Listen, clutter can be everywhere! If you’re not careful, it can take over your entire home. But there are a few hot spots that tend to collect the clutter. I’ve found that there are six common areas that we use as a dumping ground. Maybe it’s because these places are more susceptible to being to being a drop spot or maybe it’s just easy to drop stuff and walk away. Regardless, I want to help you stop The Drop and organize your life just a bit.
What are the Hot Spots?
The most common spots for clutter in my home tend to be the dining room, the kitchen counter, the coffee table, my desk, the night stand and my junk drawer. Yes, I have one. Shocked? These spots have been where I’ve found the most clutter and have to clean the most often. Let’s go through them one by one to see if you have the same hot spots.
Dining Room Table
The dining room table tends to be the biggest hot spot because it’s the place I hit the minute I walk in the house. It does get used for family dinners, but also tends to be the place that I pile things – mail or packages we receive, bags from shopping trips to Target, my work bag, my husband’s tools and so much more. Do I clean it every day? I try to because even just seeing the piles, causes my anxiety to flare up.
Kitchen Counter
My kitchen counter is probably the second biggest hot spot because it’s just past the dining room table. At any given moment, there are appliances like our toaster and air fryer, clean dishes that have been washed and dried, the cutting board we use every day. Sometimes there is also mail, our Home Base Binder, our recipe book and a jar meant to hold anything we need to drop for a moment, like our wedding rings or a golf tee. It can be a disaster.
Coffee Table
The coffee table is where I do a lot of my work so my laptop is almost always there. there is always a cup with remotes, pens, highlighters and scissors too. On the weekends, it gets majorly cluttered with books and magazines I’m reading or using for research. And on occasion, a drinking glass from the night before gets left there after we’ve gone to bed for the night. Those dust bunnies, though, I’m not counting those, but there can be a ton.
Night Stand
The night stand is the last place I see before I go to bed. It holds a lamp, the book I’m currently reading, a stand for charging my Apple watch and phone, my daily journal and a diffuser. If you’re wondering, no, the nightstand is not very big. Despite all the items on the top of the night stand, there’s even two drawers that have stuff! Sometimes I can’t even see the top of the night stand.
Junk Drawer
The last place that tends to collect clutter is the junk drawer. Yes, I have one. I swear everyone does. If you don’t, tell me how you do it…please! The junk drawer becomes the catch-all for everything that doesn’t necessarily have a home. It can hold random things like a screwdriver that never gets back in the toolbox, elastics that you don’t want your kid or pup eating, pencils and pens, scrap paper and God only knows what else.
You have the most common hot spots. Do you have the same ones in your home? You may have the same and you may have others in addition to this list. What are the other hot spots for clutter in your home? If you do, it means you’re doing something that I call Stop the Drop.
What is Stop the Drop?
Stop the Drop is when you come in your home and you literally drop everything you have in your hands. It all gets left wherever you put it because you’re too busy to put it all away that very minute. We’ve all been there. Life is crazy and you can be taken from one task to another at any given moment. There is a way to stop The Drop, though. How? Create a system, find a home for everything and tidy up daily.
Creating a system for dealing with anything and everything that you bring in the house. If you grab the mail before you walk in, open everything right when you enter and decide what needs to be tossed and what needs to be dealt with. Those purchases you made, put them away immediately and toss or recycle the shopping bags. If it will take less than five minutes to handle the items you bring in, do it and move on.
When everything has a home, it’s much easier to remember where things are kept and keep your home clean and organized. Tools should be kept in the tool box, bills that need to be paid should be kept in the place you make the payments and purchase you make should be kept in the place you use them. Toilet paper goes in the bathrooms, not on the kitchen table, Friend.
Take 10 to 15 minutes before bed every night to tidy up. Walk around your home and pick up things that aren’t in the right place. You don’t have to do a full deep clean, but tidying up the hot spots for clutter will help so much. Put the things you find out of place where they go and sleep a little easier every night.
The other thing I want to remind you to do is feel your feelings when it comes to your stuff. Notice how your emotions are when you see clutter and piles everywhere. Understand that the places you put your stuff are chosen for a reason. Even if that reason is because you don’t have time to deal with it. Lastly, be proactive and prevent that feeling of overwhelm from even creeping in. Clean up those hot spots, reduce your clutter and you’ll end up living a much more organized life.