{31 Days To organize the "hidden" areas of your home} Day 18~ Organize Your Car

Don't forget to leave a comment on Day 16~ Organize your purse to enter the give-a-way for the cosmetic bag.




Today I am going give you some tips on organizing your car. This seems to be one of the hardest areas to keep clean and organized for me. I have a little one who loves to "take" stuff with her but doesn't like to "take" it back into the house when we get home. So the first thing I have to make myself do on a weekly basis is to do what we call a 10 second tidy to clean out all the "stuff" we have left in the car. But after all is clean what types of things need to be kept in your car. Obviously, in the glove box I keep our registration and insurance info but after that what things come in handy and how should those things be stored? When we owned mini-vans I stored things in an under the bed plastic container under the last set of seats. My current vehicle is an SUV and because of the design of the seats there is no room to store anything under them. I do have a storage compartment near the back gate that is sunk into the floor. So what to store? Over the years the items have changed. One thing I kept in the car when my children were toddlers, and I didn't need to carry a diaper bag any longer, was an extra set of clothes in a plastic storage bag in case we had an accident of some sort. These days the things I keep in the storage area are: a roll of paper towels, a few plastic grocery bags, an umbrella, & jumper cables. On the back of the front seats there are two pockets. I like to keep some thin books or magazines to keep my daughter occupied while we are on the road. In the glove box, I like to keep a large plastic storage bag with extra napkins and coffee stirrers. The most unusual item that I keep in my car is a small local phone book. I cannot tell you how many times we have used it to call for store hours or to look up a restaurant's number to place a carry-out order. I keep it tucked in a door pocket. Years ago, our cell phone service charged a fee every time you called information for a number,  so it also saved us a little bit of money to be able to look up numbers ourselves. The spare tire and jack are built into the car so I didn't include those items but if your vehicle doesn't have them built in, it is a good idea to include these items.  I find the less we keep in the car the cleaner and more organized it stays.