How to Cut Your Bedroom Clutter — Tackle The Nightstand

Sometimes, instead of being a place for retreat and sanctuary, our bedrooms can become a war zone of clutter and disorganization. But there is a very simple way to restore peace and cut your bedroom clutter. Take a look. We all know that it's easy to let your bedroom get messy, let the dirty clothes pile up, or even have a pile of things on your dresser that you've meant to put away - but what about your nightstand? Does it just collect the things that don't have a home or that you don't want to put away right away? Is the drawer so stuffed that you can't close it? Well, our next guest blogger has some answers that will help you get things straight AND have fun in the process.We all know that the nightstand is the most important furniture beside your bed, but it can get awfully cluttered with last-minute things. Here, I show you simple ways to manage and organize the mess. First, do the usual toss or keep any items you no longer want, use, or love. Make easy piles of everything off your nightstand dividing them into designated piles of:

• Toss

• Keep

• Move to its proper storage place.

Trash or recycle the toss pile set the keep pile aside, and then deal with the third pile (this time, let it reach its destination). Since the nightstand is a true breeding ground of clutter, it can become  a problem. It's often the only extra storage in a bedroom, so people tend to throw random odds and ends into the nightstand because there is simply no place else for it. That's fine, to an extent, but it means you need to go through and declutter this space regularly and have stringent parameters about what is displayed on the top of your nightstand.Why? Because anything on top of the nightstand is the first thing you see when you wake up in the morning and the last thing you see before you go to sleep. So place anything you use every single night before you go to sleep and anything you reach for as soon as you wake up on the nightstand.Now it’s time to organize the drawer--that very important drawer that simply fills with last-minute-things or no-place-in-particular-things. Here I present a solution: a very handy DIY can be the drawer dividers that may be made from 1/4-inch sheet acrylic (have the retailer cut the pieces to size, or cut them yourself using a fine blade in a table or radial arm saw). Put the pieces together in whatever arrangement you desire, and then bond the joints with acrylic solvent. Create compartments in the drawer by notching and joining strips of wood lattice. Clamp the crosspieces together, and cut the notches all at once so they'll align evenly.By doing this, you will have everything you need handy and make it as attractive as possible. Don't add a lot of stuff! You don’t want it to look cluttered and disorganized; you want it to look as impeccable as the day you cleaned it. For example:

• If you like to have candles in your bedroom, keep one out and store the rest.

• If you like to have a glass of water near your bed, remove the glass daily, so it is not sitting there just collecting dust. And there you have it, a couple of tips to organize your nightstand.

Monica Kroos is a writer and decorator for Glass and Mirror Pros who enjoys DIY projects and creating beautiful things with an affordable budget. If you are interested in more project ideas you can check out their Pinterest. Or you can share your projects with them through their Facebook!

As always, we hope this has been inspiring and helpful to you. If you have insight to share and are interested in doing a guest blog feature, please email us for more information.

Until next time – Keep It Simple!