Organize by Bucket

Whenever I have to clean something out such as a junk drawer, closet, playroom, bedroom or bathroom I use buckets or other similar containers.  Stuff seems to migrate in my house from one area to another, they are always on the move.  I find that instaed of making piles of stuff put them in a bucket.

Find conatiners. (I used my kids' Easter buckets today.)
I also use: laundry baskets, shoe boxes, bowls, large clean yogurt conatiners, baskets, bins and whatever is handy.
Just as long as it can hold the stuff you need to sort and move.

Find your mess and start sorting.
Pick an area for each bucket to represent.
For example: Upstairs, downstairs, garage, playroom, bathroom, kitchen, bedroom and so on.
Place items that belong in the area the bucket represents and place them in the bucket.

Once you are done sorting take each bucket to the place the represent and put the stuff away where it belongs.

The buckets also work great with kids.  I will give each of my kids a bucket and a task.
It might be collect everything that belongs in your room.
I also use it in the playroom and assign each child a particular toy to put in their bucket: such as only Barbies or Thomas the Trains stuff.
Sometimes I have them clean until their bucket is full and once thay fill it and put the stuff away thay can go and play.  I do this a few times during they day and by the end I have a cleaner house and they did not mind helping because it was only a few minutes each time.