Why your baskets and bins aren’t working
Have you ever grabbed some cute baskets or some lidded bins while you were shopping at Target or Home Goods and thought, “This is it! Now I’m going to be organized!”? Then in a few weeks (or days), felt disappointed that you weren’t any more organized than you were before?
I know this cycle well. Before I learned how to organize, I would spot a cool organizing product while I was shopping and buy it, thinking it would solve my problems. Eventually, I’d realize it was just creating more clutter in my home. Today, as a professional organizer, many of my clients tell me, “I keep buying bins and baskets, but I just can’t keep up!”
Don’t get me wrong, I love bins and baskets. They are useful tools and I recommend them to my clients all the time. But if you don’t know how to buy them and use them effectively, they can be a waste of money and space.
If those bins and baskets you bought aren’t working out the way you hoped, here are a few possible reasons why.
You didn’t declutter first
Before you can identify the best way to store your belongings, it’s important to take time to re-evaluate what you have and pare down to what you really want and need. Often when we feel disorganized, we have clutter. Meaning we have more things in our environment than we can manage or enjoy. If you go out and buy containers before you’ve decluttered, you’ll only be transferring your clutter into bins and boxes.
Sometimes, just putting things in containers can be an effective strategy for people who are struggling with organization or are neurodivergent. But for everyone else, this tends to lead to more clutter and stress, because you’re still aware that you have bins of stuff you have to deal with, and you’ll probably find yourself just buying more bins to contain new things you acquire.
If you find decluttering really difficult, working with a professional organizer can help make the process less painful. But don’t skip the decluttering step.
You bought it before you knew what was going in it
With pretty organizing supplies, it’s tempting to just buy something and think “I’ll find a use for this.” But then you end up with a bin that snags your sweaters or a basket that’s slightly too small for your kid’s stuffie collection.
Before you buy anything, consider:
What kind of things (and how many of them) do I want to store in this container?
Do I want to be able to reach in and grab things quickly, or is it storing things I don’t need to access frequently?
Where is the container going to live?
Do I want to be able to see inside it?
Thinking through these points can help you pick the products that are going to work best for you.
You didn’t measure
All of your containers/organizers need to fit in the places where you want them to live, whether that’s inside a drawer in your bathroom vanity or on a metal shelving unit in the garage. Make sure you measure the dimensions of the space where you want to use the container, as well as the container itself, before you buy anything.
You didn’t establish a system
Sometimes my clients tell me that they feel like they need to keep buying more bins “to keep up with things.” Usually, what’s happening is someone buys baskets to contain all of the things they currently have to feel organized. But what happens when new items come in? We need more containers. As this cycle repeats, our homes just feel more cluttered.
This is why creating a system to manage your belongings is really important. (And no, buying more bins doesn’t count as a system.) Maybe you want to create a boundary for a category of items and decide that once your belongings reach that boundary, you don’t buy any more, you declutter, or you use the 1-in, 1-out system. So for example, let’s say you decide your closet is going to be the boundary for your clothes. If you get to the point where you can’t fit any more clothes in your closet comfortably, instead storing your extra clothes in bins in the attic, you could declutter your closet to make space for new things, or discard one old item for every new one you bring in.
This is just one example of a system, and there are many types of systems you could create to stay organized. However, the important point is to create a system that works for you. And if you have trouble with systems, working with a professional organizer can also help you.
If you’ve struggled with buying organizing products that didn’t really organize you, I’ve been there, too. I hope this gave you some new ways to think about bins and baskets in the future so your next attempt at getting organized can succeed!
