Organizing The Family Room
Why do family rooms become disorganized?
Now a days family rooms can really get disorganize, because there are so many things that we keep in them. I mean we have so many electronics gadgets that it is hard to keep track of, everything especially with all the gaming units that we've got now. All the Gameboys, Xboxes, Nintendos, Playstations and all the games that go with all of these things. It's hard to keep track of everything along with all the movies, music, books and family albums we have. These are all kind of things we find in family rooms so it is easy for them to get a little disorganized.
How can I create more storage space in my family room?
I think the best way to create more space in your family room is to really first of all look at what's in there and ask yourself does it belong in here. If it doesn't, you need to move it somewhere else. But if it does, then you need to figure out what's the best way to utilize the space. Now, most family rooms, a lot of family rooms have built-in units where they're housing electronic equipments so there are shelves associate with that or cabinets space. So you want to put some of your bulkier, less attractive things in those cabinets. A lot of times things like gaming controls and units, it's really helpful if you can get a container to store those things in. You can put them all together and then put them on a shelf in a cabinet. It sounds so simple but it really saves a lot of space and again, it puts everything together so you're not searching to find something and taking something else apart in the process to look for it. If you really have a large DVD collection for example, or a very large CD collection, one of the things I recommend people is buy special binders that you can store these things in, where you can keep the actual sleeve of the DVD that tells you what the movie is and the DVD itself. You can hold like 5 times as many DVDs in the same amount of space that you might just keeping them all the original packaging. And what's great is it also makes them more portable this way because, again, nowadays people tend to travel and they take movies with them, they take games with them so it's nice to have things being more portable as it is. For all your kids' games, there are systems that you can buy where you can keep all the separate cartridges and discs and things all together. If you don't want to buy those systems, then just get some boxes or containers that you can put all the Nintendo cartridges together versus all the Xbox discs or things like that. So really it's about looking at everything that's going into that space and just finding things to keep them all together and separate and that way the space will be more functional.
Does organizing my family room mean I have to get rid of my family mementos?
No, absolutely not. Being organized just means being more selective. You may not be able to have every single thing that you have in the room right now, simply because it does not all fit in the room, there's not enough space. However, it does mean selecting the things you do want to have in the room and finding a space for them. So it does not mean getting rid of everything and, sometimes, we can move things into other rooms. Kids rooms, again, have lots of shelf space, and great spaces to have family mementos and knick knacks. You know, mementos, they don't all have to be housed in this one room. You can spread them out throughout your home.
How can I display personal items in my family room?
I think family rooms are really fun spaces because they are also the place where you end up putting your little mementos from your trips, your trophies that you might have, and lots of family photos. There are fun ways that you can put these things there without cluttering everything up. A really great way to store all your mementos from a particular trip is maybe to put them in a shadow box and hang them on a wall. For photos, if you have lots and lots of photos and you love to have them all out, you can get a photo wheel where you put all the photos in that wheel and then you can just spin that wheel to be on a particular photo, and then when you get tired of that photo, you can just switch it. Another really great thing in a family room are those electronic photo frames where you can put in all your family photos from a particular vacation, or a year, or however you want to do it, and then they just automatically are playing every few seconds - it is like a slide show that goes on and it is much better than having a big photo album sitting on a table some where. So there are different ways that you can show off a lot of your family knick knacks that you've got, and shelf spaces are also really fun spaces to use certain things as decorative items. You can have that baseball that your son caught at a game and got autographed, and put it in a little plexi container and use it as a book end. There are different things you can do. You just sort of have to be a little creative about it.
How can I use bookshelves to organize my family room?
I love using bookcases, for example, as a place for all different kinds of things. It's really not just a place for books. It's a great place to store things. It's a great place to showcase things. And I think a truly great bookcase is a space that's got books, and mementos, and knick-knacks, and storage, all at the same time. And you can get interesting boxes and store things in them. You can store your photo albums in boxes, and have them on shelves as decorations. You can store wires and cords. You can store manuals in great looking containers and have them again on these bookshelves. You can have all kinds of artefacts and knick-knacks and albums and photos. All these things can all be on a bookcase, so it's not just for books. It's not like years ago where you just saw a bookcase, and all you saw on it were just rows and rows of books. Now, bookcases have become, really, like a piece of art, or a decoration in your home. So use them for that.
How can I organize the media in my family room?
There so much media nowadays, movies, music, games, and we live even in a society were we have a lot of that stuff so if you have a excessive of amount it or a large amount, it's good to catalog of it maybe so that you're not always searching for something. There are programs that you can get, you can download, that are ever free where you can literally bar code scan your DVDs and your CDs and it makes an electronic library for all of them so that you know what you have and what you don't have so you're not going out and buying the same movies again and you really just have to think of ways that you can store these things using as little space as possible because the chances are, your library will just keep growing larger and larger so you don't want to run out of space quickly and I highly recommend the binders that you can buy to store everything from CDs and DVDs and games and some of them are also really attractive so they look good in your shelves.