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Best Organizing Products for Your Living Room
My living room is the first room people see when they walk in. It’s also the room my family actually lives in, and my little gentleman’s playroom. One room with three functions: hosting, living, and playing. For this season of life, I wouldn’t have it any other way.
This is what a real family living room looks like.
Toys. Blankets. Stuffies. Two remotes my toddler is convinced are his. A comfortable sectional made for watching our favorite shows, and a coffee table my husband built with a buddy that I picture one day holding a beautiful coffee table book, but for now holds puzzles and board books.
If your living room does everything too, this is for you. Here is how to organize your living room with your family when one room has to host, live and play, without turning it into a toy store or starting a renovation. Mostly it comes down to good storage doing the quiet work, so the room resets in about 15 minutes. And you can do anything for 15 minutes.
Why the family / living room is the hardest room to keep calm
The living room works harder than any room in the house. It’s where everyone lands at the end of the day, where guests sit, where you laugh, cry and dance to your own beat. It’s also where the whole family’s stuff collects, because everyone passes through.
That’s not a discipline problem. It’s a design problem. When the everyday things have nowhere to go, they land on the coffee table, the couch and the floor. Give them a home and the room looks calm even on a loud day. There’s a reason a tidier space lowers the stress you carry in your body, and I wrote about the clutter-and-cortisol connection here: How Organizing Transforms Your Home (and Your Cortisol Levels).
How to organize your living room with your family, one piece at a time
You don’t need twenty bins. You need a couple of pieces that do real work. In my own living room, that’s one cabinet and two kinds of baskets.
Start with closed storage: a living room cabinet
Closed storage is the single biggest win in a family living room, because it hides the everyday mess behind a door. One motion, and it’s gone.
Our cabinet is the Casement from Crate & Barrel. Ours is the blue one, and the black version is just as pretty and would slip into almost any room. Inside it live our games, photo albums, CDs, DVDs and my husband’s records. Yes, I know most of that is digital now. I’m a little old school, so there they are, an organizing project for another day. (Our CDs live in simple lidded CD bins so they stack neatly inside.)
If you’d like something similar at a friendlier price, there’s a storage cabinet on Amazon that’s close to ours in feel: closed doors, clean lines, a modern look.
What to keep in a living room cabinet: board games, photo albums, media, chargers, remotes, kids’ craft supplies, spare blankets. The rule is simple. If you reach for it in the living room, it can live in the living room, just behind a door.
Add baskets for everything that doesn’t need a door
Baskets are the workhorses of a living room. They corral without hiding, so the pretty-but-messy things look intentional instead of abandoned. I use two kinds: rectangle and round.
Rectangle baskets for shelves, inside the cabinet, or a nearby closet, to group the small stuff so it stays grouped. Round baskets for throw blankets, toys, balls, or whatever makes sense for your family.
For the toys themselves, I keep a set of bins to corral my son’s, some in the living room and some in his bedroom. Toys are the one category that multiplies overnight, so they earn a home of their own.
If you only do one thing today, pick the single surface in your living room that keeps ending up a pile, and give it a basket. That one move buys you a calmer room by tonight.
Beauty is the icing, not the foundation
A beautiful living room is lovely, but it isn’t the whole point. It’s also a room that works for your real family, resets in minutes, and is ready when company comes. Beauty is the icing. A place to put things is the foundation. Get the function right and then you’ll be able to see the beauty.
This matters even more as the season turns and the house fills with guests. If you want a gentle, faith-filled way through the busy months, I wrote one here: Anchored, Not Overwhelmed: A Faith-Filled Way to Organize Your Home During the Holidays.
Frequently Asked Questions
How do I keep my living room clean when I have kids?
Give the everyday stuff a home it can disappear into. A closed cabinet hides games, media and photo albums, and a basket or two catches blankets and toys. Then a quick 15-minute reset at night keeps it from building. Closed storage does the work so you don’t have to stay on top of it every hour.
What do you store in a living room storage cabinet?
The things you want close but not on display. In mine: board games, photo albums, CDs, DVDs and records. Chargers, remotes, kids’ craft supplies and spare blankets all work too. The rule is simple. If you reach for it in the living room, it can live in the living room, just behind a door.
How do I organize a whole room without feeling overwhelmed?
I use my G.R.A.C.E. Method: Gather like with like, Release what you don’t use, Acquire only the storage the keepers actually need, Cultivate by giving every item a home, and Enjoy the calm. One room at a time, and every single thing ends up with a place to belong.
Can a professional organizer help with just one room?
Yes, and the living room is a wonderful place to start, since it’s the room you and your guests see most. I work with busy moms on a single space or a whole home, in person or virtually. We build it around how your family actually lives, so it holds long after I leave. You can book a 1:1 with me, in person or virtual, and we’ll get started.
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