How to control clutter hot spots

Many people reading this right now will glance around their home and see clutter all around. Or know that it’s lurking en masse behind the closet door or inside cabinets. Even though we see our entire house as one big mess sometimes, there are often more troublesome hot spots within your home that really fuel the clutter fire and flare up constantly. This is exactly why they are called hot spots.

These are usually spots in your home where clutter is just on another level. Even when you have just finished cleaning up these particular parts of the house, it doesn’t take long for clutter to accumulate once again and erases all evidence that you just cleaned it all off yesterday. These hot spots areas tend to be more prone to clutter than the rest of the house and in this article, we will take up some of the hot spots that we could think of and some ways that we can deal with it.

Hot Spot #1: Entrance to the house/ Foyer/ Entryway/ Hallway

Probably the most important part of the house is the entrance or the foyer. As much as we see it as an important part, it is also the most neglected. In a house, especially the ones with kids and pets, the entryway can be filled with a lot of stuff scattered all over – books, bags, shoes, tons among other things. It can be humiliating to welcome visitors into your home when the minute they step in, they see chaos all around. You do not want people to get the wrong perception of how you run your house so the best advice we could give is to always to keep this area of the house as tidy as you can.

Here are some tips to help you organize:

Clear the entry way from junk that’s probably already piling up.
Put a nice-looking entrance mat right at the front. This helps to trap dust and grime from shoes of those walking in.
Invest in some furniture that can double as a storage space to put in the hall or the foyer. Like a smart table or chair, baskets or bowls to hold keys, put up hooks on the wall for bags and jackets and maybe a letter holder as well for all the mail that’s coming in.
Fancy up the entrance to your home with decors. It doesn’t require you to spend more than you should. You only need to be resourceful about it. Maybe dig up some old stuff amidst the clutter, and find some usable decorative pieces.
Clean the area regularly. Even though you take the time to organize now, you need to do this regularly to keep it at tip top shape most of the time.

Hot Spot #2: Kitchen Counter

If you are a homemaker, I would have to guess that you spend a lot of time in the kitchen cooking meals for the family – breakfast, lunch for the kids to take to school, snacks and then dinner. Aside from all the things you use mainly in the kitchen – utensils, kitchen equipments, food and ingredients, the kitchen counter is also home of things from other parts of the house like magazines, books, bags, wallets, unopened mail, keys, etc.

To keep your kitchen counter from being a mess, you must decide that the only things allowed to be on the counter are the items you use daily for preparing food. No magazines, mail, wallets, purses, gloves and so forth. This new rule is essential for success. And everything else that doesn’t belong there needs to have a new home created for it.

Finding all that paper that ends up on the fridge as reminders of events you’re attending and shopping lists unsightly? Why not create a magnetic board inside on of your cabinets to put everything on? Or add a cork board so things can be pinned to the door. Everything will be out of sight, but still accessible and easy to find!