In this post-Marie Kondo era, people are increasingly interested in organization hacks and minimizing clutter to maximize joy. But the pressure to have a home that looks like it could be featured on HGTV leaves many parents feeling overwhelmed. We’ve got you covered with easy and inexpensive ways to get organized.
You know what brings us joy? A tidy playroom and toys without missing pieces. We want to help you experience the joy a little organization can bring to your life which is why we’re sharing our top organizational hacks using everyday items.
We’ve got 14 inexpensive or free items that will help up your organization game. We hope you find these organization tips useful, but don’t let them be another source of parent guilt. A home doesn’t have to be tidy to be loving and happy!
Check out these organizational hacks for parents:
1. Tackle or craft boxes make great storage for small items.
Not just for fishing tackle or craft supplies anymore! The small spaces designed for fishing lures or buttons galore are perfect for small cars, action figures, trains, art supplies, Lego and more. On the road, these compact storage boxes are a great way to store toys and treats for a long car ride. You can find inexpensive options at rummage sales and big box stores.
2. Use resealable plastic bags to organize outfits.
Use quart and gallon-sized plastic bags to keep outfits organized when traveling with little ones. BabyQuip Quality Provider Lauren Swihart shares this tip, “I individually pack outfits so luggage isn’t a mess upon arrival. My 4-year-old can easily grab a bag and dress herself in the morning. I label the bags with each kid’s name and day of the week. Then I keep and reuse the bags for every trip.”
Pro-tip: For an upgraded version of this, use packing cubes to organize your clothes and add a little pizazz to your luggage when you travel!
3. Hanging shoe racks are a genius toy organizational hack!
Shoe organizers top the list of home organizational hacks—beyond closet organization, we’ve seen them used to store everything from spray paint to pantry essentials. Hanging shoe organizers are so versatile! They should really just be called hanging organizers! BabyQuip Quality Provider Inbal Vellucci uses one to keep her kiddo’s toys neat and off the floor, “I put all the little toys—building bricks, action figures, anything with lots of little pieces—in an over-the-door shoe organizer.” Check your local dollar store for an inexpensive shoe organizer.
Pro-tip: For families in cold weather locations, place one of these in your coat closet for your family to store winter gloves, hats, goggles, etc.
4. Organization hack for breast milk: Use empty soda boxes!
If only you could bury liquid gold…but you can’t. Pumping mamas know that breast milk takes up a lot of freezer space. We love this easy breast milk storage hack from Val at Lovely Lucky Life. She uses old soda boxes to organize and store her breast milk stash.
Soda boxes fit perfectly in most side-by-side fridge/freezers and upright freezers. You can easily stack, label and rotate the boxes to keep your stash organized. If you’re looking for a crafty DIY project, you can cover the soda box in cute paper.
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5. Store old clothes in empty diaper boxes.
Babies quickly go through diapers AND quickly outgrow clothing. So re-purposing empty diaper boxes for clothing storage makes a lot of sense! And because diaper boxes already include size info, you don’t even need to label them.
Pack those adorable newborn bodysuits (the same ones that baby only wore once) into the empty newborn diaper box and you organization hack is quickly done. Of all the organization ideas we’ve come across, this is possibly the most simple. And we love how the boxes stack neatly because they’re all the same size.
6. Reuse fabric bedding bags for toys.
Have you been wondering what to do with those fabric bags that bedding is sold in? They include some kind of closure—Velcro, drawstring, snap, or zipper—and are just begging to be repurposed. These bags are perfect for keeping toys organized—like train sets or toy food. Infants get a kick out of opening the bag to see what’s inside. And your toy box looks a little less messy! Did we mention they’re washable?
7. Large envelopes make storage for small parts and pieces easy.
Wooden puzzles are great toys for babies and toddlers—they help develop hand-eye coordination and fine motor skills, they help teach colors and shapes, and they can survive being thrown and chewed on. But they don’t stack well. And if you’re not careful, the puzzle pieces go missing.
Envelopes exist to help you keep your puzzles intact and organized. We love the string-tie versions because they expand to accommodate puzzles of varying thickness and allow little fingers to practice tying and untying a figure eight. This is an organization hack to easily adopt today!
8. Fridge organization hack: Use labels!
We could dedicate an entire blog post to all the organization hacks that could benefit from labels, but for now we’ll just suggest one place you should label immediately—your refrigerator. Many wise people have said, “a place for everything and everything in its place.” Labels will help keep your fridge clean and organized—with leftovers that are easy to locate (so they don’t mold in the back) and important items are always where you expect them to be.
The average person opens the fridge 15–20 times each day. Multiply that by the number of fridge-opening people in our household and you begin to realize how labeling your refrigerator can help keep you sane and efficient. Aby at Simplify 101 has a great post about how she uses labels to keep her fridge organized. Her fridge is relatable and her labels are specific enough to be clear yet general enough to be flexible.
9. Lazy Susan organizational hack.
This has got to be one of our favorite organizational hacks. No more losing things in the back of your refrigerator because you can’t see them. Spin those items ‘right round baby, right round’ and bring that item from the back to the front with just a spin of that turntable. Turn all labels facing outwards so they are easy to recognize.
This hack is not just for your refrigerator either! Pantries, bathrooms, and cupboards are also great for lazy susans. Place taller items in the middle of the turntable for easy visibility. Get a double decker turntable for taller spaces with lots of small items! You can have lots of fun with this one.
10. Best hack for Lego storage.
Lego promotes fine motor skills, encourages teamwork, improves creativity, and develops problem solving and mathematical thinking. We simply love legos for kids! However, all those boxes of legos take up a lot of space. And when you mix them all together, finding the correct pieces to make a specific toy becomes frustrating. If you want to keep sets together without using the bulk of their boxes, put them in resealable plastic bags with the picture of their instructions facing outward. This will help a lot with finding specific sets and for only pulling out the pieces needed for each set.
When your kids graduate to the “create your own” phase of playing with legos and want to mix all their sets together, place all those instructional guides in sleeve protectors and store them inside a binder. Easy and compact!
Pro-tip: Have your kids play with legos on a big blanket! When they are done, gather all four corners of the blanket and watch those tiny miscellaneous pieces fall to the middle for easy cleanup! This will minimize those treacherous barefooted catastrophes that all parents fall victim to.
11. Use a letter sorter for tupperware lids!
Do you ever have to rummage through your drawers or cupboards looking for the correct lid for your tupperware? Who doesn’t? Use a letter sorter to organize the lids to your food storage containers! Stand your lids upright and place them going sideways so you can see each one easily. This is so much better than digging for a missing lid!
12. Using a magazine file is one of our favorite organizational hacks!
Take a magazine file organizer and hang it up inside a cabinet. Pull the tin foil, plastic wrap, wax paper, and plastic baggies out of the drawer and stand them upright…Marie Kondo style. Voila, you have freed up a drawer AND utilized space that was unknowingly being unused! Now don’t you feel smart?!
13. Accordion folder organizational hack!
Store one of these in the glovebox in your car! Have dedicated sections for your auto insurance, registration papers, and toll money! Maybe you’ll want to keep a spare phone charger in there or emergency contact numbers! Either way, you can keep your important items organized and separate from the less important Target receipts and napkins that are flying around in there!
14. Tension rod organizational hack!
We have all been there. We have a good size cabinet that is only at half capacity because all the items are sitting at the bottom. Utilize that space above with a tension rod or two. Hang those cleaning supply bottles by their handles on the tension rod and free up all that space below!
These are just a few of the organizational hacks that every busy parent should know. Were any of them revolutionary for you? Do you have any favorite organizational hacks of your own that were not mentioned above? Tell us in the comments below!
Kathy is a freelance writer, an Independent Quality Provider with BabyQuip and the mother of a very active one-year-old boy. When she’s not changing diapers, developing engaging content for clients, or helping families travel with little ones, she enjoys reading, gardening, yoga, and naps.
I just want to say I am newbie to organization LOL. Thanks a lot for sharing this info. I need it bad.
I love the tip to use plastic bags for each day of clothing…I just keep forgetting to do it when I’m actually packing. Hopefully next time I’ll remember!
We use the hanging shoe organizers for so many things in our home: cleaning products, art supplies, toys… there are so many uses! I love the idea of using an old tackle box to organize small toys in the car. I never would have thought of that!
I feel so proud of myself that already do so many of these things!
Love the breastmilk idea. I have also heard old gift bags and then you would just cut a hole in the bottom and grab the oldest out first.
So many good ideas. My fridge will really benefit from the lables. Now only if my husband can read it. Lol
Love the idea of bagging outfits for vacation! Would really help my toddler out and make sure we stay organized on our next vacation.
I could have really benefited from that method of storing breast milk bags when mine were babies!
‘A tidy playroom and toys without missing pieces.’ I know this would bring me joy! There are some really great hacks here! I am going to put outfits organized in bags and a hanging shoe organizer to work this week!
Wow! I’m definitely going to use that idea for my breast milk! Currently my freezer has milk bags all over the place, and it drives me nutts! :/ Thanks for all the tips!
Storing my breastmilk that way was a game changer. Just be sure to lay flat first to freeze in order to maximize space. Not a soda drinker, use sparkling water boxes or large blueberry containers.