New Series! Beautybabbling at Home

Disclaimer: The product mentioned in this post was purchased by me. All opinions are my own.

I'm hoping to start a series of posts on my blog about getting organized, in part to actually help me get more organized. I'm not going to make any promises about how often I'm going to do these kinds of posts because I will inevitably break that promise.

I'm no expert at being organized. I try, but things always end up going a little bit crazy around my house. Over the past few months though, I've made some discoveries that have really seemed to help.

Tip #1: Declutter before you buy organizing items. If your house is full of stuff, organizing that stuff isn't going to help all that much.

Tip #2: Don't rush into buying a bunch of items to help you get organized. Use cardboard boxes or other items that you already have lying around the house to see if your new organizing system is going to work. Also give yourself time to find the right item for the job. Settling for an item that will work for the time being can just be a waste of money and can just add more stuff to your house that you have to deal with.

That leads me to my example.

This bar area in my kitchen had been driving me nuts for months! It had become too much of a catch-all for cereal and snacks. My kitchen doesn't have a lot of counter space, so I like using that area for food prep, and all the stuff was starting to make that impossible.

I wanted to find a shelving unit to go on the wall to the right of this counter, but I wasn't finding anything I really liked and wanted to buy. I almost bought one of those cheap particleboard units like this:

Picture from closetmaid.com

The thing that made me hesitate was that this would have been a temporary solution, and at somewhere around $30-$40, it wasn't a cheap one either.

Instead, I kept my eye out for something I really liked. I scoured the internet. Then one day, while out shopping with a friend, the heavens opened up when I saw this:

We were walking through Hobby Lobby when I saw this baker's rack. It is an antique bronze finish (even though it looks black in the picture), and it was around $100. It can fold up (the shelves fold up and the sides fold in), which made it possible for me to get it home in my 2-door Cavalier. The only thing I would change is making the shelves a bit thicker because they have a little bit of bend in them when I push down on them. I stashed a few of my cookbooks elsewhere because I was worried about the shelf permanently bending from the weight. Other than that, this has solved my cluttered counter problem, and gave me the added bonus of being able to store my cookbooks closer to where I actually use them (they were previously in a different room).

Now, if I had caved and gotten the particle board shelving unit, I would have had to deal with finding a new place for it in my home or get rid of it. The first option isn't ideal since I have no idea where I would have put it, and the second is just plain wasteful.

What is your best home organizing tip? Is there a solution that you've come up with that is working really well for you? I'd love to know!

Disclaimer: The product mentioned in this post was purchased by me. All opinions are my own.