completely. Decluttering means you have less stuff to have to organize. Done right, you could even make some money in the process, so it’s a great first step to take.

Take an inventory of your stuff

What stuff do you actually have? You may not know the answer to this, other than a vague idea. You don’t need a perfectly itemized list of every single thing that you own, but something with a little more precision is needed to be useful.

Find or make a place for everything

This is probably the hardest part. Right now, your home is probably a mess of things scattered around with little rhyme or reason. What you need to do is find a place for everything to go. Every item in your inventory needs its place. If you don’t have a place, make one. Whether it’s adding more space or clearing out spaces that are already being used, make that space for everything.

Put similar things together

This is simple, but should never be underestimated. Similar things should go together. Do you have a lot of random electronics? Put them all in the same place. Have a spice rack in the kitchen. Any way that you can group similar things makes everything look more orderly and makes it simpler to find where things are supposed to go.

Search for a simple system you’ll actually use

It’s tempting to go all out for a big, comprehensive, and complex organization system, but don’t. Are you actually going to follow everything past the first week, or even the first day? The simpler the system you go with, the more likely you are to actually follow things.

Don’t expect it to get done overnight

You also shouldn’t hold yourself up to too high of a standard. Your new system isn’t going to be perfect right away. Even if it was, you’re not going to start off following it perfectly. Give yourself time to get used to new things and you’re a lot more likely to stick to it long term.

Put things back where they go

This is the real hard part. Things get disorganized because stuff just gets left everywhere. If everything has a place in your home, then put it back there when you’re done. It’ll feel like a hassle, but that’s just at the start. Once you’ve made it a habit, it’ll be much easier to put things back where they go when you’re done, keeping the mess from sprawling all over your home.

Experiment with and tweak your system

The first thing you come up with or try isn’t going to be perfect. If it fails, it just means that your first experiment failed. Try something different next time. Whether it’s a small tweak or a larger change, the more you’re willing to try new things, the more likely you are to come up with something that will actually stick.

Everyone struggles with organization because it’s hard. With the right amount of effort to building new habits, it can be overcome. Organizing your rental home will take time and some failures, but it’s worth it in the end.

Categories: Renters

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