How to Organize a Messy Room

Leather sofa, coffee table, and writing table in a living room

Do you have a messy room at home or at the office?

Need help tidying things up so you can reclaim and use your space?

A messy room can making living, working, or playing downright difficult.

Even the simplest of tasks, like sitting in a chair, or opening a door, can become an exhausting Herculean task.

What’s more, a messy room can be visually unappealing.

Stacks of junk, piles of recycling, and messy areas can be an eyesore to everyone who uses a space.

If you want to refresh your living and work space (and your senses!), then you can’t go wrong organizing a messy room.

In this post blog, you’ll find a step-by-step process to help you organize a messy room.

You can use these steps anytime you need to clean up a messy or disorderly room at home, the office, or school.

Are you ready? Let’s begin!

Clean up trash.

If you’re going to organize a messy room, you might as well take the time to ensure you’re working in a clean environment.

This is the perfect opportunity for you to remove any trash or recycling that’s sitting in the room.

Begin by grabbing an empty garbage bag or trash bin. Take a walk around the perimeter of the room.

Pick up any empty or used wrappers, containers, bottles, boxes, scraps of paper, lids, stained or soiled items that cannot be recycled.

Once you’ve removed any obvious trash, you can work on removing recyclable items.

Pick up a clean, empty garbage bag or recycling bin, and take another walk around the perimeter of the room.

Place any paper materials that need to be recycled into the garbage bag. Ideas include newspapers, magazines, junk mail, or boxes.

Repeat the above recycling process for any plastic recyclables, including bottles, containers, bins, and lids.

After you remove trash or recycling, you can turn your efforts to reusable wares.

Gather dirty plates, glass, cups, mugs and utensils. Fill a sink or basin with hot soapy water and leave items to soak.

Set up a workstation.

Sometimes it can be difficult to organize a messy room because there’s no clean, flat surface in which to work.

Here’s the truth: you need adequate space in which to properly sort and organize materials.

Take a moment to identify an organization workstation in your room.

You can use a cleared-off countertop, desktop, or a freshly-made bed to temporarily store and process items.

What if you don’t have clean a space or area available to you? You just have to create some space for yourself!

Set up a folding tray, card table, or other table inside or directly outside of the messy room in question.

You’ll use this space as your temporary organization workstation.

Choose an organization method.

Once you’ve set up your workstation, you can turn your attention to organizing items.

Choose one of the following organization methods.

You can organize a specific area of the room or you can select specific materials to organize.

Organize a specific area.

Want to focus on a specific area of your messy room? Choose a small, contained area of the room.

Select an area that’s small enough for you to work on in one brief session.

You may decide to clear off the top of a desk. Removing items from a corner of the room might interest you. Or you may decide to remove items from the floor of a closet.

The idea here is to make progress in one specific area of the room.

Once you’ve cleaned up this area, you can move onto other areas of the room.

Select specific materials to organize.

You may opt to select specific materials to organize in your room.

This technique works well when you have a lot of common items in a room and you want to clean up these items quickly and efficiently.

For example, let’s say you’re organizing a messy bedroom. You could focus on picking up all clothes first, followed by picking up all accessories, followed by any collections of books or magazines.

The idea here is to work on organizing one set of materials first before switching over to the next set of materials.

Follow the rules of organization.

Select items.

You’ll want to choose the specific items you want to organize.

Good news: you’ve already tackled this step when you chose one of the above organization methods.

Take a moment to gather and place all the items you chose at your workstation.

You’re now going to work your way through processing each of these items, one-by-one.

 

Sort items.

This next step is quite simple. You’re going to match like items with like at your workstation.

All you have to do is gather similar items with one another.

It’s up to you to decide how broad or narrow you want to go in your sorting.

How does this work in practice?

If you’re working in an office, you might sort pens with pens, and notebooks with notebooks.

And if you’re decluttering a kitchen, you might sort mugs with mugs, and napkins with napkins.

See how easy that is? You get the idea.

If you happen to come across any items that belong in another area of the home or office, then you should place them in a separate area so you can return them to their proper storage location.

And if you come across any items that are dirty, soiled, stained, or beyond saving, you can properly dispose of these items in the recycling or trash as necessary.

Store everything.

Once you’ve sorted items, it’s time to move on to the storage of items.

You probably have a good idea as to where items belong in your home or office.

Clothes should be stored in a clothes closet, books should be stored in a bookcase, and so on.

Take a moment to return items to their proper storage location or where they are kept when they are not in use.

But what if you don’t have a specific storage area for items just yet?

Take a few moments to group materials by function. Then, make a plan to store these items in specific areas of the room.

For instance, let’s say you have a collection of office supplies. You could make a plan to store these office supplies inside a desk drawer.

If you have a large number of clothes you could make a plan to place these items inside a closet or dresser.

And if you have a collection of sheets, blankets, and pillowcases, you could store these items in a linen closet. 

Here are a few additional organization pointers to keep in mind when you’re tidying up a messy room:

 

Try clearing the floor first.

Safety is an important consideration whenever you’re organizing items.

Whatever you do, think safety first!

For example, if a room floor is covered with items, you’d do well to pick up and remove these items from the floor.

You don’t want to unnecessarily trip, slip, or fall on any items.

You should also be sure to clear a pathway from the entrance of the room to your work station so you have easy ingress and egress.   

 

Start with top layers.

Uncovering or sorting through a massive pile of items?

It’s best to remove items from the top of a pile first, and then work your way down to the flat surface.

Avoid reaching under and dislodging large piles or stacks of items.

You don’t want to accidentally trigger an avalanche of materials!

Start at the top and work your way towards the bottom.

 

Complete one task at a time.

You’ve decided on your room organization method. Great!

Roll up your sleeves and start organizing the room.

Above all, stick with the task until it is complete.

Don’t abandon the task for another midway.

You’re focusing all your efforts on this task at the present moment.

Work slowly and carefully, and you’ll be ready to organize another messy room in no time.

Do a final clean-up.

Lastly, you’ll want to end your organizing session with a quick room clean up.

This ensures your room is neat, tidy, and ready to be used right away.

Begin by breaking down and putting away your folding tray or card table.

Next, you’ll want to move furniture that was temporarily moved when during your session back to its original location.

And finally, now is the perfect time to do some light dusting, spot clean, or wipe down surfaces.

Finishing things off by sweeping, vacuuming, or mopping the floor or carpet.

And just like that, you’ve successfully organized a messy room!

 

How about you? How do you approach organizing a messy room? Do you dive in right away to clean up a particular area or are you more inclined to focus on organizing similar materials first? Join the conversation and leave a comment below!

5 Unexpected Things You Need to Organize a Work Notebook Mockup
About the Author

Rashelle

Rashelle Isip is a New York City-based productivity consultant who helps successful entrepreneurs and business owners manage their time and energy so they can reduce stress, work less, and make more money in their businesses. She has been featured in Fast Company, Forbes, NBC News, The Washington Post, NPR, and The Atlantic. Get her free guide, 5 Unexpected Things You Need to Organize a Work Notebook, by clicking here.

4 Comments

  1. Christian

    Olá Rashelle, tudo em paz?
    Muito bom artigo e que bom que você gosta de ajudar as pessoas.
    Muita saúde e paz.

    Reply
    • Rashelle

      Thank you very much for your kind words, Christian! It is very much appreciated.

      Reply
  2. page turner

    There’s the problem.
    No trash, no dirty dishes.
    Just stuff I use or need to use and can’t find.
    Work/creative supplies and equipment.
    Not just your average household stuff but that too.
    I organize one set of things as you suggest
    then I’m too pooped to move on to the rest.
    I’m in a live/work space of 300 sq feet.
    I don’t know where the stuff should go as you say I do.
    There isn’t’ much room to put it.
    So it piles up again, right on the part I organized.
    I’m cool when I have some company to do this.
    It’s just too defeating alone.

    Reply
    • Rashelle

      Thanks for your comment, Page. Given your unique situation, I would suggest looking into hiring a local professional organizer for some hands-on organization help. They can evaluate your living space and help you find appropriate storage solutions for your needs. Try doing an online web search for “professional organizer” and your location.

      Reply

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