Disclosure: This is a sponsored conversation written by me on behalf of DollarTree. However, these are my real messes and my real solutions for how to organize your home on a budget.

My $11 Home Organization Project

My Real Advice Gal tip when it comes to home organization is to just start. Start somewhere and start small. Personally, when I am facing a big job and I just don’t know where to start I can get overwhelmed, then I shut down, and decide to pretend the job doesn’t really need to be done. I can live with things just the way they are. But eventually, I have to face the music because living with the mess is making me more crazy than trying to face the problem and get the job done. I know many of you have walked in these shoes. Ok starting small…

I chose to organize two areas of my home. Two small areas that are making me Crazy with a capital C! First, my make up drawer and then my medicine cupboard.

The Make Up Drawer! 

Many friends in my life have heard me exclaim once or twice that “I am not a girly-girl” and certainly not a big make up girl. Well…I think my make up drawer claims otherwise. When did this happen? Wowza! Guess I do like a bit of make up. Ok, so this area of my life is making me crazy because I can never find what I am looking for and because I keep my hair brush in the drawer everything always has hair on it. Yes, I have very long hair and shed worse than a husky in the spring all year round. What a mess.

So if you really want to know how to organize your home on a budget your first step is to make a trip to the Dollar Tree. I have found it is the best place to buy storage containers and items to help you get organized.  They have a great selection of containers and I often find things that I can use creatively to help declutter or organize and area of my home.

I found these great bins that are designed to go in drawers, come in different sizes for organizing various items, and also snap together so they don’t slide around in the drawer. Hallelujah!!! Let the fun begin. So I sorted everything in to the bins and threw away old brushes and make up.

Everything in the basket went in the garbage. The markers?? Why did I have markers in the make up drawer??? Who knows but they went back in the classroom where they belong. When I put the bins in the drawers I had enough room to put my brushes in the space left over. Perfect!!! This not so girly girl owns 18 eye shadows, 15 eye liners, and 5 different types of mascara, HA! This drawer makes me so happy now. I can’t believe the transformation!

 

The Medicine Cupboard!

Okay, so the problem with the medicine cupboard is that it is in the highest cupboard in our home way out of the reach of small hands. The cupboard is above the microwave directly above the stove. While this is great for safety it does not make it easy to find things. Since I am vertically challenged, everything is shoved in there or more like tossed in there while I am standing on my tippy toes. So when someone gets sick, if I can’t find the right kind of medicine in the disorganized cupboard I go out to the pharmacy and get some more. Then it gets tossed or shoved into the cupboard and the cycle continues. I found 24 medicine dosage cups in a basket in the back of this cupboard!

So first things first, I threw away everything that was expired or we no longer need, like infant medicine or dosing cups. My youngest child is 4! Then I sorted the medicine into categories: First Aid, Kids cough/cold, Adult Cough/Cold, Pain, Allergy and Digestive.

I measured my cupboard before I went shopping and bought 7 containers from the Dollar Tree that I knew would all fit in my cupboard. I made sure they all had lids so I could stack them and also get them in and out of the cupboard easily. I made labels using index cards cut in half and taped them to the containers. No more hunting for medicine that is all jumbled and cluttered randomly in baskets. Now I can pull out the container with the right type of medicine and quickly and easily see if we have what I need.

Thanks to the Dollar Tree I was able to organize two areas of my home for just $11. Organizing these areas will save me both time and money! What area of your home would you like to clean up and get organized? I hope you will use some of tips for how to organize your home on a budget. Remember start small but start somewhere.