Get organized in style

Wonder what to do with the clutter at home? Check this fine article from ehow.com for some tips.

So you’ve decided to tackle those piles of photographs, books and other home clutter by using a smart storage system. Your options are endless: bins, shelves, notebooks, scrapbooks and labels. But how do you make these often-utilitarian solutions gel with the rest of your home’s décor?

Those helpful plastic and metal containers can take up a lot of space. Plus, just because you’ve cordoned off your debris doesn’t necessarily mean you’ve improved your home environment.

“You have to strive to fit in organization so that it doesn’t scream ‘ organization,’ ” said professional organizer Justin Klosky. “It’s about improving the overall aesthetic of your home. It’s a lifestyle and mindset.”

Home organization experts say the market is so flooded with tempting clutter-taming options that many people dive right in and fall prey to systems that don’t make sense for their home. No matter how much you love a set of stacking trays or matching bins, you can’t avoid the crucial first step in Organizing 101: cleaning up and sorting out.

People can actually make their homes more visually distracting and less effective if they don’t analyze their belongings before they try to store them, said organizing and time management expert Julie Morgenstern. “To get a real integrated solution, you should organize your stuff before you go looking for products,” she said. “Containerizing is the last step rather than the first.”

Those who don’t sort and purge first end up buying too little or not enough storage devices, or they sink money into a decorative pattern that may not work with the rest of the house, Morgenstern said.

“There are so many organizational products that it can be overwhelming,” she said. “People pick what’s convenient and what’s in the moment. They don’t think of it in terms of how it will work in the context of their homes.”

Morgenstern recommended sorting and categorizing similar items that you want to organize, getting rid of duplicate items or those you don’t use, assigning a space for each category and then separating the belongings into containers.

“Once you know what you have and where it will live, you can shop strategically,” she said. Sorting first is so important to Klosky as to be an indispensable part of the process. “I can’t work with a client,” he said, “if I can’t pull everything out and look at it.”

Klosky likes to make framed collages using similar items, such as photographs or a personal collection.

“Some of the things that people hold on to, like a collection of ticket stubs, can be displayed in a creative way,” he said. “And you’ve added an art element to your home. It brings something special that wasn’t already there.”

All that creative thinking and clutter-containing can be for nothing if you don’t keep your items in your new storage system, the organizers said. And homeowners, Morgenstern said, must practice living within their organized environment so that it doesn’t return to its formerly cluttered state.