In addition to the kitchen and/or dining room, the living room is one the busiest hubs in the home. From family movie nights to craft projects and beyond, we all use our living rooms for a variety of purposes, so it’s no wonder why it often gets so cluttered.
If your living room could use some help in the organization department, then you’ve come to right place! Because today’s post is packed with simple and effective tips that can help you clear your living room of clutter and keep it looking clean and tidy.
So let’s jump right in!
15 Simple Living Room Organization Tips That Work
1. Put Discs In A CD Wallet
If you have a sizable collection of DVDs, Blu-rays, video games, or CDs, then you already know how much valuable storage space all those cases can take up. But before you do anything else, you should go through your collection of discs of all varieties and see if there’s anything you don’t actually want or need anymore.
Then once you’ve decided what you’re going to keep, take all the discs out of their cases and put them in a CD/DVD wallet. Not only will they take up a fraction of the space this way, but it’ll be easier to peruse your collection to find what you’re looking for later on.
If you think you may want to sell some of those DVDs or video games down the line, you can always keep those cases, but you don’t have to keep them in your actual living room.
2. Use A Battery Organizer
Between the remotes for the various components of your entertainment system, the remotes for fans and other small appliances, and video game controllers, there’s always something that needs a new set of batteries in the living room.
Keep your spare batteries organized and easy to find with a dedicated battery organizer. If you go through a lot of different kinds of batteries, this battery storage case has a foam insert with slots for pretty much every kind of battery you might need.
If you don’t need something quite so spacious or durable, this clear battery organizer box should do the trick nicely.
3. Add A Coffee Table Tray
Adding a decorative tray to your coffee table is an easy way to make it look more organized and put together. It’s a great place to corral magazines, books, remotes, coasters, and other items you typically keep out on your coffee table.
4. Use A Baking Sheet For Hidden Storage
If you tend to work on crafts or projects while hanging out in your living room, arrange your supplies on a baking sheet. When you’re done with your project for the day, just slide it under your couch to keep everything together in one place without cluttering up your coffee table.
5. Make Your Own Decorative Storage Boxes
No need to spend an arm and a leg on decorative storage boxes for your living room—you can make your own using cardboard boxes you already have on hand. Learn how to make painted burlap storage boxes at A Piece Of Rainbow, or woven felt storage bins at Lily Ardor.
6. Get Rid Of Old Magazines
Got a big stack of magazines gathering dust in your living room? Go through them all and set aside the magazines you don’t want or need anymore, then either recycle the rest or store them elsewhere to use for craft projects. (And don’t forget to cancel your subscriptions for any magazines you aren’t actually getting around to reading!)
7. Clean Out Your Pet Toys
If you keep a basket or box of pet toys in the living room, go through it and get rid of anything that’s falling apart, unrecognizable, or so gross that you’re no longer willing to touch it. (Unless any of those items are your pet’s fave, in which case you may need to work with your pet directly to come up with a compromise everyone can live with.) ;-)
8. Add A Wastebasket
Why don’t more people have a wastebasket or trash can in their living room? It’s 2021, and we ought to get real about the fact that there’s more than enough trash coming out of our living rooms to justify having a place a put it.
A living room wastebasket won’t just eliminate those trips to another room to throw trash away, but you’ll also eliminate those laps you make around the living room to gather trash that had no place to go.
9. Set Up Cubbies For The Kids
If your family room is close to the front door, or if your kids or grandkids do homework there, you may want to set up a system like Jen at I Heart Organizing did. She has a cabinet where the kids can keep their backpacks, homework supplies, and school papers organized and put away neatly.
10. Work With Your Clutter
Think about what really happens in your living room—are you constantly bringing in items from another room and then getting up to return them when you’re done? Try storing those things in your living room instead in a storage ottoman or some cute baskets
If you don’t have the space to add more storage to your living room, try a rolling storage cart that you can store elsewhere and bring into the area as needed.
11. Never Leave The Room Empty-Handed
Instead of letting thing pile up in the living room, take care of misplaced items, trash, and clutter regularly by giving yourself the challenge to “never leave the room empty-handed.” There’s almost always going to be something you can take with you to help keep your living room tidy.
12. Deal With Cord Clutter
When it comes to the tangled mess of cords behind our entertainment system, I used to take an “out of sight, out of mind approach to it. As long as I couldn’t see the cords, it didn’t matter if they were a tangled mess or not.
But after a few harrowing instances of needing to remove and untangle one device from all the others, I realized the error of my ways. So I set about using a combination of cord wraps and zip ties to tidy up those cords, and now I wish I had done it sooner!
13. Organize And Update Book Cases
Having a lot of books on your bookcase isn’t a bad thing, but it’s full of books you don’t actually read or care about that much, you could probably be using that space in a better way. So go through your bookcases and set aside books you’ve never read and probably never will, old books from school you’ve never gotten rid of, etc.
After downsizing your collection, you might find that you don’t even need that bulky bookcase anymore. Consider getting a smaller bookcase that can accommodate your books while freeing up some extra space.
14. Set Up A Clutter “Outbox”
If clutter tends to pile up fairly quickly in your living room, consider setting up a decluttering outbox where you can put items you’re not sure whether you should keep or not. While you should eventually make a decision about the fate of each item in your outbox, part of the beauty of having one is that you don’t have to make that decision right this second.
Related: The One Simple Tip That Will Make You Better At Decluttering
15. Consider A Universal Remote
If each piece of your entertainment system has a different remote and it drives you crazy, consider investing in a universal remote to simplify your setup and preserve your sanity. You can program this one to control up to 4 separate audio and video components, which means 3 fewer remotes for you to keep track of.
Related: Overwhelmed By Clutter? This Is The Best Thing To Do First
Do you have any tips or tricks for keeping your living room organized?