As I wrap up my series 8 Weeks to Home Organization Bliss! I am excited to share one of my all-time favorite tips – creating a Home Command Center. I have found that establishing one central location in the house for storing everyday, frequently used items like office supplies, a basket for mail, the home phone and files helps my clients save time and frustration.
With this week’s tips and pictures I hope you will be inspired to create or re-organize your own Home Command Center and I invite my readers to comment below with any questions or frustrations. If you have success I want to hear about that too! Check out the previous posts for 8 Weeks to Home Organization Bliss! including: Week 1 – Kitchen & Pantry, Week 2 – Kid’s Rooms & Playrooms, Week 3 – Closets, Week 4 – Bathrooms, Week 5 – Garage, Week 6 – Living Rooms and Week 7 – Paperwork & Home Office.
Step 1: Establish a Command Center Location. It will need to be centrally located for easy, every-day access. I am a big fan of a hutch with multiple shelves but if you live in a small space a cupboard with shelving will work in a pinch. Above is a client’s sample command center. I had to get creative because there was a lot of open shelving but I think the outcome was functional and attractive.
Step 2: Decide What Goes in Your Command Center. My suggestions: your home phone, mail basket, every-day office supplies and tools, address book, sunglasses, gift cards, menus, maps, magazines and instruction manuals.
Step 3: Pull Everything Out. You will need to look at what you have to make a storage system action plan. This is the perfect opportunity to toss out any paperwork or supplies that are no longer useful and also collect items from around the house to add to the Command Center.
Step 4: Create a Storage System Action Plan. Take measurements of all of the storage areas you will be using whether it will be on shelving or open spaces. You may be able to re-purpose storage items from another part of the house but if not you will regret not having measurements when you go shopping. For this Command Center I knew the client used her cooking magazines as a reference regularly so I knew they would need to be incorporated into the plan. Also, there was a lot of open storage space that was an eye-sore. Sometimes you have to be creative with open space when you are shopping for storage pieces.
Step 5: Shop. It was nearly impossible for me to find containers to fit into the open space boxes in this Command Center so I had to get creative. The clear plastic storage for loose items are actually refrigerator bins! I am also a fan of plastic separator’s for drawers and highly encourage you to invest in purchasing them because they work really well.
Step 6: Fill Your Command Center. I started at the top and worked my way down. It is really helpful to have all of your instruction manuals in one place. I used a file box with a lid and labeled each file with tabs. If your appliances have an issue you will know exactly where to find the instruction manual!
Very nice series.
Dying to know what are in the small cubbies???
Each person in the family has one. They hold gift cards, keys, notes, etc.