Overwhelmed with Christmas gifts? Here are some ways to get your house organized.

POCATELLO – If you celebrate Christmas, you are likely finding yourself facing a nagging problem right now. Where are you going to keep those new gifts?

The question seems simple enough at first, but what if you find that you don’t have room in your bathroom for that new body wash you’ve been dying to try? Or maybe your shelf was already full before you were gifted some brand new books.

“(After Christmas is) absolutely the perfect time (to organize) because we’ve got new things so we’re motivated. There’s an excitement and there’s also that excitement of a new year, a fresh start,” said Dawn Brooks, a co-owner of B&B Organizing, a professional organizing business in Pocatello that does both home and commercial spaces.

EastIdahoNews.com contacted Brooks to find professional advice on how to start getting your living space organized, specifically in the context of incorporating new items into that space. Brooks said people should be aware of two overarching principles when they begin to incorporate their presents into their home’s organization.

1. Does it fit your current lifestyle?

The first step for anyone organizing their home is to evaluate if their new item and the items they already have fit their lifestyle. In the context of organizing your Christmas gifts, this is evaluating whether the given gift is right for you.

“So the real hard truth here is if you were gifted something that you would never ever use, the best thing is not to incorporate it in your space and find a really good way to regift it,” Brooks said.

While this might feel insensitive to the person who took time out of their day and money out of their budget to get you a present, Brooks said that it just doesn’t make sense for you to keep something you won’t use.

“Let’s say someone gave you a shirt, but it’s so not you. Well, we’re not going to throw out three other really nice sweaters to make room for this really puffy sweater that you’re never going to wear,” Brooks said.

After you’ve found someone who would appreciate the regifted present or donated it, there will be more space for the presents that do fit your lifestyle.

While finding space for your new gifts, you may find you already have things that don’t fit your lifestyle.

“There could be something in your space right now that isn’t serving you and you could do the same thing with it. You could regift it, donate it, so that it frees up space,” Brooks said.

As people create space by removing items, it makes following the second principle easier.

2. Does it fit in its appropriate container?

Here’s what “container” means in this context.

“Your home is a container. Each and every closet is a container. Each room is a container. Each shelf is a container,” Brooks said.

When finding places to put things, you have to evaluate how easy or difficult it is to access the item. Brooks said we should be able to find things easy, and we should be able to access them in one to two clicks, or movements.

“Can I pull it out and put it away? Is it easier to put it away than to get it out?” Brooks said.

What should you do when you have used all the space that’s easy to access, but you can’t easily get rid of any of the items by applying the first principle? To deal with overflow items, you should create a storage area, or what Brooks called a “mercantile” room. People who don’t have an extra room to spare can use their garage, or any closet where they can make room for storage.

Evaluating the container space you have available is what will truly allow you to organize your house, Brooks said.

“When people say organized, what they truly want is they want to walk into a space and have it be really easy for them to get what they like the most, of any item that they have,” Brooks said.

Where to start?

For people who find more and more items that they don’t need, and containers they have to clear out, what started out as a seemingly simple task could become overwhelming. To deal with this, Brooks said that you should focus on breaking the work out into “four-hour projects.”

“It’s hard for you as a person to know what a four-hour project would be,” Brooks said. “One side of a full length closet (or) just one side of a pantry can (be that) very easily. Depending on the size of the pantry, it could be 16 hours.

“What you want to do is you want to chop it down into four-hour projects, and you want to focus on just really specific categories for that four hours.”

Brooks said it’s important for you to hold to the four-hour approach, rather than try to get the whole house finished in one go.

“You spend 36 hours around the clock, and you’ve got everything organized and now you have no wherewithal or energy to maintain it,” Brooks said.

Brooks also said that splitting the work gives you motivation to keep going once the project is completed.

“Success leads to success, so if that (project) is done, the success, the relief is what’s going to motivate you and give you long-term motivation to keep going,” Brooks said.

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