I Sent a Pro Organizer a Photo of My Small Bedside Table, and Now It’s So Functional

I’ve been going around my apartment decluttering and organizing space by space. I love the term “incremental progress” and feel this is exactly what I’m doing: aiming to make improvements to my home gradually, mindfully, and simply. I’ve since tackled my small entryway, and even my tiny bathroom. The next area on my list was the bedside table. 

My bedside table had no sense of order to it at all. The drawer was a “junk drawer” of unknown things, the top surface became a drop zone for stuff, and as shameful as it feels to admit, I sometimes opened the top drawer and balanced books and larger items on it to extend the small surface area … Yikes!

I decided to seek the guidance of Linda Samuels, certified professional organizer and owner of Oh, So Organized!, to see what I could do to make my bedside table more organized. Here’s what I did thanks to her suggestions.

The first thing I did was remove everything from the bedside table. I also  gave it a complete wipedown with antibacterial surface wipes. Then, I created three piles of items on my floor for each section of the table (the surface, the drawer, and the cubby): stuff to discard, items to relocate, and items to store back in or on the bedside table in a more orderly manner.

Linda suggested breaking down my decluttering this way to help prevent overwhelm, but I also found it incredibly useful for when it came to organizing items back into the space. I was surprised to learn that most of what was in my junk drawer could actually go in the recycling bin: old bus tickets, envelopes from past mail, some receipts, and so on.

After discarding any trash, I undertook what Linda called the “edit and reroute.” It involves asking yourself questions about your stuff, such as whether or not you truly need the item and, if you did need it, did it have to go specifically on or inside your bedside table or somewhere else.  Items I didn’t reach for like my portable CD players I stored elsewhere in the space, and I immediately noticed how removing even a few larger items from the table made the space look much clearer.

At this point I was left with what I wanted to put back into or onto my bedside table. Samuels encouraged me to review my keep items and take a moment to evaluate where made the most sense on the table to place each item. “For instance, the books, CDs, and journals are heavy and bulky, so it makes sense to store them in the open cubby below the drawer,” she explains. “Tissues and the alarm clock make sense ‘living’ on the top surface so you can easily access them.”

Finally, I began placing my items back into each part of the bedside table with some added storage solutions. I placed a shallow bamboo tray similar to these Bamboo Dinner Trays on Amazon on the top to keep my books together and the surface looking intentionally minimal. I’ve been trying to read more lately so I wanted to make my book area inviting.

I also added three little woven fabric baskets similar to these decorative woven fabric storage baskets from Walmart into my former junk drawer to create categories for my items as well as give them an easy drop-zone style home. The first basket held lip balms and self-care items, the next writing supplies for jotting down late-night ideas, and the last held snacks because I’m totally a snack person and often work on my bed so it’s convenient to have snacks nearby.

I removed some of the bulkier items from the cubby shelf to display my books better and make them more accessible, and I also got a library card so I don’t feel as much of a desire to accumulate more books than I truly want or need. I’m excited to use my freshly organized space as well as the library more as a byproduct of the process.