Happy New Year! This January I’m bringing you Tidy Tip #1-15, because I have found that simple home projects can make a big difference in our family’s day-to-day rhythms and routines.

Tidy Tip #15: Use sentimental photographs, letters, and artwork to decorate the inside doors of cabinets and closets.

Our 3 daughters share a bedroom, and they each have their own wardrobe system for clothing. We decorated the inside door of their wardrobes with sentimental photographs, letters, and artwork.

The girls also help us sort their artwork into piles of which art they want to keep and which art to send to friends or family members. They help to sort it into piles for friends, aunts, uncles, cousins, and grandparents. Then we send them each an envelope full of art, which the girls get to help drop off at the post office, hopefully bringing some smiles to those they love.

The artwork they want to keep gets displayed on the fridge or in their wardrobe and we also keep one file folder per girl of special art in our file cabinet. When Mabel was in PreK, my wife also took photos of all the coloring, art and worksheets she did that year at school and had it printed as a photo book.

We’re finding at this age they enjoy the process of making art a lot more than saving the results, and that by simply getting to “create” the art has already served its main purpose. They are fine with not saving everything!

Tidy Tip #14: Tidy up your Friday night!

We’ve gotten into a routine of doing remote learning at our cottage in Pennsylvania Monday through Friday, and then spending Friday night until Sunday afternoon back at our New York City apartment.

Our Cook Smarts meal plans are designed for Monday-Thursday, and we love trying all of the new recipes, but on Fridays we completely remove the mental load by making the same family favorite. I buy yeast in bulk, I make homemade dough, and we have homemade pizza on Friday nights and homemade cinnamon rolls on Saturday mornings. Win Win.

My basic dough recipe is only 5 ingredients, super easy, and I can now make it on auto-pilot. It’s a fun family rhythm that we all look forward to each week.

Tidy Tip #13: Rethink bedside tables!

I have found that I can’t be trusted with a traditional bedside table that has drawers or cabinets, or it will quickly become a clutter trap. Instead, I’ve designed other creative solutions as simple landing places for items next to the beds in our apartment and at the cottage.

Sometimes to maintain tidiness, you have to get rid of furniture pieces that hide clutter. I have found that “out of sight, out of mind” is NOT a helpful tidy principle. Clear the clutter by eliminating clutter traps in your home.

Tidy Tip #12: Use wall hooks to add hanging storage!

We use little wall hooks throughout our home to add extra hanging storage. Today I added utility wall hooks by the bunk bed for rainbow unicorn robes. We also use them on my closet door for pajamas, next to the sink for washcloths, in the kitchen cabinet for pot holders, and next to the door for keys. Our favorite hooks come in various size packs, as small or 2-packs, or as big as 20-packs. There are so many uses for them, it’s fun to get creative!

Tidy Tip #11: Set up a system for kid clothes.

It is important to organize and categorize kid clothes! We have 3 daughters who all have spring birthdays, so their seasons/sizes all overlap and we save a lot of hand-me-downs. We’ve had to develop a system for storing a few categories: 1) current clothes, 2) clothes that are for the upcoming sizes, 3) clothes that are too small.

All 3 girls share a bedroom. Their bedroom does not have any built-in closets, so we invested in a 3-wardrobe system. Each girl has their own wardrobe with accessible drawers and a low rod for their current size clothes. There are higher shelves with zippered storage bins for clothes that are for the upcoming sizes. This system helps to clearly define the space for how much room we have to store hand-me-downs. Clothes that are too small get moved into the next wardrobe for little sisters to wear, and stored in another zippered storage bin on a high shelf. And then when Margaret outgrows clothes they are ready to pass on from our home!

Tidy Tip #10: Tidy up your toys by choosing toys with 2+ purposes!

We installed a basic shelf with these sturdy brackets in our playroom, and the girls use it as a standing desk for imaginative play (doctor’s examining table, grocery store checkout area, etc). We also have 2 kid-size chairs to turn the shelves into a sitting area for play activities (coloring, learning activities, etc). We often bring out toys from our toy rotation closet and reset this space. We love finding toys with multiple purposes.

Here are a few of our favorites, that are fun to play with in multiple ways, and can be enjoyed by siblings with a range of ages!

Wooden Magnetic Stacker AND Carrot/Rabbit Rocket Play Set

200-Piece World Atlas Floor Puzzle AND Endangered Animal Figure Play Set

Wooden Pull Along Snail Toy AND Musical Instrument Drum/Xylophone

Tidy Tip #9: Store toys by category.

The 2 cabinets in the cottage under our custom floating shelves were overflowing with games and puzzles. The girls were beginning to have difficulty independently finding the items they wanted.

We emptied the cabinets and sorted everything into smaller categories. Now one cabinet holds adult games and the other cabinet holds kid board games. We also added a black cabinet to the side of the room, and filled it with puzzles. The 2 small drawers at the bottom of the cabinet hold an assortment of smaller card games.

It is so much easier to find a specific game/puzzle/toy when they are sorted into smaller categories. We routinely use this strategy to keep stock of our toy inventory within our home. One of our very best “tidying with kids” tips is to take time to go through your own inventory of toys.

Tidy Tip #8: Use the back of closet doors for vertical storage!

This closet in our front entryway (now playroom nook!) originally had only one high shelf and a hanging rod. We no longer needed the hanging rod for coats after I installed a DIY board and batten hook wall by the main entry door. So we removed the rod and installed 3 additional shelves to turn this former coat closet into a space that much better fits our storage needs.

Then we added a 6-tier over-the-door storage rack. It gives us so much space to store our favorite cleaning supplies! We also swapped the basic door knob for a key-lock door knob, so the girls can’t access the cleaning products. It’s a complete transformation!

Tidy Tip #7: Add turntables to your kitchen cabinets!

I have to admit that our baking supplies cabinet has been overflowing. We love to make homemade treats, and have accumulated quite a variety of flours, sugars, and sprinkles.

We use a turntable for our oils and vinegars in one cabinet. We just added another turntable in our baking supplies cabinet. It makes such a big difference when you can simply rotate and see everything!

I also added an extra spice gripper strip to the wall of the cabinet and hung our sprinkles! Now we’re ready for the next cake or cookie craving!

Tidy Tip #6: Do a 10-minute Tidy Reset before lunch and before dinner.

Our family has found that a 10-minute Tidy Reset before lunch helps us so much us in the afternoon. We set a timer and focus on one high impact area. We spend the majority our time in the living area, since that’s where school, play, and meals happen right now.

We have also found that tidying together before dinner is so much easier than after dinner when everyone is tired. We can transition the girls straight from dinner to bath, pajamas, and books, with the added benefit of not tidying up their stuff for them after they’re asleep.

This tidy rhythm helps us so much when we are all at home together all day, every day. But it can also be helpful in other situations, like quickly reseting your work office halfway through the day and then again at the end of the day, so things don’t pile up.

Tidy Tip #5: Use a toy rotation for small toy sets.

We store small toy sets in clear plastic containers in a closet, and rotate them for the girls. This helps keep the playroom area more clear for open-ended imaginative play, and keeps small toys off the floor since our littlest girl is now crawling. Also, when a small toy set comes out, it is fresh and exciting!

Tidy Tip #4: Add a tray to every room!

We use trays in almost every room of our cottage and apartment. They’re perfect by the door for wallets, in the living room for remotes, on the bathroom counter for toiletries, and our latest spot, at the base of the stairs for items that need to be carried up at the end of the day!

I found this discarded broken table (it was missing the top) on the sidewalk outside our apartment. I brought it back to life by dusting, cleaning, and polishing. I took a piece of glass from an old picture frame and placed it on top. It was a perfect fit! It also allows us to see the bones of the beautiful antique wood.

I placed a tray on top, along with a clear vase (each bought at Salvation Army last winter for $1 each) and a cutting from one of the trees in our yard. We set up the table/tray at the base of the stairs. It’s a perfect place to gather things that need to be taken upstairs, like hair clips, doll shoes, and my glasses.

Tidy Tip #3: Schedule time each week to meal plan & meal prep!

Emily and I usually set aside time to meal plan and meal prep for the upcoming week on the weekends. It makes it soo much easier for us to get healthy meals on the table for our family of 5 when we have a plan in advance. Here’s our typical meal plan & meal prep routine:

• choose meals for the week (we use Cook Smarts meal plans: you can try a 2-week FREE trial of their amazing meal planning service. If you love it, use code TIDYDAD for 20% off a subscription plan!
• check grocery list for ingredients we already have in the kitchen
• order and pick up groceries
• make spice blends (we store them in OXO mini food storage containers)
• prep meat & veggies (we use a set of flexible cutting mats)
• store food in labeled prep containers (we use Bentgo Prep 3-compartment food storage containers)
• set up accessible snacks for the girls 
• pack lunches for the girls in their lunchboxes (we use Bentgo Kids 5-compartment lunch boxes)

Tidy Tip #2: Create a “getting out the door” area!

With 3 young kids, this is an area we frequently work on making more efficient! In our home, these items have helped us get organized for efficiency and ease getting out the door.

• low wall hooks – each girl has a hook for their coat, and the older girls can reach it themselves
• shoe tray – we each store one pair of tennis shoes by the door, with extra shoes in bedrooms
• mail holder, key hooks, mask hooks – this storage piece is on the wall, right next to the door
• over-the-door hooks – Emily & I store our coats and bags here, as it is higher than the girls can reach
• cabinet with bins for outdoor accessories – we each have a shelf for items like hats, gloves and sunglasses

Tidy Tip #1: Organize your spices!

For this project, we started by gathering all of our spices, oils and vinegars. We sorted them all, and looked for ones that were expired or duplicates. We have used a few spice organization systems in the past, such as drawers or shelves, but this time we designated a specific cabinet and added spice gripper strips to the cabinet walls. We organized the spices alphabetically, and added a turntable for the oils and vinegars.

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