While the kitchen is often the center of activity and socializing in the home — which you’ve probably confirmed this holiday season — it’s not the center of peace. That’s the bedroom’s role.
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Of course, even though your bedroom is supposed to be a haven of serenity and slumber (and, perhaps, romance), it also tends to be the dumping ground for unfolded laundry and unintended objects. Want to change that? Follow these three steps to reclaim your bedroom ahead of the new year.
Step 1: Define the purpose of your bedroom.
Because of limited space in the rest of your home, your bedroom may double as a workspace and storage for things like books, toys, workout equipment, paperwork, and more. If you want to bring some tranquil magic back into your bedroom, try to reverse this passive approach by defining precisely what your bedroom’s purpose is. Choose your bedroom’s intention based on your goals for the space and its explicit functions.
For instance, generally a bedroom is meant to be a quiet and private place to sleep and relax.
After you’ve defined the purpose of your bedroom, you’ll want to streamline the items in your room and the way you store them so that the space better represents you and the feeling you want to experience when you’re in it. Start by writing a list of the items in your bedroom that don’t meet your 2023 bedroom goals. Then, decide if you’re open to letting any of these items go. For the ones you want to keep, tour your home, seeking nooks and crannies where they may better fit. Consider purchasing any organizing products that will help you better manage the items in their new homes.
Because a bedroom is a personal space, most of your personal effects can and should live there. Think: clothes and accessories, memorabilia, a book or two that you’re reading, and possibly extra blankets and linens.
On the other hand, if you don’t regularly exercise in your bedroom, it’s best to not distract yourself with that equipment. Similarly, electronics like a TV or desktop computer may not align with the whole serenity goal. Of course, some of those items may need to remain in your bedroom out of necessity. If that’s the case, see if you can tuck some items away in your closet when you’re not using them. For any that don’t fit, take the time — and potentially some money — to organize and visually simplify these spaces. For example, maybe office supplies and small electronics can live in softly woven boxes. Perhaps you can even hide a computer monitor inside a secretary desk on the weekends.
Step 2: ID the challenges of maintaining your bedroom.
Now turn to the habits you’ve perhaps unintentionally established in your bedroom. The most common issues? Rifled-through clothes and accessories strewn on the floor and clean laundry that’s never been folded or hung. There have been volumes written about solutions for these difficulties and countless organizing devices manufactured to help you with this. Bottom line: Downsize your clothes and find the easiest system for you to maintain, understanding that that’s not necessarily the most aesthetically-pleasing one or the one you think you’re “supposed” to use. For example, if you hate putting clothes on hangers and often leave them in piles, consider using open-top bins instead.
Do skip under-bed storage, though. It always seems like a good idea until it becomes mostly forgotten and dust-encrusted. If that’s not something you want to take on the responsibility of maintaining, downsizing can help here, too.
Oh, and yes, you should make your bed every morning. A messy bed looks chaotic and unwelcoming, while a made one supports that whole idea of your bedroom serving as a peaceful respite, a place of calm and control. But this doesn’t need to be time-consuming or picture-worthy! If you know you’re not the bed-making type, go easier on yourself by not using decorative pillows and layers of perfectly aligned blankets. Instead, simply capture middle-of-the-night-sock-escapees and any other objects that have found their way onto the bed, then straighten the sheets and blankets.
Step 3: Rethink the status quo.
Even after you’ve articulated your bedroom’s purpose and addressed its challenges, something may still not feel quite right. If this resonates with you, think about whether you’re relying on the status quo to tell you what belongs in your bedroom — that may be keeping you from fully realizing your ideal space.
For example, maybe you thought a reading chair was a must-have for a perfectly styled bedroom — but you’ve come to realize that yours simply takes up space and makes the room feel “messier,” and you’ve got a bed to sit on anyway. Or maybe your nightstands are becoming more like junk drawers than surfaces for your next-to-bed lamps — or they’re clogging the space you’d rather use for a reading chair. Speaking of your bed, do you even need one? Seriously. One of my clients opted for a hammock instead! Or maybe you’d prefer a mattress without a frame or headboard?
Skip the assumptions about what must be in your space. The status quo stifles your creativity, and it makes it more difficult to define your bedroom’s intention and conquer the current challenges you face maintaining it — and enjoying it.
With five children, Shifrah is learning a thing or two about how to keep a fairly organized and pretty clean house with a grateful heart in a way that leaves plenty of time for the people who matter most. Shifrah grew up in San Francisco, but has come to appreciate smaller town life in Tallahassee, Florida, which she now calls home. She’s been writing professionally for twenty years and she loves lifestyle photography, memory keeping, gardening, reading, and going to the beach with her husband and children.
I recently started seeing videos in the ADHD corner of TikTok about “doom boxes,” an ominous name for something I thought everyone did, regardless of their neurotypical or neurodivergent status. Turns out, maybe not.
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“Doom” is an acronym for “didn’t organize, only moved,” and a “doom box” is a space where you store these random unorganized items, just for the sake of putting them away. I have a doom closet, and I know people with doom rooms too. While a doom box may seem like an organizational no-no, you can make this habit work for you.
Why do some people create doom boxes?
Some people, especially those who have conditions like ADHD, occasionally beat themselves up for being disorganized and creating simplified methods of hiding clutter. However, it is perhaps a strength that they have in their ability to cope.
Dr. Gregory Young, a pediatric psychologist at Franciscan Children’s in Boston explains that “individuals with ADHD have deficits in organizing, planning, and general executive functioning. As a result, people with ADHD utilize multiple ways to reduce laborious organizational demands.”
Much like how students with ADHD sometimes have trouble organizing school work, leading to overfull backpacks, adults with homes of their own sometimes feel overwhelmed with managing household things. “For many people, putting things away is a difficult task and for people with deficits in executive functioning, knowing where and how to organize things can seem impossible. For this reason, some may find it easier to store random items together because it requires less cognitive demand,” says Young.
While they “may be seen as a sign of poor organizational skills,” another way to look at it is that “doom boxes may be considered an adaptive compensatory strategy,” says Young. People who live in a world that doesn’t fit their brains have had to create adaptations to it.
How to make doom boxes work for you
Piles are unattractive and clutter on the floor is unsafe, so doom boxes can contain the unorganized chaos. However, you might lose things in their Mary Poppins’ bag-like expansion, and, without a system, you may never remember where anything is.
I have two kids who have ADHD and hate cleaning, and I sometimes tutor out of my home, which means I sometimes have to do a quick transition from “parent” to “teacher” persona. To make my home look a touch professional, I have purchased a series of opaque canvas open bins in various sizes and colors. They fit on the bottom shelves of my bookcases, can be stashed in a closet, and don’t even look that terrible sitting next to a couch.
The point of having multiple empty boxes at all times is that when my son refuses to put his Lego creations back where they go (among the Legos in the clear Lego bins) or my daughter has left markers and drawings of cats all over the coffee table, I can sweep the variable items into one opaque bin and stash it until later when I have the emotional fortitude and time to supervise having my children put their things where they actually belong.
Similarly, I often have a variety of objects surrounding me as I work. Currently, on my desk, I have suction cups for tight shoulder muscles, two pairs of glasses, hand lotion, notepads, and bills, even though I swear I told them I wanted to go paperless. When I’m having the tutoring client over, I don’t have time to go through all of this and put it in perfect little drawers. I’m going to want it all surrounding me tomorrow anyway. So I sweep it into a small doom box and place it to the side of my desk, out of the way, but creating a clear space.
Categorized, not organized
If you are prone to doom boxes, don’t be ashamed. The problem with doom boxes is when you put all manner of chaos into one box. So, if bills, Matchbox cars, and makeup all lived together in one box, I’d be in trouble.
To the best of your ability, let your doom boxes have some form of category. It can be broad, like “kids,” “bathroom,” or “for tomorrow.” Or, it can be more specific. I have doom boxes of kid toys that don’t come in sets. I tried, for a while, to separate cars, animals, and trains, but, eventually, all “smaller than a breadbox” non-sets live in a series of three doom boxes on a shelf. My kids are happy to let a Dorothy from Oz figurine go on an adventure with Thomas the Train, so it works for them.
If you feel motivated, on a rainy Saturday, you can go through a doom box or two and see if anything needs recategorizing, or if you want to donate or trash anything. For important items like those bills, I make sure they stay pretty close by because doom boxes out of sight do tend to go out of mind. For the non-minimalists, doom boxes are a way of life, one that should be embraced, not hidden.
Stephanie is a writer, editor, and full-time dog petter. As Apartment Therapy’s Cleaning & Organizing Editor, she covers all the ways to make your home sparkle with decluttering tricks, cleaning tips, and organizational hacks. Stephanie holds degrees in English and journalism from the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa. She lives in Hawaiʻi with her husband and dog.
Stephanie is a writer, editor, and full-time dog petter. As Apartment Therapy’s Cleaning & Organizing Editor, she covers all the ways to make your home sparkle with decluttering tricks, cleaning tips, and organizational hacks. Stephanie holds degrees in English and journalism from the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa. She lives in Hawaiʻi with her husband and dog.
