How to keep your bedroom tidy

My bedroom is such a busy area of the house, the terrier feels it is his look out post for any approaching people, sat by the window on guard. My oldie dog thinks it is her snoozing area, peace and quiet in the afternoon and my son thinks the bed is a trampoline and general monkeying around room. The laundry gets dumped in here for sorting out and I do work in there too with my laptop. By the end of the day I have an assortment of books, toys, magazines and clothes in the room to sort out. I'd like to reclaim my room, so it feels a bit more like a calming space but what can I do to sort it out?

Image source: Time4Sleep

1. Grab a couple of carrier bag and go through every drawer, shelf and wardrobe/closet space. Have one bag for the bin and one for charity items or to sell on eBay. It's good to declutter and have surfaces clean and junk free. I have drawers full of costume jewellery that I have not worn in years, old watches, clothes that don't fit any more and probably never will and books on subjects I've long since moved on from. Be ruthless in your sorting and get rid of what you no longer need!

2. I love baskets, one for my make-up, one for my bedside books, lotions and potions. They keep all my items organised and then on busy mornings I know where to find things. 

3. Have clever storage. Organise drawers using separate little boxes, utilise all your wardrobe space - I have mini plastic drawers at the bottom of mine for accessories, use under the bed boxes for out of season clothes. I regularly look for ideas on Pinterest for ingenious ways to organise space. I love the idea of using a pegboard to hang jewellery from.

Image source: Better Homes and Gardens

4. Spend a few minutes every day doing a little bit of tidying. I have a busy week, as we all do, so a quick 5 minutes each day sorting a shelf or one of my drawers helps and soon adds up to helping keep the bedroom looking ordered. 

5. I keep a bedroom 'want' list in my notebook for my organising and cleaning so I can keep a look out for items as I'm shopping - bargain shops for handy storage boxes and containers or fragrant cleaning products.

6. A baby wipe is my favourite cleaning weapon for a very quick wipe of surfaces in the room, when it's not due it's full clean with the furniture polish. Wipes are great at removing mucky hand prints from walls and splashed drinks on the door frames. 

Time4Sleep are looking for the UK's messiest bedroom, mine is probably not that bad but is yours? if you fancy entering, all you need to do is enter a photo on the competition page along with a description (or tweet #messybedroom) and you could win a storage bed up to the value of £500.

*Feature post, words are my own*