Have you gotten on board with Get Organized Month yet? If not, here’s your chance to GO for it while you also GO green!
If living an eco-friendly lifestyle is important to you, then it makes perfect sense for you to organize you home while simultaneously going green. With an eye toward simplifying your space and paring back (sometimes dramatically) on how much STUFF you live with, you will notice that your home feels lighter and more relaxing as you begin to unburden each room.
Going green is not just about living with less, although that is a great mindset to have. You want to make sure that the items you do buy are the healthiest, most sustainable products available. Start out by revamping the way you maintain your home. In other words, hit that scary collection of chemicals under your kitchen sink and clear it out. It’s worth a trip to your local hazardous waste center to dispose of those chemicals properly, as you should definitely not dump them down the drain or into the trash. You can always visit Earth911.com for details on where to recycle just about anything.
To clean your house without the toxins, you can turn to any number of readily available alternatives (like Seventh Generation or The Honest Company) that won’t harm your family or the planet. Or, if you’re ready for a real change, a simple Bing or Google search will summon countless recipes for safe and super-cheap cleaning solutions that can be made from household staples like vinegar and baking soda.
To apply the traditional green anthem of “reduce, reuse and recycle” to your home, start by going room-to-room and collecting items that are no longer useful. Those beautiful mugs that you shoved in the back of the cabinet because you never drink out of them can be repurposed to organize anything from markers to makeup brushes. And using them in that new way will also clear up some valuable storage space in the kitchen! Take a serrated knife to your kids extra pool noodles and cut them into DIY boot forms, or put that iPhone box you saved for no apparent reason in your junk drawer to organize your odds and ends. Use some colorful contact paper to dress it up first, if you’re feeling creative. Upcycling your underused items gives you a chance to appreciate them in a whole new way, reduces waste, while also saving you money.
You don’t have to be drowning under precarious piles of stuff to be ripe for a good purging. After you’ve repurposed as many of your belongings as you can, take everything else you’ve collected from each room and get it out of the house! Give away, donate or repurpose as many unused, unappreciated items as you can, relegating only the unsanitary or truly irreparable pieces to the dumpster. The idea is to unburden yourself but without being wasteful.
Prevent the re-accumulation of STUFF with one simple rule: in order to acquire something new, you must purge something first that takes up a comparable amount of space in your home. Get your belongings down to a manageable quantity and be mindful about keeping it at that level. If you bring something new into your home, make sure it has an intended use or specific purpose, so it won’t become unwanted clutter that you’ll have to purge later on.
Which room in your home do you think could undergo a green transformation? Tell us in the comments what you plan to change first…
