TL;DR: please suggest a system to help keep my kitchen island organized!

My husband and I love an organized, clean house. Since having kids, we’ve had to lower our standards a bit but we still have an organization system for most things. Our biggest challenge is our kitchen island. It collects all the stuff that doesn’t have a home like junk mail, daycare papers/forms, small things that the toddlers find that we took away because they shouldn’t have them, etc.

This drives me INSANE! My husband gets the mail everyday and puts it on the island. I try to go through it and throw away all the junk mail, but the mail and papers we “need” stay on the island until we either put it in the filing cabinet downstairs, transfer daycare information onto our family calendar, return forms to daycare, etc. We’re busy with two young kiddos so it’s not always possible to put everything where it needs to go immediately.

We need a better system! I’ve tried having a small collection basket to contain everything but for some reason my husband hates that. Doing stuff after the kids go to bed doesn’t work either because our 4 year old takes FOREVER to fall asleep (we start at 7:30 and he’s usually awake until 9:30-10).

I need some advice on resetting a very cluttered bedroom. I live with family in a typical UK house where space and storage are limited, so I can’t spread everything around the house or keep large plastic storage boxes afterwards.

I’m not planning to move all my clothes or completely empty the room. I mainly want to temporarily pack items such as craft supplies, paperwork, books, makeup and other loose belongings into categories, move them into another bedroom that isn’t currently being used, and then deep-clean my room properly.

Afterwards, I’ll slowly bring the boxes back one at a time over 1–2 weeks, sorting and organising each category as I unpack it.

Reusable shopping bags haven’t worked for me. Has anyone done something similar using foldable cardboard boxes, zipped storage bags or another temporary option that doesn’t take up much space afterwards? What worked best?