Life simply works best when we have our physical environment really work. When we’re organized, we can think more clearly, we’re more efficient, and we can take on projects that have lain dormant for months or even years.

Whether your storage room is at home or at work, the following advice applies. The key is always keeping the appropriate things in the storage room instead of allowing this room to be a place where things get put because there’s no other place to put them.

Remember, good, lasting organization doesn’t happen overnight. It is crucial to start smart because decluttering takes a lot of effort at the beginning. I strongly recommend getting expert advice in order to see results quickly and avoid getting bogged down in too much “stuff”. You’ll save yourself hours and hours of work if you listen to the right people.

If you’re cleaning the storage room, following these simple steps will at least get you started:

Step #1 in Cleaning the Storage Room – Sort Everything in the Storage Room. Always ask yourself, “Does this really belong here?” If it does, make a place for it. If it does not, find another place. For years, I had many things in our storage room that I never actually used. Therefore, the storage room became a place filled mostly with things I didn’t need plus several things that I used a lot, like wrapping paper, and office supplies.

Finally, I decided that I wanted the storage room to be a room that we used, like an extra room of the house where we put things that we’d need.

So, I sorted everything in the storage room into three categories: 1) keep, but never use, 2) stay in storage room, and 3) go somewhere else in the house

Step #2 in Cleaning the Storage Room – Clear Everything Out. All of the things that I wanted to keep but didn’t need to have readily available, like old pictures, family history, financial records, etc., I put up in the attic. I even put holiday decorations in the attic. I knew that I would need them once a year and since my attic is very organized, I figured that I could climb up there every few months to get holiday decorations.

Step #3 in Cleaning the Storage Room – Store Things Efficiently. Make the best use of your space. Instead of having a two-foot high CD storage unit that would carry 100 CDs, we converted a tall book shelf into a CD tower by getting extra boards cut for shelves and spacing them only far enough apart to place CDs on them.

Then, we set up bookshelves for all of the books that we wanted to keep but weren’t reading at the time. We also stored all of the children play toys that didn’t need to be out all of the time, but did need to be accessible. The wrapping paper supplies we put on shelves so that we could pull out paper, or bags, or bows without having to re-arrange a lot of boxes.

Now, our storage room stays organized and we use it daily. Having that extra usable space lets us keep our house clear of things that we don’t need available all of the time.

Dr. Isabella Santorini used to be a messy packrat until she and her husband began their family. Since then, she’s mastered the fine art of organizing her house for success. If you’d like to easily make your house a wonderful place to live, don’t waste valuable time and energy. Visit her at: http://www.Inner-Genius.com