January in Canada is the right time to reset. The holidays leave behind extra stuff — gifts, packaging, food, decoration — and the apartment absorbs all of it. By early January, a small apartment that worked well in November can feel genuinely cramped. A reset fixes that. Not a full renovation, not a new furniture purchase — a systematic declutter and reorganize that gets the space back to a baseline that works. I do this every January in my 510 sq ft Toronto apartment, and it reliably makes the whole year easier. According to CMHC, the majority of urban Canadian renters live in apartments under 750 sq ft. In spaces this size, clutter has an outsized impact — and so does clearing it.
TL;DR: Declutter before you organize — removing excess is the step that makes everything else work. Start in the bedroom and closet (Saturday morning), move to the kitchen and pantry (Saturday afternoon), then the living area, bathroom, and entryway (Sunday). The entire reset takes one weekend if you stay in sequence and don’t stop to organize before decluttering.
Why January Is the Right Time
The end of the holiday season is the highest-clutter point of the year in most small apartments. You have:
- Holiday gifts (some of which you won’t use)
- Packaging and bags that haven’t been broken down
- Extra food from holiday cooking and hosting
- Seasonal decor that needs to be stored
- Winter clothing piled up because storage is full
January is also a natural mental reset. Before the new routine of the year sets in, a physical reset creates the conditions for it. The two reinforce each other.
The January Reset Sequence
Do every room in this order. Finish one room completely before starting the next.
- Bedroom and closet
- Kitchen and pantry
- Living area
- Bathroom
- Entryway
This sequence prioritizes the rooms with the highest daily impact. Bedroom first because it is where you start and end every day. Kitchen second because it is the room most affected by holiday food accumulation. Living area, bathroom, and entryway follow.
1. Bedroom and Closet Reset
The bedroom closet is where the most clutter hides in a small apartment. January is the moment to open it fully and make decisions.
Declutter the closet completely:
- Pull everything out — every item
- Every piece of clothing: keep only what was worn in the past 12 months
- Holiday gifts of clothing: try on now, decide now
- Shoes: if you didn’t wear them in 2025, donate
- Bedding extras: one spare set is enough — more than that is taking space from things you actually use
The closet organization reset:
Slim velvet hangers (~$18 CAD at Amazon.ca) immediately free 30–40% of rod space. After decluttering, this alone may solve most of the closet problem. Hang by category: tops, bottoms, dresses, outerwear. Heavy winter coats go at the far end or on a separate hook.
Folded items: use shelf dividers (~$12–$15 CAD at IKEA Canada) to keep stacks from collapsing. Jeans, sweaters, and knitwear fold better than they hang anyway.
Under-bed storage:
January is the right time to reassess what lives under the bed. IKEA SKUBB under-bed bags (~$14 CAD) compress seasonal items — summer clothes, extra bedding — flat under the frame. Clear bins with lids work for anything you need to see and access occasionally.
2. Kitchen and Pantry Reset
The kitchen accumulates more over the holidays than any other room.
Pantry and food storage:
- Empty the pantry completely
- Check every expiry date — holiday baking ingredients, canned goods from November
- Remove duplicates: if you have three open bags of the same pasta, consolidate
- Donate non-expired items you genuinely won’t use
Organize what stays:
Clear stackable bins (~$5–$8 CAD each at Amazon.ca or IKEA Canada) by category work far better than loose items on shelves. Label each bin: grains, canned goods, snacks, baking, breakfast. Items behind other items get forgotten — bins solve this.
Kitchen tools and appliances:
The holiday season tends to surface appliances that only come out once a year. January is when you decide: does this earn its space? In a small apartment kitchen, every inch of cabinet space is at a premium. A panini press used twice a year does not earn a cabinet.
The under-sink cabinet:
Usually the most chaotic spot in a small apartment kitchen. In January, empty it completely. Install a tension rod across the middle to hang spray bottles. Use a turntable (~$10–$15 CAD) for products at the back. This one cabinet often looks dramatically better in 20 minutes.
3. Living Area Reset
The living area collects holiday decor, gifts, bags, and overflow from everywhere else.
Remove holiday decor now:
Box it, label the box by category (lights, ornaments, textiles), and store it. Label clearly — December-you will thank January-you. Boxes at Wayfair Canada or even repurposed shipping boxes from holiday deliveries work fine.
Declutter the shelves and surfaces:
After the holidays, surfaces tend to have accumulated items that don’t belong there. January reset rule: every surface gets cleared completely, then only intentional items go back. If you can’t name why something is on a shelf, it doesn’t go back.
Reset the storage ottoman or media console:
These fill up fast over winter. Empty them in January, assess what’s inside, and only return what belongs.
4. Bathroom Reset
The bathroom accumulates slowly and gets ignored until it’s suddenly very full.
Product audit:
- Check expiry dates on every skincare, haircare, and medication product
- Remove anything not used in the past 3 months
- The rule for duplicates: finish one before opening the next
Counter reset:
In a small apartment bathroom, the counter should hold only daily-use items — everything else in a cabinet or drawer. January is the time to enforce this. A small tray (~$10–$20 CAD at Wayfair Canada) corrals daily items and stops the counter from accumulating.
Under-sink:
Same approach as the kitchen. Empty completely, group by category (cleaning products, spare toiletries, hair tools), and use bins to keep groups together.
5. Entryway Reset
The entryway in a Canadian winter apartment takes serious abuse — wet boots, heavy coats, scarves, gloves.
January transition:
The deep-of-winter entryway needs to be functional above all else. Reduce it to the essentials:
- One hook per household member for daily-use outerwear
- One designated spot for daily footwear (boot tray if wet boots are an issue)
- One spot for keys, transit cards, and daily-carry items
Everything else — seasonal footwear, extra bags, rarely-used outerwear — moves to the closet or under-bed storage.
What to add if the entryway is chaotic:
A door-mounted organizer on the back of the entry closet door (~$25–$35 CAD at Amazon.ca) holds gloves, scarves, small items, and does not require drilling. An IKEA KALLAX unit at the entry, if space allows, functions as bench seating, shoe storage, and surface for daily items simultaneously.
The January Reset Shopping List
If you want to make improvements during the reset, these are the highest-impact buys for a small Canadian apartment:
| Item | Approx. Cost (CAD) | Where |
|---|---|---|
| Slim velvet hangers (50-pack) | ~$18 | Amazon.ca |
| Clear stackable bins with lids (6-pack) | ~$30–$40 | Amazon.ca / IKEA Canada |
| IKEA SKUBB under-bed bags | ~$14 | IKEA Canada |
| Over-door organizer | ~$25–$35 | Amazon.ca / Wayfair Canada |
| Pantry turntable (lazy susan) | ~$10–$15 | Amazon.ca |
| Shelf dividers (4-pack) | ~$12–$15 | IKEA Canada |
| Boot tray | ~$15–$25 | Amazon.ca / Wayfair Canada |
Total for the full list: under $160 CAD. Most apartments only need 2–3 of these items to see a significant improvement.
The January Reset Rules
These three rules make the difference between a reset that holds and one that reverts by February:
1. Declutter before you organize. Organizing around clutter is why organization systems fail. Remove the excess first — what remains is always easier to organize.
2. Every item needs a home. If something doesn’t have a specific place, it will end up on a surface. During the reset, every item either gets a home or leaves the apartment.
3. Systems have to fit the way you actually live. A beautiful organization system that requires too many steps to maintain will not be maintained. The best system is the one you can keep up in 5 minutes a day.
The January reset takes one weekend. By Sunday evening, the apartment is at a better baseline than it was in November — before the holidays added everything it collected. From there, the systems you reset or installed do the ongoing work. For the room-by-room organization system that keeps a small apartment working through the rest of the year, small apartment organization ideas covers every room in depth. And for the budget-conscious version — the highest-impact changes under $100 CAD — small apartment organization ideas on a budget prioritizes what to tackle first.
→ Once the apartment is reset, small space kitchen organization gives you the full system for keeping the kitchen — the room that fills fastest — working all year.
