As homes and apartments continue to be built for our ever-growing population, the challenge of space management seems to take center stage. These homes and apartments get smaller and smaller leaving people with the question “Where do I put all my stuff?”

You might ask even, “Why is these tips on a biblical training site?” … Simply testimony. As a Pastor and Chaplain my family was/is constantly pulled in 20 different directions, making it a challenge to keep a clean home. Nothing is more embarrassing than to have a drop-in visitor to find my home to be a mess, it makes for a poor testimony.

So in this article I will look at additional tips and tricks to help keep your busy home a good testimony for the Lord (and help keep your sanity).

Replace and Remove

If you’re like so many of us, we hate to throw things away. I mean, surely we’ll have a use for that one day; right? And so, begins the clutter. A good rule of thumb to help keep your home clutter free is to have the mindset of “replace and remove”. This practice simply helps you make a habit to replace those things that you are upgrading, such as a small appliance; then remove the old one. You might even consider having a yard sale or donating those old items to help keep the clutter down.

A Place for Everything and Everything in its Place

We’ve all heard this adage, but now it’s time to put it in the practice. By only keeping and utilizing those things that you need, it helps to cut down on clutter, simple; right? Often this is easier said than done. Especially when moving from a larger home to a smaller home or apartment, you’ve accumulated stuff that simply doesn’t have a place in your new home. To help overcome this challenge it will be noteworthy to categorize the different rooms within your home and what you actually need on a day-to-day basis. Then looking for appropriate storage for those things that you don’t use on a day-to-day basis.

The Three-month Rule

Part of having a place for everything and everything in its place is to have, as previously mentioned, appropriate storage for things that you don’t use on a day-to-day basis. Once you put something into storage (closet or cabinet) comes in the three-month rule. If you don’t need it or use it over a three-month period of time, you might not need it at all!

Clean As You Go

One of the things that we teach our kids when talk about home organization, cleaning or clutter removal is to adopt the mindset of “clean as you go”. This practice goes a long way to help keep your home clean and clutter free. If you clean up when you get done… You don’t to clean it up later. Which brings us to the next point:

Store your items where you use them

With our busy lives here it’s easy to identify a task and simply say “I’ll do it later”. If your storage is in a different room or on the other side of the apartment, it’s easy to just leave it for later; only later comes later everyday. Before you know it, you’re dealing with a cluttered mess that you will need more time to clean and organize than if you would have planned to keep the storage and the location closer together.

By organizing your home to store your items in the same room or area that you are using them: such as office supplies stored in the desk or CDs and DVDs in the entertainment center; it’ll help you be able to quickly put away those cluttered items before it becomes a bigger problem.

Take Time to Plan

When setting up a new house or apartment you should take time to think carefully about what’s going where and how it’s going to be used. In doing so you can set up or purchase additional storage, for those little things that can cause clutter, so you can keep and maintain a well organized room.

The Skeleton in the Closet

Have a place where all of that extra little clutter can go, call it a junk drawer or a box that is in the bottom of the closet. Wherever you can put those things that don’t have a place to go, but you can’t really get rid of them. Hopefully, over a period of time you can decrease that box of clutter using the three-month rule. But until then at least it won’t be causing clutter on your counters and tables.