Home Organization

Personalized Family Storage Baskets

Print This Save This

February 5, 2008

A great way to show your home a little love is by encouraging your family to work together to keep it clutter-free. Personalized home storage baskets for each member of the family are a simple and effective way for families of all sizes and ages to eliminate belongings that can pile up throughout the home. Baskets look much nicer than piles on counters, tables or leading the way up the stairs and help build a sense of responsibility for keeping your home clean and tidy.

Getting Started

Attractive wicker home storage baskets with washable cotton liners are available at most home décor stores. Consider using different colored liners for each family member’s basket so they can be easily identified.
Next, you can personalize the baskets for each family member by attaching a fun photo or image to each basket that represents each family member. Use safety pins or clothespins so you can change the photos easily as the children grow or you find a new favorite photo you want to use.
Make sure your home storage baskets are large enough to hold an ample amount of personal belongings that tend to pile up around the house. Be careful not to make them so large they become ‘catch-all’ containers that are cumbersome to carry, and difficult to store.

Putting Your Baskets to Use
Use everyone’s home storage basket as their personal “inboxes” where you can distribute mail or place CDs, DVDs, notebooks, cell phones, hair accessories and other personal items that frequently get left lying around the house.

Use your creativity and fun to encourage your family to use the home storage baskets as part of their daily routines. For example, start a contest where the family member who does the best job of using his or her storage basket to pick up personal belongings throughout the week gets to:

Decide what’s for breakfast on Saturday or Sunday morning.
Choose the movie for family movie night.
Select a special snack food from the grocery or bakery to share with the entire family.

If you have little ones, teach them to use their home storage baskets to collect toys and other items that need to be put away. For older kids, suggest they use the baskets to transport school supplies and papers to where they belong.

Keep Them Handy
For your family’s new home storage baskets to work most effectively, they need to be kept in areas that are out of the way yet easily accessible. You can keep them in convenient areas for each member or all in one spot. Here are a few examples of good spots for keeping baskets:

For smaller children: a corner of a playroom or family room.
For teenagers: near their desk or at the foot of their bed.
For you: in the kitchen or near your workspace.

Another possible solution is to find a convenient place to store everyone’s baskets in the same high traffic area for easy access. Here are a few options:

Under a bench in the entryway.
Going up the stairs, with one basket per stair placed out of the way on the far left or right.
On a shelf in the utility room or hall closet close to the kitchen.

Wherever you decide, make sure everyone agrees on the best location for their baskets when you first begin using them. Also, ask your family to keep them in the same location so you’ll know exactly where they are when you want to place wayward belongings in their baskets.

With a positive attitude and spirit of cooperation, your family can clear the clutter with their personalized home storage baskets and keep your home looking great throughout the year.

Print This Save This