Easy Organizing Projects When You Have 15 Minutes or Less!

As a busy professional/wife/mom/chauffeur, I’m all for easy organizing projects that conquer chaos but don’t take all day (or weekend)! In fact, I often find myself putting off organizing around the house because I don’t feel like I have a whole day or weekend to devote to it. (While I did spend this past weekend on a complete pantry makeover, I don’t usually have that kind of free time.)

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I thought it would be fun to see how many different areas of my house I could organize in 15 minutes or less. There were quite a few! I even timed myself to make it a game and see how fast I could complete each project.

Easy Organizing Projects

Banish Bathroom Drawer Clutter

I started with my most-used bathroom drawer. It’s small, and I had jammed it with all kinds of things, some of which didn’t even belong in the bathroom!

I hit the timer on my phone and got to work. I removed every item in the drawer and wiped it out with a washcloth. I then sorted everything into groups: hair products like bobby pins and elastic bands; contact lenses, contacts cases, and glasses; oral care; skin care. Anything that didn’t belong in the drawer or bathroom went in a separate pile, as did anything that needed to be thrown away.

I grabbed some small food containers we had in the pantry and used them to organize my small groups to make everything easy to find and access. After eleven minutes, I was done! First easy organizing project complete.

This project required no purchasing of any containers; I only used things I had on hand. However, there are some good deals on Amazon for vanity drawer organizers, like this set:

Uplift Your Under-Sink Bathroom Cabinet

Another easy organizing project in the bathroom was my under-sink cabinet. Like my drawer, I had a bunch of random stuff that either didn’t belong or wasn’t being used. This made it more difficult for me to access the items I do use on a daily basis.

I already had a Lazy Susan similar to this one:

as well as a Sterilite storage drawer organizer on hand. All I needed to do was sort through everything I had stuffed onto and into each one and reorganize.

The drawer organizer is perfect for corralling small items like razor blades, small skin care tubes and bottles, and eye care items like contacts, cases, travel-size saline bottles, etc.

The Lazy Susan is AWESOME for small, cramped bathroom cabinets. I stored taller items like hairspray on the top, maximizing the vertical space in the cabinet. By placing my products in a neat circle, it’s super easy to see and access the items I use every day.

Here’s how the finished cabinet looks:

I stole another of our many meal-prep containers from the pantry and stashed nail polish, files, buffers, trimmers, etc. in it and stored it on top of the drawer organizer, as the bottles were too tall to store upright in a drawer. Another easy organizing project done in twelve and a half minutes.

Tame Your Tupperware

This quick project is one that should probably be done on a periodic basis, say once a year or so. I have found that, like socks in the laundry, Tupperware containers and lids are often magically separated, never to be reunited. Plastic food containers also get cracked and need to be recycled so they don’t cause leaks in the refrigerator or lunch box.

The premise is simple: take out ALL of your plastic food containers and play the matching game with lids. (This is a great one to have the kids do!) Any extra lids left over should be recycled. Any containers missing lids can be repurposed for organizing projects elsewhere in the house.

This project only took me eight minutes!

Pare Down and Pretty Up Your Pens and Pencils

Here’s another of my favorite easy organizing projects that, like Tupperware, should be done on a periodic basis. (And another great one for the kids to help with!)

Grab all of your pens and pencils from the kitchen drawer, desk drawer, craft room, play room, etc. Grab a spare pad of scratch or note paper. Take each pen and test it on the piece of paper. How many are dried up? I had a TON of pens that didn’t work anymore. They all got tossed.

Next, do the same with the pencils. Test the lead in each mechanical pencil, and refill as needed. For those good ‘ol Number 2 pencils, make sure they’re sharpened and the erasers are intact (or add a pencil topper eraser).

After that, sort the pens in any manner that works best for you. I like to have Sharpies in one pile, highlighters in another, ball point or fine fountain pens in a third, and so on. You may prefer sorting by color.

Last, divide the pens and pencils and restock the kitchen, office, play room, craft room, etc.

Conquer Chaos Under the Kitchen Sink

When was the last time you reorganized the cupboard beneath the kitchen sink? Are you a little bit afraid of what you’ll find? (I was.) But I found I enjoyed going through the process of clearing it out and creating useful groupings of items that will save time. And it only took me 15 minutes! This might take you longer depending on how big your cabinet is and how much stuff you’ve managed to cram in there.

After I removed everything and threw away the nasty old sponges, dish cloths and forgotten potting soil from an ancient kitchen window succulent project, it was time to sort.

Garbage bags went together, as did dish soaps and gloves, and glass and surface cleaners. I stored cleaners that I use less often in the back of the cabinet, and I put everything liquid in a plastic tub to reduce the risk of leaks.

I used Command hook tape to install these awesome organizers for scrubbers, bottle cleaners, dish cloths, and other small items.

The final project turned out pretty nice!

Naughty-to-Nice Nightstand

My nightstand is typically a forgotten wasteland of random stuff. In addition to books I’ve neglected to read, I found business cards, greeting cards, chargers and cables, an unused picture frame, a reusable shopping bag, drink coasters and the plug for my side of the electric blanket.

In just 13 minutes, I cleared it out, wiped it down, sorted and reorganized. Voila! One of my favorite easy organizing projects!