HDYDI: Organize Keys

If you’re like me, you lose your keys. All the time.

There are a plethora of things I lose – my iPhone, my purse, my mind. After the millionth time, I finally decided to do something about it. This project took me less than 15 minutes, just a few dollars and almost all the supplies were already in the house.

We’ve had a “command center” in the house for many years. This great little piece I picked up at Target many moons ago for around $20. I really wish I would’ve thought to take a before photo. It was a mess. Dozens of keys hung on the hooks and coupons/gift cards and BoxTops were jammed in the dividers. It wasn’t pretty. But, look at it now!

First, I tested the loose keys.  Turned out we had an old front door key, an old shed key and a couple of “I have no idea” keys floating in there.

Then, I sorted the keys into categories (extra sets for both our vehicles, front door, shed, safety deposit box and even a neighbor set). The neighbor keys will be a quick grab when we head out of town and need to give a set to a friend. That’s quite a bit easier than taking keys off our own sets and remembering what key goes where.

After sorting, I added some simple colored key tags, found at The Home Depot, inserted labels and the keys were finally organized.

For all those gift cards and box tops, I used a super simple filing system. On the top, I have the eating out coupons. I slipped them into envelopes, added a sticky tab with the restaurant name and put them in alphabetical order. On the outside of the envelope I indicated the gift card amount. I used the same principal for the gift cards to other places, in the bin just below.

Here’s the entire system hanging on our wall. (Please forgive the horrific lighting. That hallway has no natural light!) The wall is adjacent to our garage entrance, so it’s a  convenient place and reminds us to hang our keys and insert any gift cards into the bins.

For more HDYDI posts, visit my How I Do It Page.