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We recently asked our readers to share some of their best organizing and home decorating tips with us. Well, we were flooded by your responses and ended up with a huge list of great decorating tips. What follows are 25 of the best and most interesting decorating tips that were submitted by you.

Please note, these tips were submitted anonymously, and no names or personal information will be posted without express written consent from the person who made the submission.

1. One of the things I did was to make my office more organized was to buy the individual parts to a shelf and hang them up. This way I was able to customize the shelves to my liking. It also allowed me to spray paint the parts and cut or modify them to how I saw fit. It allowed me to put books, cds and movies off the floor and clean up the book cases to put pictures or knick-knacks up.

2. Try to store things close to where they are used. This keeps things handy, more organized, and easier to use and put away.”,

3. Organization: Determine the best, most efficient and useful place for any and every item. After using it, ALWAYS return it to its “”home”". Your home will tidier and you won’t waste time searching for things like light bulbs. One spot for each of your household items. Pretend you’ll be quizzed on it. For example: Brooms? They are located in closet A and closet B.”,

4. One of my best home organization tips is also a decorating tip! When you get a bill in the mail, write out a check immediately for it and place it in a nice basket near the front door. In the upper right hand corner square where the postage stamp goes, write the date that you want to mail it in small print. Make sure the date is far enough from the due date for the bill to arrive in time. Each day on your way out the door, take a quick look through the basket for any bills with the current date written on it. When you get to a bill with the current date, put a postage stamp in the corner and mail it out! The basket keeps all of your bills organized and with this system, you’ll never miss a bill due date again.

5. I try to decorate my house for my comfort hoping that others that enter will be comfortable. I happen to like earth tones because they are relaxful to me.

6. Always use semi-gloss paint on your walls — not eggshell as so many of us have been taught! Semi-gloss adds a depth and richness to your rooms that looks especially lovely at night

7. Take a cardboard box and date it. Anything you aren’t sure you will need such as receipts, toys, buttons and anything else that usually clutters drawers and tabletops place in the box. After one year anything you haven’t gone back and retrieved just throw away and don’t look back.

8. Draperies and window covering treatments are very expensive. What I like to use is bed sheets and hang them from clips on a curtain rod. The excess material is a bonus for those old long windows; just let the material drape onto the floor gracefully.

9. My tip is a home organizing tip. As a mother to two small children I got very tired of walking into the family room and seeing toys all over the floor that they had got from their rooms and I had to battle the kids to take them back to their rooms. I went to Peir1 and purchased 2 medium sized wicker baskets. I picked decor that matched my western living room. I told the kids that they could fill their baskets with toys that they wanted to play with in the family room and that was the only toys allowed in the family room. So each of them filled the baskets with toys from their rooms that they wanted to be kept in the play room. Every couple of weeks I let them swap out toys if they want. This has worked so well because they do not have to go upstairs to take all the toys that thy have drug out back to their room and they have no problems putting the small amount of toys back into their basket. It helps mom out and helps the kiddos out as well.

10. If you are painting your living room, choose a color scheme that will match well with the flooring or carpet. Your main wall should be a shade darker than the rest of the walls in the room. If your room is small, add a big mirror to the main wall. The mirror will make your living room look bigger.

11. Always keep the things back in place after you are done with that. (I know it sound simple …but it’s not. Do you really feel like to keep the book back in the shelf after reading it? or when you leave the living room do you always keep the TV remote back in place?) Once the habit of it grows, it’s simple and your house remains organized and tidy.

12. Bring yourself into your home! You and your husband are unique. Personally, I love flowers, greenery and I love the ocean. My husband loves flowers and greenery and is an avid rockhound. We have various plants and flowers around our home, inside and out and I have incorporated my love of the ocean and his rocks/fossils by having several large round glass bowls with white sand in them…I have placed seashells and sea fossils into them. The whole idea of clear glass and white sands and greenery is peaceful and neat surroundings!

13. My secret to decorating a perfect house is to keep it simple. Focus on a few key accent pieces for a room and decorate around them. I bought a large porcelain rooster for my kitchen. The rooster inspired the wall color, which I picked out from the base of the statue, and bought kitchen towels, table cloth and seat covers cloth napkins, etc. That coordinated with the rooster thus pulling the room together. It makes it easy for when ready for a change to give the room a whole new look just by changing out the colors of your kitchen towels, table cloth and table accessories. The same with a living room, just by changing out the lamp shades and adding different color pillows or a couch cover is my secret to freshening up a room that I might be ready to make changes in, but don’t want to spend a lot of money!

14. one of my secrets for keeping my home organized is I get rid of all clutter. I also throw away loose things I don’t need, and don’t be a pack rat. There is so much out there we don’t realize we don’t really need, and i condense down as much as possible. I choose to decorate by what I’m feeling inside. If I’m feeling in the mood to show off my family, I put pictures on the wall and make the living room nice and cozy. If I’m in the mood to entertain I make it easy to get access to our video games and dvds. Its generally based on how you feel to make your home fit your needs

15. One way to add a lot of character to a home is to avoid commercializing the bathroom. Instead of large, unframed sheet mirrors over the sink or vanity, choose one or two uniquely framed mirrors that will add personality to the room. The look can be aided by choosing unique light switch and power outlet plates instead of the usual standard ones too.

16. When shopping for home decor, I try to find one item in a room that I like and then build all my decor around that object. For example, I had a painting of a windmill in a file of red flowers. I painted the wall behind that painting a dark red then scattered the same color throughout the house in the form of curtains, pillows, and paintings.

17. Acquire boxes that fit under your bed. Cover them with paint spray or brush on. Or cover them with contact type paper, or wrapping paper. Keep what You can store in them that You don’t use often but always need to be able to get Your hands on quickly. Like emergency supplies, e.g. flashlight for power outage, batteries in new pack for filling flashlight, first aid kit, emergency snack foods. Even important papers/pictures incase of natural or other disaster. This way You know where they are and You can even have them decorated, coded for most to least important.

18. To decorate: pick one main color that you like. Use lighter and darker shades of that color throughout for the main pieces - such as walls, furniture, window treatments. For accents, pick one or two contrasting colors in a different pattern, such as stripes, checkers, floral prints, etc.

19. I found a great way to spruce up some plain curtains in a kitchen window. I went and bought some fabric blocks at my local store and pinned them to the top of the curtain. Trying not to show the pins and put it on the rod, fixed it up so if was even. When I’m tired of that look I can always take it down and put something else in it’s place and it only cost me 9.00 for a fabric bundle. I can have a different look all the time.

20. A tip that I use to help keep my house organized is using clear Rubbermaid “”Shoe Box”" containers. I love using these boxes to help organize my daughter’s art supplies and other little toys she may have that really do not have a place. They may be too small to just toss in her toy box. I take these clear shoe boxes and fill them up with her supplies and toys and then on the one side I use pretty paper on one end. This way when I stack them in her room on the shelf, it looks like a pretty dressed up box, rather then seeing everything that is in it. Then if my daughter takes the boxes down to play, she doesn’t have to open them to see what’s inside; she just turns the boxes around to see the clear side. It has worked out great in our house and my daughter’s room is very organized and PRETTY!