Quick Tips for Organizing Laundry Rooms

Hats, gloves, sunglasses and scarves usually end up all over the house or shoved in the coat closet. Use Julie Morgenstern's (author of Organizing from the Inside Out, www.juliemorgenstern.com) SPACE method to get organized: Sort, Purge, Assign, Containerize and Equalize. First identify what's important and group similar items, she says. Then purge any glove missing its partner. Assign by corralling all your cold- and warm-weather essentials and containerizing with labeled baskets for each member of the family. Store these where your family normally takes them off after coming indoors. "Rather than retrain the family," says Morgenstern, "store things beautifully where people drop them." Finally, equalize the space every day by tidying up.