In our last house we had a different fridge. We unfortunately couldn’t take it with us because it wouldn’t have fit in our new house. It was a pretty good fridge & I really miss it. Wahhh. I think this fridge that we have now is from my childhood. The one before that was avocado green! I secretly wish we still had it.

Our fridge now works for the most part and we’ve been living with it (it leaks and makes really loud noises!) but I feel like it should be called the GREAT FOOD HIDER. I swear, I never really know what I have in there because I have to stand back 5 feet to see way in the back of it.

I was having a really good Sunday in the kitchen last week and decided to go through my fridge again and weed it out & set the tone for the week. Sometimes that’s all it takes to get my head back in the game.

Here’s the kitchen. This is the kitchen I learned how to cook in! It’s changed a lot over the years.

Are you ready to see inside? It’s kinda packed. Go ahead…snoop!

There’s really no rhyme or reason for anything. I’ve been living in the SHOVE stuff in here mode.

It’s not really that fun. I have no idea what’s in there half the time.

So I started sorting everything.

And cleaning…a soapy rag makes a huge difference.

Especially with the yucky parts. Dang jam!

We also have a part of the fridge that leaks…water collects down here and I have to use a turkey baster to get it out every other day. YIKES!

This is the current sate of our fridge. Things are way more organized. I also weeded out a bunch of old stuff.

I probably could have done a better job “styling” the drawers but THIS IS REAL LIFE.

All it takes is meal time and the chi can get disrupted.

Have mercy! There’s actually some empty spots to put food now.

I bought a few pull out bins from the Container Store. They’re fantastic.

This bin is for tubs of things–like cream cheese, sour cream, dips, etc.

This narrow pullout bin is for almond butters & such.

I sorted all of my jars/condiments and created sections for myself.

I’m sticking to it!

I really hope that I can keep this up!  The freezer is next!

In our old house I had my jewelry pretty organized. Remember when I went through my bathroom & cleaned it all out?   In our house now we have a cabinet under the sink where I keep the tupperware drawers of my jewelry (bracelets, earrings & hair doo-dads) hidden. I like that it’s concealed but I realized that I am not wearing a fraction of my accessories because I don’t see it all the time.

But…my mom put up all of these hooks in her bathroom….and I couldn’t resist hanging my necklaces on them. I really liked the access, but I found it super cluttered and really couldn’t see what necklaces I have in my arsenal. Everything is just lumped together. I have lived with this for the past year and then one day I found myself in the clearance section at The Container Store…

I walked down those aisles staring at each item…trying to come up with organizing schemes in our house. And low and behold in the SALE section, I found a few organizers. What attracted me was:

• the price (nothing more attractive than a RED sticker at The Container Store)
• that I could see all of my accessories at once
• I could have it out of sight in my closet, yet still have easy access to it.

This is the first one that I bought. You can find it online here.

I decided to get this other one too because I thought it would work well with all of the small studded earrings I have.

So here I am going through all of my loose jewelry….

I put my earrings in this one. On the other side I have pendants & rings. It’s only 1/4 full on the other side.

And I hung up my necklaces on this one.

They are grouped by kind/like. Now I can access a necklace based on kind!

Here they are in action! I have them at the end of my closet so I can see them when I immediately open the door.

I’m hoping these organizers help remind me that I have a nice collection of stuff to jazz up my outfits. Or maybe it will inspire me to get rid of some…

Hello Friends!!

So a few weeks ago I set out to merge all of my emails to Gmail. How’s it going? Hmm….I’m still trying to figure it all out. When I imported my email addresses, thousands of emails merged and made this task SUPER daunting. You might remember that I am merging 5 email addresses into my Gmail account so I can have Gmail be the hub for my addresses.  It took me a few days to get on top of it and move things out of my inbox and archive. To be honest, I’m still not done with it all because I feel like it’s super disorganized within all of my folders. It’s also taken some time getting used to searching for things within my inboxes.

What have I learned? That you MUST commit to blasting your email ASAP.

I had to change my thought process for when an email comes in to:

• Does this email require action?
• Do I need to keep this for later/archive it?
• What folder does this need to go in?
• Is this personal or Shutterbean related?

I also spent the first week blasting all of the subscribed emails. If I got an email from a list I didn’t want to be on, I unsubscribed IMMEDIATELY. It was super gratifying and I feel a tremendous sense of relief not to have all of those nagging/unnecessary emails.

What’s the biggest takeaway from this?  You HAVE to make a big effort to keep on top of your Inbox. Everything in life requires maintenance.  In life you have to keep on top of EVERYTHING and create rules and systems or else you drown. I have also realized that I have a huge problem with starting something and jumping right in and figuring things out as I go. This can get me into trouble because I don’t always understand how I am going to use something….and then months/years later the task of reorganizing is just so dang overwhelming. I can’t tell you how much work I had to do on my website re-design because I didn’t tag & categorize my posts properly. So with this Inbox thing, I’m taking things a little slower so I make sure I’m doing things correctly. It’s a learning process!

What’s next? Continue tackling my inbox and hopefully get around to deleting unnecessary items from both my phone & computer in the next few weeks.

WISH ME LUCK.

You  might remember the last time I cleaned out my pantry…it was in a different house!

Now that we’ve lived in our new old house for almost a year (holy crap!) it’s time for me to evaluate my space.  I’ve contracted the Spring Cleaning Bug and I’m really into organizing lately (thank God!) so I decided to go through my pantry yesterday and purge/organize. On a side note, I think it’s important to live with your space for awhile when you first move in and see how you use it. Then regroup!

Let’s look at the before.

This is a high traffic closet. We’re opening it up CONSTANTLY in my house. And since it’s been quite untidy for the past few months, it really freaks me out when someone else leaves it open (COUGH COUGH COOPER).

I started sorting the shelves. This time I decided to do one shelf at a time. I thought I’d be too overwhelmed with pulling it out at once. It made it waaaaaay more manageable.

More sorting…and emptying jars…

I ended up going through all of the food and tossing what expired. It’s good to go through your pantry every few months to see what you need to get rid of/need to add. I like to do a BIG sort twice a year and then every few months straighten things up.

Let’s talk about some sections, shall we?

Top row contains all my specialty flours & things I don’t need as often. Because the top shelf is high up and has a lot of head room, I decided to put big bottles (like oil & white vinegar up there)

Shelf below contains all of my potions!

I decided to break things up into sections.

Vinegars & Oils to the left… and Asian & Mexican ingredients in the middle.

Condiments like Mustard, Cookie Butter & Peanut Butter…

And to the right we have sweeteners! Honey…Molasses…etc.

The section below this one contains all my sugar/flour and baking needs.

I have my vanilla & chocolate section.

I labeled some of my glass jars. This is my grain/rice/bean section.

I did tidying up on the row below…sorting like with like.

To the right I have rice/grains/beans in glass jars.

Nuts/Dried Fruits/Crackers & Snacks below….

Another look…

The GRAND AFTER!!!!!

Let’s hope I keep it this tidy for months to come! Wish me luck.

Last week on the podcast, Joy & I talked briefly about managing our email inboxes. I’m at a point where it’s getting out of control and I need to take ACTION. We received quite a few comments/emails  from our listeners with suggestions on how to manage email. It was SUPER helpful, so thank you!

In the next few weeks I plan to streamline  my inbox(es). I currently have 5 different email addresses- One hotmail, one gmail, some old one from years ago and two that belong to my website.  I use the ones associated with my website constantly and the other three I have for what I consider “junk” mail. The problem with the junkmail accounts is that they are FILLED with daily emails from newsletters I subscribed to A LONG TIME AGO. Real talk: My hotmail account has 20k emails and they’re all pure crap. I call that email the BLACK HOLE.  It doesn’t stress or overwhelm me because it’s not an address that I normally use. I just feel a tremendous amount of shame for letting it go and getting to that ridiculous number.

So I’m ready to power up and TACKLE.

MY OBJECTIVE:

-clean out my junk inboxes/unsubscribe to as many newsletters as possible (this may take awhile)

-create folders in my inbox and sort emails (one of our listeners suggested sorting emails into boxes based on ACTION). I like this idea because sometimes flagging something isn’t enough for me remember to take action. And sometimes I don’t need something until later so it would be helpful to have a folder for archiving. I hope to have the following FOLDERS:

INBOX: A place for sorting (ideally, this area should be cleared out CONSTANTLY)

ARCHIVE: A place for storing information I need to reference at a later date.

ACTION: Emails that require follow-up (once finished, they will either be trashed or moved to ARCHIVE)

RECEIPTS: I’ll put anything tax-related/blog related into this folder

I was contemplating merging all of my emails account into Gmail and having that as a hub for my email addresses. Do you do this? Is it worth it? I was thinking it would be a good option for someone like me who doesn’t always use the same computer to write/read emails.

I suspect this is going to take A LONG TIME, but I know that once I have a better way to manage this, email might not get out of hand. In the process I would like to work on managing my contact list. The amount of information I have scattered on different devices is frightening. I need to get it merges & centralized!

If you have any tips/tricks you’d like to share before I go FULL FORCE with the email purge, please let me know! I can’t wait to get my inbox down to ZERO!

After spending a week away from home on a MUCH needed vacation, I came home feeling refreshed and ready to start anew.  I also felt a bit worried about falling back into our chaotic routine. It was really nice to have a break from the day-to-day because I was able to evaluate what aspects I missed and figure out a few habits/behaviors I want to change around the house.

In my Organizing Goals for 2013, I wanted to figure out how to change/pinpoint bad habits that contribute to our home mess. Having some distance from my routine really helped me figure out what I want to change, so here we go!

-One of the main reasons why things get chaotic and unkempt around the house is the fact that we are all doing too many things at once. I am super guilty of this behavior. As someone who takes on too many things at once (including making multiple recipes in the kitchen at a time!) I feel like most of the time the tornado that I make in the process of doing something isn’t worth the hassle. I also have a 4 year old who adds additional mess to the situation, but that’s not something that I can entirely control.

I think it would help if I reminded myself that I need to SLOW DOWN and BE MINDFUL of my actions. If I slow down, I am less likely to make more of a mess and I won’t spill things as often.  If an action takes a few seconds (like putting away my clothes or putting back a pair of scissors after I’ve used it) I should just DO IT. Because when I have a whole bunch of little things that pile up, it overwhelms me and I feel paralyzed. Plus it’s not rewarding to clean up a bunch of little things. It never ends!

-The weeks go by so fast and I never feel like I have enough time to do all of the things I accomplish. It’s frustrating! Spending a lot of time without reliable internet connection on our vacation made me realize that I waste a lot of time messing around on my phone. I know that my whole family could benefit from me being away from the computer/phone more often. If I have my head in too many places at once, I get stressed. I am guilty of getting short tempered with my son if he’s interrupting me while I’m reading an important email on my phone.  The fact is, if I am around him most of what happens on the internet/computer SHOULD WAIT.

How do I combat this? Set boundaries for myself. My phone and computer usage could be off limits during certain times of day. One of the first things I do is look at my phone when I wake up and then I get sucked in the zone of Facebook/Twitter/Instagram/Shutterbean checking. And once I start doing that I keep getting worked up. It can actually alter my mood.  I’ve been testing the waters and ditching my phone while I get ready for work and it’s already helping my productivity. I hope that in the future, I can increase my time away from the phone/computer. Perhaps spending on weekend day unplugged might do the trick? Maybe I could do what Shauna does and not check my phone/email/computer until after I drop Cooper off at preschool. I think it would take a lot of effort, but it could prove to be rewarding.

And with that said, if I have more time to get things done (in a productive/uninterrupted manner) I could actually get ahead of my schedule and do things ahead of time so I’ll be able to build in more relaxing/creative time for myself & family. Perhaps setting timers on my phone so I can go a period of time without using it will help? We’ll see!

-I have a lot of stuff. The problem with having a lot of stuff means that I have to MANAGE a lot of stuff.  I’m constantly trying to manage things, some items get lost in the shuffle. This means I end up buying a lot of things that I already have. It is EXTREMELY annoying to find out that I already have agave syrup when I just bought more? I went through a period of time thinking I didn’t have dish soap and ended up buying three separate containers to find out that I had a few tucked deep in the back of my kitchen cabinet.

I could benefit greatly from setting out time and going through all of our cabinets and getting rid of things I need/don’t need. If I have a designated spot for items, I would be able to glance at the space where I keep q-tips and know that I need more q-tips. In a perfect world, this would be easy. Am I too much of a micro-manager? I dunno.

The fact is, I have to be on top of getting rid of unnecessary items in my house. If I don’t buy new/unnecessary things, I’ll be happier because it means that I have less to manage and we’ll save money. It’s a win/win situation.

-For a long time I used to do laundry one day a week. I really thought that was the right way to do it. Turns out it doesn’t really work for me. When my mom suggested that I do a laundry multiple times a week, I thought she was crazy. It seemed like I would be doing nothing but laundry. Turns out that processing one load of a laundry a night makes it REALLY easy to stay on top of laundry. This one little change has made such a difference!

I am sure there are other ways I can help streamline our day/routine. I always appreciate finding new ways of seeing things and shaking up my routine.

In the next year, I hope to simplify, be more mindful and find new ways of operating that will help my productivity/sanity. It’s going to take a lot of patience and perseverance but I know it will be worth it!

Have you made any big discoveries yourself recently? Are there any shortcuts you’ve found that made a HUGE impact on your sanity? I’d love to hear!

Before we moved into our new/old house there were already a few drawers in the family room allocated for toys.These drawers house my nieces old toys and some of Cooper’s toys that my parents saved for when he visited.  So when we unpacked, we all just threw Cooper’s toys in there without any rhyme or reason. I knew that one day I’d clean out/organize them and that day came a few weeks ago!  We’re on week 3 of organized drawers and it’s going really well so far!

Let’s look at the before:

Drawers from the side. There are two of them.

It was just a THROW IT IN and PRAY IT FITS situation.

I started removing stuff from the drawers. There were things in there from my childhood!

I had a few piles for sorting:

STUFF THAT GOES UPSTAIRS

STUFF THAT GETS DONATED

STUFF THAT DEFINITELY DOESN’T BELONG IN HERE

BOOKS

ROGUE TOYS, ETC.

I also went through the toys and donated the ones Cooper doesn’t play with anymore. That’s liberating!

These crayons are from my childhood. There were SO many random things in that bin.

Old lip gloss, staples, glitter, broken pencils, YOU NAME IT. It traveled to Sort-town.

The crayons are now in a container that has a lid!

I also sorted all of Cooper’s art supplies and put it in a portable basket so we can grab them all out when we want to do an art project!

His art supplies, puzzles & board games are in this one cabinet next to the drawers.

And after about an hour of sorting, the drawers looked like this:

I used old boxes/tupperware to separate some of the toys.

And in the other drawer I separated things in bins.

LEGOS / ACTION HEROES / CARS

I’ve found that when I give Cooper some guidelines of where things go, he keeps with it!

Hallelujah.

A few years ago I started organizing the Cooper’s first year’s worth of clothes and then stopped.  I guess I lost steam or I put my attention other places? Maybe I just wasn’t ready to deal with the emotions of putting my baby’s clothes away. Yeah, that’s it. I also needed to sort through the clothes we borrowed from my sister-in-law and separate ours. I always figured that would take awhile…

I’ve been storing his clothes in garbage bags…

When we moved, we put all of these garbage bags filled with Cooper’s clothes in the garage. They’ve  been staring me in the face everyday when I come in from the car. It’s time to do something with them!

They were labeled so…we’re kinda close to organizing, right?

First things first. Get plastic bins & sort. I bought a bunch of 66QT. Sterilite bins at Target for this project.

I want to tell you one small/big mistake I see when people organize. They don’t take the sticker off of the plastic bins. WHY NOT?

TAKE IT OFF. And if you have a problem with taking off stickers, Goo Gone is your friend cuz it’s my  friend and we can share friends.

Taking off the sticker seals the deal. You’re on your way to organizing nirvana!

I went through and sorted all of the clothes.

Sorting in progress…

Turns out that some of the clothes were in the wrong bag. Good thing I went through and looked at all of the tags.

We could have been missing out on some prime clothes cuz they were in the wrong bin!

Here I am organizing. I decided to lay all of the t-shirts flat and roll them up to fit in the tupperware. I decided not to individually fold all of the clothes because chances are if we have another kid, or if someone gets gifted all of these clothes, they’ll wash them beforehand to freshen them up. The clothes are already clean…but you know what I’m saying.

It saved room and TIME. Time is important. Time is what prevents me from doing things.

I had a little helper who kept telling me “I LOVED THIS SHIRT! Look! It’s my favorite shoes!”

Also…he is wearing the hat that he would never let me keep on his head. WHY IS HE MESSING WITH ME LIKE THIS?!

To finish off my project, I printed out little signs to put on the insides of all of the bins.

They just slip right in when the bins are full. You don’t have to tape them. I printed out two labels for each bin so we can see what stage clothes they’re for when they’re stacked. I can’t tell you how good this feels.

I already have a bin in Cooper’s closet labeled 4T. I’m already getting a head start on organizing! s Now it’s time to introduce these bins to the ones waiting downstairs. Newborn to 3T is DONE.

MY KID’S CLOTHES ARE ORGANIZED!!  Finally.

I’m baaaaaaaaaaack. December was a doozy. Things were so hectic with planning/entertaining that it barely left room for me to keep myself organized. December literally took the life out of me. For real. I am really not sure how I managed to breathe, but I now know that I will take on less obligations in December. The first few days of the New Year were spent getting my house back to normal. It’s pretty crazy how much better I felt once I purged all of the holiday leftovers & cleaned out my fridge! REFRESHING! I hope you’re starting the new year right!

Anyways. I am happy to be here and I am happy you’re here. I have missed you.

I want to set a course of action for this year. I had a list last year, but we when we moved, a majority of those items became irrelevant. We’re still settling into our new/old house. Things are starting to take shape and we have ideas of what we want to do. With that said, let’s talk about my goals!

-finally organize Cooper’s old clothes (seriously lagging on this one)

-do a master purge of unnecessary items in our house/craigslist stuff

-change/pinpoint bad habits that contribute to our home mess

-manage my calendar efficiently

-clean out/manage my computer files

-purge art supplies & organize what’s left

-finish the bar cabinet by adding more shelving

-find a better system to organize my photography props

-create a system for organizing Cooper’s toys

-clean out/ organize the garage

-clean out the room that stores all of my parent’s items

-set up a laundry station

-make a master list of all of the home improvement projects we plan to tackle this year

-go through the kitchen & evaluate the use of each cabinet/purge/organize

-organize the inside of Cooper’s bathroom cabinet

That’s what I have so far. I am pretty sure there will be more items to add. I can’t wait to tackle this this year.

Just a side note- I’ll be posting every other Wednesday this year.

2013, LET’S DO THIS!!!

Hello Hello!  It’s been awhile. Things have been super busy in my neck of the woods. HOLIDAYS!!! Ahh.

Here’s a small project that I worked on that made a HUGE impact on our life. When we first moved into our house, I put all of our liquor in the cabinet above our oven. It was fine for awhile and then I got frustrated because the cabinet is higher than eye level so it was hard for me to see what we had. I was pleased that everything fit, but I didn’t quite know what I had and how much booze was in each bottle. Also…the oven made my booze warm. NO LIKE.

I decided to turn this small/awkward corner closet in our dining room into our Bar Closet. I’ve wanted a bar cart for awhile but realized it would be super impractical with a kid in our household. I figured it would be good if our alcohol was not out in plan sight. I can mask my boozy ways if I have to. Hehe. So, let’s get started.

I cleaned it out and began!

Here’s the AFTER. As you can see, it’s now possible for me to know what I’ve got in our loot.

Casey asked me if I separated the alcohol by type. My answer is NO. I didn’t like the idea of bottles being different sizes in each section. As you can see I organized things by height. I did place my gin in the center of the bottom shelf because I can see it RIGHT AWAY. I think it’s visually pleasing this way. It appeals to my high straightenence tendencies.

The cool thing about having enough room for a bar closet it is this nice shelf dedicated to mixers!

I can easily see what I need to add when I need to go on a beverage run.

And there’s a little section I have for bitters, tools, garnishes & small bottles of alcohol I wanted to try but wasn’t ready to commit to a big bottle….

Now…what would you like to drink?

Hello! I’m baaaaaack.  The past few weeks have been somewhat chaotic so I haven’t had any major organizing projects in the works. We’re also still moving my parent’s stuff out of the house, so we can only do so much before we’re officially settled. I feel like once that happens, I can start making our master TO DO list which I hope to share with you.

I have been doing little things around the house though…hoping they all add up to something. I find that in moments of stress, it’s important for me to focus some energy on the little things that make me feel better—like straightening up. Having a cleared/organized space clears my head. But you already know this about me.

I was reading this article 33 Meticulous Cleaning Tricks for the OCD Person and #33 was that ANYTHING & EVERYTHING MUST HAVE A PLACE. There’s so much truth to that. Most of the stress I feel when I’m at home is caused by the chaos of things not being put back in their proper place. It’s also hard that a lot of things don’t have a designated spot still!

So let’s begin with me figuring out where to put my makeup FOR GOOD.

Remember when I organized my bathroom in our old house?  In the new house our master bathroom has a a pretty long counter with cabinets. This means we have drawers!  For awhile I refused to use the drawer on my side to put my makeup in. I put everything in my makeup bag that I’ve been using for years and kept it on the counter and then the drawer was filled with random stuff. Then I realized that having that makeup bag out adds clutter and that clutter adds to my stress level.

EXHIBIT A:

This is how I was keeping my drawer before the great ORGANIZE.  Yes…I have Carmex addiction. Shut it.

Now we have the AFTER!!!!!!!

I’ve been living with a makeup drawer for the past 3 weeks and not only have I kept it tidy, it’s helping me keep my bathroom counter clean. WIN!

Another view:

I made specific sections for my makeup. At first I really had to train myself to put things back but now it’s in my brain.

Hooray for muscle memory.

Life is manageable when things have their own place. Right?

I love notebooks. I always have and I am pretty sure I always will. The problem I find with notebooks is that I don’t always finish them. There’s something that makes me lose steam and jump ship. Am I alone here? Maybe it’s just that I love a clean slate and starting over? Maybe I get bored easily? Maybe I would finish writing in an entire notebook if it was ORGANIZED. We shall see about that.

It all started with a fancy Moleskine I bought at the beginning of the summer. It’s designed for projects. I’m a project person!

There were a few stickers in the notebook to help section of the pages. BRILLIANT.

I also used washi tape to make the sides of my indexed sections more prominent.

I started to take this idea a little bit further and I came up with a system of how I wanted to organize my notebook.

If you look up at the top, you’ll notice that I created an index for myself.

FOOD

BLOG STUFF

GOALS & DREAMS

TO DO LISTS

This would be my food section. I created a header page on the index.

Once again…washi!

This is the section where I write down recipes to make. It makes me feel good to have a map of my kitchen endeavors.

You can also see that the Moleskine has a bookmark. I appreciate that in a book.

One of the most used sections is my TO-DO Lists.

I make lists here. I’ll add post-its of things I’ve written down when I don’t have my book with me.

I keep a few post-its in the back of the book so I can make a list on the go- or remind myself of something.

All of my TO-DO lists start with a date, and when something is done, I cross it off. BAM.

This is what the notebook looks like on the side. I can easily get to the sections I need to access.

Oh! I also like to keep a print-out of my Google Calendar in my notebook so I can jot down stuff.

Time seems to pass by quickly and since I’m a visual person, it’s important for me to have a visual of what’s going on.

This is also how I plan my posts on my website. I wish I could be a person that is a 100% computer user, but there’s just something about a paper calendar that gets me every time. It just makes sense to me.

So there you have it. I’m about 3 months in and still carry this notebook around & write in it daily.

]]> http://homefries.com/2012/10/10/organized-my-notebook/feed/ 38 http://homefries.com/2012/10/03/asking-for-help/ http://homefries.com/2012/10/03/asking-for-help/#comments Wed, 03 Oct 2012 07:00:15 +0000 Tracy http://homefries.com/?p=7232

I’m sitting in my office right now taking a break from making a birthday cake for Cooper. I’m having a really small get together for his birthday tonight and I’m feeling a tad bit stressed. But then I started thinking…. I should just ask for help. What a concept!  It’s not that I don’t want help; I just never know what to ask of people because I am always planning on doing things myself. It never occurs to me that I can farm things out and use people as resources. I just don’t operate that way.

So, I’m going to take charge and ask for help today. I’m thinking of all of the things that need to be done and I am going to give some of my family members jobs. And to think I would have done this ALL MYSELF.  No wonder it’s hard to relax and enjoy a party!

My mom is coming over early and I am going to have her wrap presents and set the table. My dad will help me wipe off the table on our deck, put out the wine glasses & decant wine. My husband will help me straighten up the house and put the dishes away and possibly  clean up the bathroom. We’ll see. Now that I know what I want help with, it should be easier to ask!

Suddenly I don’t feel as stressed out.

You guys! I finally cleaned out my car. This has been on my TO-DO list for AGES. I figured that I would wait until we were officially moved into our new place to clean out my car. Trips to Home Depot have a way of messing things up. You know what I mean?

Let’s check out the BEFORE.

No wonder I feel claustrophobic when I get in the car.

I’ve had this stuff in the door pocket for AGES. It’s always in my periphery when I drive. NO LIKE.

One of the reasons why I have such a messy car is that it gets FILLED with stuff EVERY DAY. I cleaned out Cooper’s cubby at preschool after one week and this is what I have in my car. We have at least two paper airplanes to bring home with us each day… It needs to be sorted through. There’s always a lunch box, a blanket, socks & dirty clothes that I have to bring home so the front seat gets really messy. I also have MY OWN stuff to deal with. Ugh.

The back of the car is almost always a disaster. I have these bins from our office move. They haven’t made it into my garage yet. You can also see that I like to wrap scarves & clothes around my seats. Sometimes I feel like my car is another closet. It overwhelms me, but I can’t help but do it.

This is the backseat where Cooper sits. Because we just went to Home Depot and took something big home, my yoga mat is shoved where his feet belong. There’s a random towel there too and just random crap hanging out in the seat pocket.

So I took those bins and did something with them! I used them to sort my stuff.

I made 4 different bins. Garbage/Recycling. TO SORT.

MY CLOTHES/ COOPER’S CLOTHES.

All the stuff to be sorted is SORTED.

I gathered stuff that needs to go inside. What the heck is a bell doing in my car??!

I also brought all the clothes inside to put away.

I gathered all the toiletry essentials I like to have in my car and put them in this case.

There’s a drawer under the passenger side seat. I put some Essentials in there.

Now it’s time to CLEAN!

This was actually my job when I was a kid. Every weekend my brothers & I had to clean my parent’s cars.

They had to clean outside while I had inside duty. Maybe this is why the inside of cars are so important to me?

Soap + Water. I took a rag and cleaned down all of the surfaces.

I soaked areas that had build-up gunk on them. I did some detailing with some toothpicks.

It’s amazing what you’ll find in there.

I took out all of the rugs and vacuumed the inside of the car. I made sure to get into all of the crevices.

I shook out the rugs and vacuumed them.

Then I took these Armor-All Protectant Wipes and wiped down the dashboard area & the insides of the door.

I actually keep these under the seat. Sometimes when my car gets dirty/dusty on the inside I’ll wipe the inside down if I need to kill time.

Let the AFTERS begin. Here’s the inside. I wiped it all down. It sparkles. You can’t really tell in this picture though.

The toiletry bag is now in my driver side door along with an umbrella. No more paper mess!

This is what the inside looks like in the front. AHHH!

I have a few pens & some hand sanitizer in the front. This area used to be filled with jewelery I took off while driving and lipgloss and gunk.

Cooper’s spot is clean & empty! WOOT.

And from the other side, I hung up this little bag to hold all of my cloth grocery bags.

Look at the trunk!!!! It’s EMPTY. WHOA.

It’s like a brand new car (not really! It’s over 12 years old!).

Cooper was happy to be picked up from school today in a clean car. I REALLY REALLY hope to keep this up.

The key is that I have to slow down and deal with things that come In and Out of our car ASAP.

No more letting things go. Letting things go, and trying to do TOO MUCH (always) gets in my way. Slow down to sanity!

If you’re anything like me, you love looking at/collecting recipes. It can be tough to keep track of it all, huh? It’s overwhelming! Today I want to show you how I organize mine. I’ve got myself a little system.  Here’s how I keep track.

I use a Moleskine journal first of all. Then I have a recipe folder where I keep all of my magazine cut-outs.

You can see more about the Recipe Folder on my website. I’ve been using it for awhile.

In my journal I’ve made a few sections for food. I’ll talk about that more later. But this is the food section.

I have a list of Recipes To Make:

On the top you can see the ones that I have yet to post on Shutterbean.

You can see my list of what I want to make.

I write down the magazine the recipe came from & the name of the recipe.

If it’s from a cookbook, I include the page #

I usually keep the recipes I want to make right away folded in my journal for safe keeping.

The other ones I want to make live in the RECIPE FOLDER. And when I am done typing up the recipe, the cut-out gets put in the recycling. Done.

OK. Let’s talk cookbooks!

There are so many recipes in a cookbook, how do you narrow down what you want to make?

It’s easy. You use a big post-it. Lemme show you.

I go through a cookbook and write down all of the recipes I have my eye on.

Ummm this cookbook had too many things I wanted to make. This is just my first round!

I write down the recipe name and put the page number next to it for quick reference.

Things that particularly entice/excite me get the all CAPS treatment.

So then I put the sticky notes in the front page of the cookbook so I can open it up and see all of the recipes I want to make.

Sometimes I put the sticky note on the outside cover.

Sometimes I use a highlighter so a recipe can stand out more. I live dangerously.

And when I’m online looking at good recipes, I pin them on Pinterest.

This is my board called NOM WORTHY.  Cuz everything there is…well…

NOM WORTHY

Worthy of nom.

And I also have a Board on Pinterest where I post my recipes. It’s called

RECIPES THAT HAVE CHANGED MY LIFE.

Because they have.

It’s nice to be able to look at thumbnails of my recipes. It helps when I’m meal planning.

I have a bunch more to pin!

And if there’s something I see in a cookbook that I see in a bookstore, I take a picture with my camera phone and send it to an Evernote folder on my phone.

More on Evernote soon! I’m still navigating my way through it.

Do you have any recipe organizing tips? Do share!

It’s almost Labor Day weekend.  I’m having 15 people spend two nights at my house. What are you up to?

The key to me not freaking out about this is to stay organized. Frankly, I love entertaining because I love the planning aspect of it. Any excuse to make a TO-DO list is just fine with me.

So this is how I’m staying organized. I have several lists going on right now.

First list to kick it off is the WHO THE HECK WILL BE THERE, list?

I kinda map out what meals we’re going to be having. This is my first list.

Then I map out the days on other piece of paper and put down the different meals we’ll be having.

Later on I fill in the blanks after I’ve done some brainstorming.

When I’m brainstorming the food, I print out recipes and figure out what needs to be bought at the store.

Since we are having a huge family get together, I gotta make a Costco list but there are some things at regular stores I need too!

There’s much more to add, this is just a start.

I like to write down the food I’m making on my list. It helps me not forget what I have to do!

And then I like to break it down to what I need to do on each day in the kitchen/shopping wise:

Lastly, there’s stuff TO DO AROUND THE HOUSE.

I make a huge list & then the husband and I divide & conquer.

Now a mass email goes out to all my sister-in-laws about food & sleeping arrangements and hopefully they’ll email me back and fill in the blanks. In a perfect world, they would all respond back to the email, but in reality I get a few emails, text messages, and messages through husbands of what is going on. And we all know how accurate a husband’s message is. Ha!

Wish me luck!

I know it’s hard to believe but I have a hard time getting motivated. The only thing that really helps me is to set a timer. The microwave timer has been one of my favorite kitchen tools these days. What can I do in 34:59? Make a big dent on my kitchen counters. That’s what!

I have this problem…I pile stuff on my kitchen counters…. and so does everyone else! It seems like the right place to put stuff when you come into our house but man does it drive me BONKERS. I get stressed out like you wouldn’t believe when the counters look like this. And about 75% of the time they do. There’s really no stopping it, but there is a way to manage it…

This corner  gets junked up too. I cram too much stuff in there and most of the time I have no idea what’s back there. From the paper towel holder to the right there’s a black hole. Bread goes there to be bready.

I apparently like to use the stove top as a kitchen counter. Niiiice.

So what I like to do is set the timer and start sorting.

I make a few piles and plan my attack.

This section is where I put all the stuff that need to be cleaned/washed. It’s narrow but in my brain that’s where dirty dishes go.

I put away all of the clean dishes on the counter, loaded the dishwasher and let it run. Things are moving along!

I did some of the dishes by hand, dry them and put them away immediately. Drying dishes is one of my least favorite things to do because I like piling clean stuff on my counter. I’m kidding. I’m just lazy.

I grab all the food that’s just hanging out….getting in my way and PUT IT ALL AWAY. See ya.

There are a lot of things that don’t belong….These items get put away too.

I clear out this section so I can do a little deeper cleaning. I do this about once a week…sometimes twice.

I spot clean every night with a soapy sponge.

Have you tried this method kitchen cleaner? I think it smells like a lemon-line snow cone.

DONE. Boom. Things are put back, organized and cleaned.

In the process, I ended up moving my pot over to the counter and creating a bread bowl. I like it!

Except when I need to make a stew. Wait. It’s not stew weather. We’ll regroup when it is.

And here we have the final after. Big diff, right?

A timer is how I stay motivated! I usually find that when the time’s up, I keep working because after about 20 minutes I get into a really good groove. It’s a win win. Maybe I’m just inherently competitive with myself.

Here’s another 30 minute project I completed this week!

The under the kitchen sink cabinet!

Remember when I cleaned out & organized under the sink of our old place?

Man. I miss that kitchen.

What you see here is a mash up of both my mom and my cleaning supplies. Time to weed things out & clean!

Uggh. It’s pretty crazy in there. I cleaned everything out/vacuumed & sterilized the bottom of the cabinet.

Then I sorted through all of the items to see what I wanted to keep of my mom’s and what I was gonna put aside for her to sort through.

And here’s the after. I decided not to re-line the bottom with contact paper because I didn’t have the time to cut around all of those pipes. It was a little more involved than I had time for. But! I think it looks OK. At least I can see what I have now. I might move stuff around eventually and put a garbage can under there. Not sure yet!

To the left I have a bin of my cleaning supplies & a lineup of paper towels.

To the right, I used my mom’s bins and stacked the dish-washing stuff on top and rags on the bottom.

So now when I look under the cabinet it’s not as bad.

Another 30 minute project done. BOOM.

It’s amazing what you can do in a half hour. Time yourself. See what you can accomplish!

I completed two mini projects this week. One at my house & one at my sister- in- law’s. They both took 30 minutes or less.

Check out my junky spice/tea/vitamin/sugar/EVERYTHING I DON’T WANT TO DEAL WITH cabinet.

I’ve been putting off organizing this cabinet because it’s filled with things I just don’t want to deal with. Things that didn’t necessarily fit into some of the cabinets…and I didn’t have a good idea of where everything should go. You know the feeling? It can be paralyzing.

I really hated opening this cabinet and I have to do it almost EVERY morning when I get out my vitamins for the day. Boo.

You can always tell how busy I am when you look at the inside of this cabinet.

Uggggghhh.

When I was unpacking our kitchen, I realized that I didn’t have enough space for our spices. This spice rack on the cabinet (which will  be removed eventually) only fits a quarter of my spice hoard. That’s kind of a bummer. I love spices.

First step! Empty it out.

Now the sorting. My favorite part!

I put everything back! It’s all sorted all nice. Top shelf has pitchers, straws & chocolate almonds. Hiding it from the kid (husband & son!).

Middle shelf has a box of extra spices so I can pull it down when I need to. I have vanilla, cookie butter & brown rice syrup there.

Bottom shelf holds teas & vitamins.

I organized the spice rack. Top shelf is essential baking spices.

Bottom shelf has all of the spices I use regularly.  Boom!

This weekend I was over at my sister-in-law’s house to help cook & clean.

She has no idea that I got into her junk drawer and organized it.

It’s just what I do…when people aren’t looking.

I sorted all of her pens. There’s a lot of them! Sharpie HEAVEN!

Here’s the after!! Huzzah!

If it was my drawer, I would have weeded a bunch of stuff out…but it’s not and I didn’t want her to get torqued off that I threw something away! Haha. I used the word torque.

I wonder how long it will take her to notice…

Both of these little projects took 30 minutes or less. See what you can do in that time??!

Get organizing!

I’ve been thinking about Maintenance lately.  Not the high mai/ low mai we talked about on the Joy the Baker podcast recently. The kind of maintenance that we all encounter. The real stuff like… keeping a home, keeping a life, raising a child, doing chores, maintaining relationships…

Sometimes it all gets to be too much, doesn’t it?  Sometimes I have to plan a date with a friend weeks or months in advance. When did that start to happen?

As I get older, I am starting to understand that life takes maintenance. I mean…I already knew this, but more and more things pop up everyday. I’ve found that dealing with things in an organized manner prevents me from feeling absolutely overwhelmed.  Not only do I start with a TO-DO list, I TRY as hard as I can to remember that life is a constant ebb & flow. One day will be busier than the next and if I don’t go with the flow, I’ll be eaten alive. Of course, it’s easier said than done.

I get into these patterns of organizing my life. Forming rules in my head of things like “Tuesday is my laundry day, Monday is my night off, Thursday is the day reserved for recipe making & photo editing, etc.”  I find it helps me nail down my tasks and prioritize. When I feel like I have a lot to do and I’m not getting anything done, I start making up these rules. But life gets in the way and sometimes I get upset that my day of laundry got interrupted by a work day and now I have to fit it in during another day that week.

This is where the mental shift needs to occur. When I was younger and didn’t have a kid, it was important to me to maintain our home. I felt like our house had to be at a specific level of clean before I could even entertain the IDEA of entertaining.  Spending the first year with a child, I was so lucky to have so many people come over & hang out with us when we couldn’t leave the house as easily. It made me realize that people don’t care about the cleanliness of my house as much as I do. They were here to see ME and not how clean my kitchen floor was.  This is one example of how I shifted my thought process and decided it was much more important for me to have social interaction & maintain friendships than it was to have clean floors.

So what if I don’t have a whole closet full of clean clothes! What matters is that we all have something to wear tomorrow.

I assume that as I age, there will be more things I decide to let go of. My priorities will change and what I think of as important might not same in the future. Things will get done, just not always in the time I originally allotted for them.

So I have a few questions for you—

How do you maintain according to a schedule and still navigate when unexpected obstacles pop up?

What are some of the things you put at the bottom of your list now that you’ve gotten older?

Hello! I’m a little bit in limbo right now with all of the projects that I have going on in the house. We’re still trying to make room for our stuff while we move my parent’s stuff. I’ve found that doing little projects around the house and tidying things up makes me feel really good. It’s been a slow process, but I’m taking the time to really figure out the space and the best ways to manage our stuff. There’s a small desk in the kitchen that has always been a clutter magnet. When I unpacked the kitchen, I put everything that came from our junk drawer and put it on this desk. It’s been overcrowded.

See?

I’m trying to manage this kitchen the best way I can and I realize that it’s really REALLY easy for it to get cluttered and chaotic.

I’m hoping that I can kick start some good behaviors by starting with this desk.

I had to think a lot about this space and what I wanted to put there. Do I want to use it as a desk? What do I want to use it for?

I decided it wouldn’t be used as a desk, but a place to right notes, put important papers, charge our phones, and store some of the things I need to access often…like tape, scissors, post-its, etc. It might also be where I rest my purse. I dunno!  There’s also a junk drawer that’s very shallow. See?

First step! Clear it out & clean it up!  It’s refreshing to see it empty.

I spent the evening sorting stuff that didn’t belong and analyzing what I wanted to keep in this space.

Here is the after! Cleared off space! YAY!

Since there is an odd corner on the desk, I made a little supply station out of it.

Here’s what it looks like from far away.

BTW- I like that my fridge can take magnets…but it also gets cluttered easily.

This frustrates me! AHHHH.

To the right I have a little area for papers. We took off a slider door in this area to make more room.

It was never closed, so it just always stayed open…getting in the way.

We have to remove the hardware, but it’s amazing how just a little tweak can change a space.

And now we move onto the junk drawer. So many random things in there…

But that’s why it’s called a junk drawer, RIGHT?

We hope to remodel this kitchen one day, so it’s really nice to see how we really use the space and live in it!

Another project completed around the house! Hall Closet BEFORE & AFTER!

Here’s the BEFORE:

We are still in the process of moving in/moving my parent’s stuff out of our new/old house so things are a little chaotic around here. The hall closet has been sort of a dumping ground. I had two boxes of shoes & some random bits in there. See?

I was getting really frustrated with this situation so I put a little high straightenence on it! Booya.

Since I don’t have as many shelves in this new kitchen as I did in my old, I decided to make this Hall Closet part prop closet.

I’ve got tons of space!

I moved everything out and sorted.

I took out all of my shoes and counted them. I am not telling you how many I have.

If you tell me I have too many, we can’t be friends.

So I counted to see how big of a shoe rack I needed to accommodate my shoe hoard.

And after a few days (an hour or so each day) this is where we are at!

All of our jackets are hung up. I have all of my napkins hung up too. You can see how I sorted them when I organized my Paper Station. Remember?

Cooper has a little area where he can dump off his shoes & backpack from school. I might put a little rack out for him.

I’m not sure yet!

And the shelves are now filled up with stuff that won’t fit in my kitchen.

I’m still playing around with this, but I like the way it looks so far.

And the shoe rack….I picked it up from the Container Store! I thought that I was going to go for a stackable one, but this whole unit fit the bill!

It fits a lot!

Casey’s shoes are to the right now, using the old racks we had.

I hung up this canvas bag on the coat rack so I could have a place to store all of my reusable shopping bags.

I’m sure I will probably switch some stuff around, but for now I’m pretty happy with it all.

Now if I could just get everyone in my household to put their shoes away…

Aaaaaaaaaaand we’re done! Not quite. I still have cabinets to organize and tupperware containers to go through, but this is what my office looks like right now. I might want to paint this space and put framed artwork on the wall but for now I’m gonna consider it close to being done.

Here’s what it looked like last week:

THE AFTER!!!!

My goal was to make it a place where I can be creative. I was going through some of my old artwork and prints from college and wanted to surround myself with things that inspired me and continue to inspire me.

When I was unloading my stuff, I realized that I had A LOT different colors….so I embraced it.

If I had the time & money, I would probably make everything black & white…but life is colorful! I gotta embrace the colors.

Those paintings up to the right were my husband’s childhood paintings. I LOVE THEM.

This is what my office looks like to the right.

I hid all of my magazines in these black containers from IKEA.

I also categorized my shelves.

To the right…well that’s a work in progress. I’ll figure it out eventually.

Still need to organize the Tupperware…there are bigger fish to fry in my life.

I WILL GET TO IT. I promise you that.

I have all my pens & pencils in containers like I used to in my old office. I put all of my scissors in their own container.

OMG LOOK! The paper station lives on! The nice part of this office is that it’s right next to the garage so I can anticipate bringing in the mail to my office and sorting it there. I had to walk up two sets of (small) stairs to get into my old office which proved to be too much for me. I’m lazy.

The nice part about this office is that there are two desks built in. I imagine Casey working at this desk when he’s working from home. Cooper can do artwork next to me while I’m working OR I’ll use it when I need to sew. I need an excuse to sew….Curtains?! Yes this room needs them.

To the right of me when I’m sitting down. Again… this arrangement isn’t permanent. I’m trying it out!

I like it though…. I might put up a shelf so I can display my Blythe dolls again. I gotta think about that…

I need to organize the cabinets inside and then I’ll be closer to done!

This is what my last office looked like. Totally different, huh?

FACT: I spend A LOT of time at the computer in my office.

ANOTHER FACT: If my desk isn’t clean & organized, I’m a basket-case.

For the past few weeks I’ve been tripping over boxes in order to check my email until FINALLY!  I HAD ENOUGH. I slowly started organizing the space this past week. I spent a good 7 hours working in there yesterday while I was working from home and I’m pretty close to done. BUT! I want to wait until I’ve organized the inside of the closets and cabinets before I show the big reveal. I also need to make sure there are no more office boxes to unpack! That would be super tragic if there were!

Here’s a Before photo. It’s just been a place for me to dump stuff.

This was my plan of attack:

People who are High Straightenence like me LOVE to put books away.

I like to put all of my books on the shelf FIRST and then organize/adjust by height.

It calms the beast inside me.

You’ll see the end result in the reveal next week.

With that said… Lemme elaborate.

Always dust & clean off the bookshelves before you put books on them. That’s just common sense BUT I sometimes get the urge to settle into unpacking and organizing and then I think of my husband who always reminds me to DO IT RIGHT the first time around.

The KEY here is to empty out EVERYTHING. Even if there’s a box that is full of stuff you don’t want to deal with, it’s BEST to deal with it now. Sure, everything is going to be chaotic for awhile, but you have to really think about the stuff that you want to keep in your office.

EVALUATE!! Even though I purged a lot of stuff before we moved it, I found that there were many things I don’t want/need anymore.

While I was evaluating my stuff, here’s what went through my mind:

Do I want to keep this?

Can I make room for this?

If I don’t deal with this now, when will I deal with it?

I decided to put all of the tupperware containers away in the closet to see if they would fit. THEY DID! I plan on going back in sometime this week and organizing it. You’ll see that all next week.

Here are some interesting things I encountered while organizing:

-Not everything fits in the same way it used to in my old house. We had three large cabinets that I put all of my stuff in and I assumed that not my tupperware containers would fit in this ONE office cabinet. After going through all of my boxes I found out they did! Now I just need to organize everything in those containers…

-I don’t need all the organizing supplies I used before at my old house. This new office has an actual desk with CABINETS. No more using dressers to keep my supplies in. Nope! In the next week I hope to figure out what I will put in each cabinet.

-I have a TON of artwork from college that needs to be taken care of & art supplies I can donate to a few of my friends who are teachers.

Time for a break! I’m gonna bust my butt this week so I have something GOOD to show you!

STAY TUNED

Now that I’m starting over in our new house, I’m starting RIGHT!! While I was unpacking a few weeks ago, I started to put stuff that belonged in the linen closet in the linen closet with the intention of straightening it up later. Later was yesterday. The linen closet got a makeover!

Towels galore!

I decided that I don’t want to keep the tupperware container in this closet.

It barely fits on the shelf.

Time to get LABELING!!! I also had my eye on these chevron storage bins at Target a few weeks ago.

When I went to pick some up yesterday, they were on sale! Score!

I decided to stick the label on the shelf and not on the bin. I like the way it looks better.

I continued the labeling with all the other shelves.

That way we know where to find things and where to put them back.

It’s easy.

Don’t you just love a nice toilet paper stack?

I made a space for all of our travel bags & put all of our travel toiletry supplies in a small bin.

I have a lot of extra space in the closet right now.

I had this urge of OMG I MUST PUT MORE STUFF IN THERE.

I fought that urge!

If I find another box labeled Linen Closet from my box hoard, I’ll have room to put more away.

Let’s hope I don’t find another box….

Here’s another overview!

It feels really great to have this done.

I almost want to keep the doors open all the time!!!!!

Now that I’m in the unpacking phase, I thought I would give you the rest of my Tips & Tricks for the packing process. I learned A LOT this move. Lemme share it with you:

-Start the moving process early. Once you get the green light and the keys to your new place make every trip to your house WORTH SOMETHING. Even if you are dropping by to check on something, bring a car load with you! These little trips add up. Bring cleaning supplies over to your new place ASAP. You can’t put ANYTHING away until your rooms are clean.

-Decide which rooms are the most priority rooms to set up & pack accordingly. Cooper’s room, our bathrooms & the kitchen were my high priorities for our move. These were the rooms that would help us feel at home right as soon as possible.

-Put all of the priority stuff LAST in the truck. For this move, we rented a Pod. It was great  because we could pack up our house in the middle of the night and take our time with it. We found out after we confirmed our reservations that there were hidden fees. If you have the time and money, a pod is a good way to do it.  Here is my advice with a pod or any type of truck you might be packing: PUT THE LOW PRIORITY STUFF IN FIRST. Some of the boxes I needed were in the way back and I had to move boxes to find them. It’s not a fun process. Have a game plan of what needs to be moved at what interval with whoever might be helping it. Team work!

-Be smart about packing things up! Don’t load stuff on top of fragile boxes. If you have suitcases, fill them up with stuff! Use every inch of space you can AND when you’re packing a truck/pod, it’s super important to build a walk way into the space.

-Keep a check list. Online spreadsheets are great. It’s really good to have a place to brain dump. Moving is stressful and can keep you up at night. Put your thoughts somewhere.  Make a list for things to sell/buy/addresses to change/chores to do, etc.

- Be good at anticipating how much time you’re going to need to pack  & move. Hire someone if you have to! On the last day of packing/moving I had Casey call in some help. We had three professional movers come in to help with the last few bits. What took them two hours would have taken me 12. It was well worth the time and stress! I know that this will be our last time moving for AWHILE so it was important for us to invest in this.

-Use reusable grocery bags to help transport stuff. I have a surplus of these bags, and it was easier to throw items in a bag & carry them into our new place than load up a box, label the box and then move the box.  The only drawback is that it’s hard to see what’s in each bag.

-Don’t hold onto junk- evaluate if it’s worth moving! Don’t be lazy about it. Don’t say that you are going to sort it out when you get to your new place because if you open a box and don’t want to deal with it, you are likely to never open that box until your next move.  Remember that you are starting a NEW home. Not all of your stuff will fit in your new home (both psychically and emotionally).

-Box up your essentials for living. Toiletries, plates, cups, dishware…. It could be just enough for a couple of days.

-If you are moving with kids, make sure their favorite toys are with you and you have enough stuff to make their new room feel like their space. Moving can be really hard on them and YOU so prepare yourself for that.

-Don’t be cheap. If you have money to afford movers, DO IT. Taking shortcuts to save money can sometimes cost you in the long run. Your time is valuable!

If you are having movers help you, be ready & organized for them!

Here’s the deal with all this unpacking.

I’m still working on moving my parent’s stuff out. Instead of waiting for my mom to go through each room, I decided to move the process along faster. I started each room with a preliminary screening. I tossed things in the dumpster that clearly need to be there and then I’ve put items in open boxes so my mom can sort through when she has the time. Hopefully I don’t overwhelm her with too many boxes!  We’ll eventually move all the boxes into the garage so we aren’t living with them all around us because right now there are several spaces in the house that are just pure chaos.

How do we keep organized? I straighten my way from one room to the next. And just when I think I should take a break, I get distracted and straighten more things up. I’m really focused on making as many livable spaces in this house as possible.

Also!

Casey and I started a Google docs spreadsheet so we can track all the things that need to be done around the house. It’s great because when we are at work and something pops up, we just add it on and go on with our our day. It’s helping us prioritize what needs to be done and who does it.

This project has actually been pretty fun & gratifying. It’s feeding the High Straightenence beast inside me. It’s been really interesting to see how my parents used the different spaces in this house. It’s a fun challenge to think outside the box.

WHAT I HAVE DONE SO FAR:

Kitchen:  I cleaned out the cabinets, added contact paper to the shelves & the bottoms and unpacked almost everything! Almost all the cabinets are clean. I have to tackle the under the sink cabinet. That one is gonna be tough. But! I’ve already gone through this process recently, so it shouldn’t be too hard.

After unloading all of the stuff (I hope it’s all of it!) I noticed that there’s a little less cabinet space in the new kitchen. The drawer that I had in the island of my old house had a ridiculous amount of room for all my kitchen tools/instruments. This house doesn’t have the same room, so I’m trying to figure solve this problem somehow. I did put all of my essentials in the one drawer I have as a quick fix.

We will eventually remodel the kitchen so it’s really good to see how I work in this space and what my needs are before that happens. I have already played around different organizing schemes and moved around cabinets.

I wasn’t sure how I was going to use this space…I was thinking prop closet at first. I unloaded stuff…sorted it..

Put pantry stuff in another cabinet. That didn’t work out. Then I put everything back here and made this the official pantry. DONE.

Pantry done. Remember my old pantry? This one fits the same amount…it’s just not as deep.

Prop Cabinet created!

I still need to do some sorting, so I’ll show you a legit picture soon.

Here’s all of our Everyday/Essentials in one cabinet. This cabinet was one that my mom used for her pantry when I was growing. I totally switched things up! It’s pretty weird because my muscle memory wants to go to the prop closet for my dishes. I’m gonna have to retrain myself. Hopefully I made the right decision with moving everything here.

Cooper’s Bedroom: He has all the bare necessities. We have to clean off the shelves of his built-in bookshelf and slowly bring toys into the room. His closet is pretty big and will be fun to organize. Right now I put everything that was leftover in the master bedroom closet in Cooper’s closet so my mom can sort through it.

Master Bedroom: Our closet is unpacked! There are a few adjustments I have to make. Right now Casey and I aren’t sleeping in the master bedroom because furniture needs to be moved out and things need to be sorted. Our closet looks great though!  I’ll take a picture of it with a real camera soon.

Office: The first night we were here, I set up my computer. I’m slowly clearing more things out. My dad needs to go through the drawers & there are things in the cabinets that need to be removed.

Bathrooms:  I cleaned our master bathroom & Cooper’s bathroom thoroughly.  I put most of our toiletries away in the master bathroom. I’ve never had a bathroom with so many cabinets before. It’s a new way of organizing! We have drawers instead of medicine cabinets. Remember my medicine cabinet??!! This is gonna take some getting used to. It’s the little things…like organizing my bathroom drawers that keeps me sane.

So that’s where we are at thus far! I’m sure I am going to do a LOT of rearranging in the future, but at this point it’s nice to have some semblance of home. I really do enjoy making a home. Can you tell?

We did it. WE MOVED. Insert big sigh here _________.

I was gearing up to post more packing tips, but my head is TOTALLY not there right now. I’m EXHAUSTED and my stuff is all in boxes sitting in a Pod in the driveway at the new place. Did we discuss how we’re buying the house I grew up in?  My parents built this house almost 36 years ago which means there’s 36 years worth of stuff to get rid of. Oh boy. My parents haven’t lived in this house full time for awhile so a lot of things haven’t been touched in a looooong time.

The task has been challenging to say the least.  I just cleared out my OWN house and now I’m doing another house, but this time it’s not MY STUFF!   My mom is trying to go through everything and figure what to hold onto and what to get rid of…there’s SO MUCH STUFF!  And right now I’m just an impatient High Straightenence gal who wants to get the house clean and completely EMPTY so I can paint, organize & make a home for my family. I also really want to see this house empty. It’s never been empty since I’ve been on this planet!

I really need to consider that this house stores a lot of memories for both my parents. I also have to remember that it can be really hard to get rid of stuff that you have emotional attachment to. I need to be more patient with my mom & her process and help wherever I can!

I could tell my mom was getting overwhelmed yesterday so I decided to make an organizing system so we can sort through the clutter.

We set aside the living room to be the sorting area. Different piles go to different places. I used pieces of paper to mark what each pile was for. When we were going through rooms, I asked my mom where things belong and then I immediately put them to the pile. Things went really fast this way and we made a HUGE dent in a few hours. It’s good because now someone else can come in and see a pile and help because the information is not just hanging out in one of our heads.

There are many more rooms to go through, a dumpster to arrive and loads of stuff to be taken away for donation. This is where I’m at right now…..getting rid of other people’s stuff.

Wish me luck!

THANK YOU so much for your tips for packing on my last post. I really really appreciate your help! I’ve already put some of your tips to good use. We’re still involved with packing and we will be for the next few weeks. This is the sixth time that I’ve moved in my life, and though I’m no expert, I’ve found a few things that have helped me.

I thought it would be good to start in parts. One bite at a time. First step to moving is getting organized! You must lay the foundation to make the transition smoother. I know, I know! It’s easier said that done.

Where to start?

-Figure out your move out date. Find out when you get the keys to your new place. You might get lucky and be able to move in over a longer period of time. But! That shouldn’t mean you should take your time on moving. If you don’t power through and go full steam ahead, you might not be ready when you REALLY have to be out. This has totally happened to me.

-Do a once over in your home and get rid of stuff. What are the essentials? What will definitely not fit in your new house? What would you not want to move?  Make lists of what you would like to keep/sell/donate furniture wise and create a game plan with that. Plan a day to take photos for your items to Ebay/Craigslist! If you can’t sleep at night because you’re thinking too much about this move (ahem, ME) make lists before bed and get things on paper.

-Figure out if you will be moving yourself, renting a truck or asking friends & family to help. If you are renting a truck or getting the help of friends/family, put it on your calendar and coordinate.

-Will you have movers help you? When we moved into our house, we finally splurged and paid a moving company to move us. It was the best money we ever invested!  As much as it’s nice to have friends help you, you won’t necessarily be able to ask your friend to replace something they damaged during the move. Remember: You MUST be ready for them when they come to pick up your stuff. You also have the option of hiring a few organizers to help you pack up your stuff. From what I’ve heard is that they pack everything that’s in one cabinet in one box. So if you had a random toy hanging out in your cabinet full of plates, you’d find it there.

When you’re at the stage when you’re ready to start packing:

-Gather your packing supplies. ALWAYS have enough packing tape & boxes. I can’t stress this ENOUGH! You don’t want to have a reason to have to stop. When you’re on a roll you have to keep going! Also…TAPE GUN?!! WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN ALL OF MY LIFE??! For this move, we decided to buy boxes. We don’t have the time to hunt for ones behind grocery stores (there aren’t that many at ours! I looked!). They are pretty inexpensive and if you find ones at Lowe’s they have punch outs on the sides of their boxes so you can hold on to something while you lift up the box. Home Depot boxes are more of a label lovers box. They have a section where you mark which room the box goes to is from and you mark a box if it’s fragile or not. It’s a nice idea, but somehow I ignore all the writing… and the fact that it says Home Depot on it. You also might want to check Craigslist for boxes that people are getting rid of as well as the website Used Cardboard Boxes if you have a little more time before you have to get started.

-Start with one room at a time. I know this sounds impossible but…it will feel less daunting and more productive when you have a whole room done. I’m really struggling with this now because we didn’t do this. I have like 4 rooms in disarray and random stuff hanging out in the most peculiar places. It makes my High Straightenence brain GO NUTS. Part of the problem is that we need to have our essentials still in place so we can live in our house until we have to be out. My kitchen is about 1/4 packed because I’m hoping to do some recipes in my kitchen before we leave. Big sigh!

-Make a bunch of boxes before you start on a room. That way you can go BAM BAM BAM.

-Figure out how you want to label all of your boxes and STICK TO IT. I write the name of the room I packed on top of the box as well as a brief description of what’s in it. I then write the name in the upper right hand corner on all 4 sides and write two words that would help me jog my memory of what’s in it. If a box is full of ESSENTIALS, then I put the word ESSENTIAL on the box. I know people who make spreadsheets of their boxes and they find it super helpful. I think that putting different colored tape on the outside of boxes would help you prioritize too! I saw different color duct tape (including zebra & leopard!) at Home Depot.

-Divide and conquer! After 5 moves with my husband, we realized that I’m better at packing small individual things and organizing boxes while he excels at doing all the labor of moving boxes, making the boxes and figuring out what to get rid of. Every night we check in and figure out what needs to be done for the next day and create a new game plan based on that.

-Some people (ahem, my husband!) will tell you that cleaning and straightening up your house while you’re moving is useless. If it makes you feel better, than you should do it! It’s really hard to go through the process of moving and if you don’t feel like your home feels like home it can be super stressful. Do what you need to! To reduce the clutter, I like to have all of the boxes out of the way after I pack them. Right now our dining room is housing them. It drove me bonkers when there were boxes throughout my kitchen.

-If friends & family offer to help you, TAKE their help. I shouldn’t have to tell you why! You can even throw a party around it. Make things easy and order pizza, supply the drinks and let people go to town. Just remember…your friends & family most likely aren’t professional packers… They need direction and you should be organized with what you need them to do when they show up to your house.

Now I’m off to continue packing! More soon next week. Wish me luck!

You know all of those Organizing Goals I had for 2012? Well….I have to scrap some of those goals because….we’re MOVING!

We are excited to be moving but LORDY it’s A LOT of work to move a house. We’ve never moved a whole house before! We’ve also never moved with a child before. Wowzers.

Right now I’m in the OMG I have too much stuff and I’m packing up my entire life and starting over phase.

It’s stressful. It’s messy and my crazy organizing brain wants to organize boxes and plan this move out thoroughly.  Problem is…I don’t have the time to do all of that (sad trombone!). All of the random piles around the house are driving me CRAZY.  I want things to looks nice & organized! And it probably will be messy until we are completely moved out. I’m having a really hard time accepting that….talk about inner turmoil!

Remember the cabinets I just finished? Well…I’m slowly emptying them. Sigh…

The good news is that I am PURGING a bunch of stuff (ummmm…we filled up a dumpster). Wow! It feels awesome. All of my past organizing projects have prepared me somewhat for this move. I can’t imagine what I would be facing right now if I hadn’t weeded out a bunch of stuff in our house already. It has definitely made this situation less daunting. I’m also looking forward to setting up new organizing systems in our new house so that will be fun!

Next week when I have a moment, I’d like to give you a peek into my crazy packing brain. It’s crazy. It’s tormented. It’s chaos.

It gets worse before it gets better! That’s my mantra right now.

Wish me luck! I’m going back to box packing.

Oh! If you have any tips or tricks on packing, please share! I’d love to hear from you.

Laundry. Oooooh Laundry.

I’m about to air my dirty laundry here. You ready? OK!

So, I only like putting clothes into the washing machine and washing them. I do not like sorting them out to wash, folding them OR putting them away. Buuuuut! The way it works in our household is that I am the laundry doer.  Which means I’m kinda screwed.

Here are the facts: I do an average of 6 loads of laundry a week. Occasionally the husband will step in but I usually don’t like the way he folds things so I get all control freak about it and take over. He’s exceptional at sock sorting so I exploit that strength when we’re watching TV…

This is how it works. I do laundry once a week and it usually takes me 2 days to work my way through it. When the laundry load comes out of the dryer, I dump it out onto my bed to sort. My bed is kind of the designated laundry hub. It’s centrally located between our laundry area & Cooper’s room. I would totally use the laundry area, but it’s usually a mess and it’s right under Cooper’s bedroom. I’d wake him up if I worked there during nap time or bed time.

I’m pretty good at sorting and slightly OK at folding. Although I’m not as good as I want to be at folding I learned early that GOOD ENOUGH is GOOD ENOUGH. Martha Stewart has her linens pristine & styled. I cannot be her. No one can. What are your thoughts on folding undergarments? {Discuss}

Back to sorting…

I like to make piles on my bed while sorting. Here’s what it looks looks like:

My crazy brain takes over and I imagine that I’m an octopus reaching back and forth between piles. I wish I had 8 arms…

I fold things and put them in empty laundry baskets. I only do this for Casey & Cooper’s laundry. If I am working on my own, I immediately put things back in my closet. If I keep stuff in a basket, I never put it away. I just pull items from the basket when I need them and then the basket gets destroyed. I know this about me.

Because my husband is a grown man, I make him put his laundry away. It saves time and I want him to see how much work I’ve done folding his clothes I let him hang up his clothes too!

But Cooper…Cooper can’t put his laundry away (properly). One day I will have him trained, but for now I am the main person who puts laundry away.

This is what Cooper’s laundry situation looks like:

I have a trick for his PJs (which I secretly like folding).

You fold the pants. Then you start to fold the shirt.

You put the folded pants at the edge of the shirt. Then you fold the shirt up.

And you have a little pajama package. The pants are nestled in the shirt and you can stack them.

Does that make sense? I also have a MISSING SOCK trick. It’s changed my life!

I feel the greatest sense of accomplishment when I fold Cooper’s laundry. It’s so small & compact. But it’s sad when there are items I have to put in the “this doesn’t fit anymore” pile. That’s another post I’m working on… Dealing with kid’s clothes!

I put all of his clothes back in a basket. I have a system.

I line the bottom with the underwear, socks & pants and then I fill in the gaps with the PJs and shirts.

I take this basket full of his clothes and put it by the stairs leading up to his room. When we’re putting him to bed at night, I put all the stuff away.

OK now that you’ve seen some parts of My Crazy Laundry Brain, I need YOUR HELP.

How often do you do laundry? Do you save it up for one day or do you do a load every night? GIVE ME YOUR TRICKS because I want to be better at laundry. I’m really not doing so great at keeping on top of it these days.

Thanks in advance!

It’s easy to get distracted while working in the kitchen, and before you know it you have a HUGE mess to clean up.

Today I’m going to give you my tips & tricks on how to stay organized while cooking & baking!

Before you start working on a recipe, start with a clean kitchen!  Your baking/cooking mess will be greatly reduced. The task of cleaning up won’t be as daunting if you’re starting from square one. It’s just common sense.

A clean kitchen also helps you get your head in the game.

Make sure your work surfaces are clean & clutter free. It’s soo necessary! You’ll prevent a lot of accidents this way.

If you don’t want to mess up your freshly cleaned counter top, put down a dishtowel. It’s really nice to have when you’re measuring things like flour because the mess is well contained.

Before you get started on a dish, it’s SO IMPORTANT to re-read the recipe because you might forget an important step, preparation or ingredient. I almost always make the mistake of forgetting that something might need to be chilled in the fridge for hours and I’m totally thrown off time-wise. It’s important to know what steps, ingredients & tools are involved. So read, re-read and READ your recipe AGAIN. Really think about what has to be done from start to finish.

After reading the recipe, layout your tools. Be prepared! If you’re reaching for something you need in a drawer with sticky hands, you are most definitely going to make a mess.

Gather your ingredients! Look at the ingredients list and take time to measure things out in advance (if you can). It’s easier to follow along with a recipe if you’re prepared.

Also, SEPARATE ingredients. For example, I may have one area/station on a counter designated for all of my cake ingredients and another area/station set up for the frosting. If you have things mixed together, it’s easy to misplace the items you need.

When I’m in the kitchen I like to use an empty baking sheet as a surface where I put everything that needs to be put away.  In my kitchen I keep it on the center island so I can pivot around and place things on that baking sheet. When I’m done with a recipe and ready to clean the kitchen, I go right to the baking sheet and sort out the items that need to be put away. It’s all contained on one place.

I learned this tip a looooooooong time ago while watching Rachael Ray. Have a junk bowl on hand! Keep a large bowl at your workstation where you can toss your garbage/compost scraps. It’s not always easy to access the garbage can, so this prevents messes and is a huge time saver.

Timing is EVERYTHING. Take note of any baking/cooking times and set your timer accordingly. I usually use my phone because it doesn’t leave my side (sadly) so if I’m getting distracted in the other room I won’t miss hearing the timer. Like I said above, it’s important to know how long things are going to take. You also know how much time you have to clean up your mess. Which brings me to the next rule…

CLEAN AS YOU GO! This rule is ESSENTIAL. I can’t stress this enough. Use the increments of time in between steps to cleanup dishes/bowls/surfaces. Always exploit your cooking & baking time to clean up your mess. You will feel completely overwhelmed if you leave all the cleaning to the very end. You might not even have a clean surface to put your finished product on!

When I start working on a recipe, I like to get a little tub of soapy water ready in my sink so I can soak items that might require extra elbow grease.

I also like to play a little game with myself to see how much I can get cleaned while something bakes in the oven. It’s a good challenge and the reward is a clean kitchen.

Good luck in the kitchen! Remember to have fun!

Do you have any good tips to add? Let’s discuss.

You guys! I’m almost done with my cabinets! I just have to sort out my dishes & glasses and we can move onto something else. I can’t tell you how much these little improvements have impacted my life. It’s crazy.

This week I decided to tackle 4 different cabinets. All of these cabinets suffer from me not taking the time to put things away properly. I also realized in this process that I didn’t make good use of these cabinets, but we’ll get back to that shortly.

First up- The cabinet to the right of my stove. This cabinet has never really served a good purpose. I most recently put all my salt, pepper & oil for stove use in there as well as my vitamin loot. When I had a moth infestation problem, I put things in plastic bags and shoved them at the top of this cabinet. Slick move, huh? Ughh. This cabinet frustrates me.

Like any organizing project, I sorted first. I got rid of a bunch of stuff. STALE CRACKERS are the worst. Right?

I had some extra room so I brought over all of my cereal boxes from the pantry into this cabinet. It’s great because Cooper can’t get into the cereal now because he can’t reach!

When I put all of my miscellaneous condiments back I made sure to put EVERYTHING within eyesight. That way I can see what’s in there and a quick glance can tell me what I might need to pick up at the store. I also put all of my vitamins into a tupperware container so I could easily pull it out when I need to. It helps to create a divider in the cabinet. Easy fix!

Here’s the before of Cooper’s cabinet. It’s where I keep all of his snacks & extra wine glasses.

I am so lazy with this cabinet.

Not anymore! I sorted through stuff and put things back nicely. I also had some extra room so I put some bowls & plates in there for snack needs.

I re-purposed a few of my ceramic containers that were doing nothing and made them holders for oatmeal & bars. Pretty organizing!

Above the stove cabinet…this was a QUICK fix and boy did it make an impact.

Turns out JAMMING things back into the cupboard will lead to a disorganized space. Hmmm.

And my prop closet…it already appears pretty organized, but I have a hard time accessing a few things because I can’t see them.

That changed! I also decided to get rid of a few things (donate or future yard sale material) because I’ve outgrown them.

It feels really good to have extra room in that cabinet. Plus all my polka dot mugs are in plain sight! I love it.

I wouldn’t be able to do all of this stacking if it wasn’t for these shelves! They are perfect. I picked them up at The Container Store 6 years ago.

It maximizes your space like nobody’s bizness.

Now I just have to weed out a few of my dishes & cups and we’ll be all set!

I decided to tackle TWO cabinets this week–UNDER THE SINK & ABOVE THE FRIDGE.

Here we go!

I’ve been dreading these two because they required a lot of work. Buuuuuuut somehow this lady powered through. I will say at one point I looked at all the piles of stuff around my kitchen and wondered how I would ever get it done. That’s when you just gotta GO FOR IT. The end result is always worth it. ALWAYS.

Here’s the under the sink BEFORE.  Garbage on the left, recycling on the right….but it all just looks like GARBAGE, doesn’t it?

I waited until Cooper went to bed to tackle this project. BTW- This project was fueled by The Because Show! I listened to the NERD OUT podcast while I nerded out with my organizing. Almost dropped a few things from laughing too much. I like to listen to Simple Mom when I’m folding laundry. But that’s a whole other post I’ll save for another day.

I digress…

I took everything out from under the sink & sorted what didn’t really belong there. There are a few things that will make their way into the garage because I don’t need them often enough to warrant precious under the sink space.

I paired everything down to the ESSENTIALS and put all of the bottles in a metal/mesh container so I can take it in and out from under the sink if I need to. Before they were all just hanging out there and they’d get knocked over if I was being to aggressive with putting things back.

Sooooooo…under the sink? Gross!!! Would you believe that I swept out and scrubbed the bottom of this cabinet in this picture? And it still looked like that! It actually looked like this when we moved in. Nasty.

That’s where CONTACT paper comes in handy. I bought a roll of it at Target. Black and white….go figure…

In less than 10 minutes I had a new lining for the cabinet. Folks! This makes a HUGE difference.

The best part is that this pattern is SUPER forgiving. There are a few creases but they get lost in the pattern.

I started putting things back. Those big containers go in the back with the dust pan & broom.

The recycling bin & the container of all the goods goes next to it.

And there’s the garbage bin in there—with room to spare! SCORE.

I love looking down and putting something away in the garbage because it means that I get to see a little peep of the contact paper.

It’s the little things…Let me just nerd out for a second!

And we work our way to the dreaded ABOVE THE FRIDGE CABINET.  This is the GOT SOMETHING BIG? SHOVE IT IN HERE, cabinet.

I took everything out…cleaned the insides…sorted…

I had one Tupperware full of all my baking stuff and split it up because it was a MESS.

Baking things in one container & cupcake stuff in another. Boom boom pow.

This is the AFTER!

This is how I sorted everything. There’s a place for stuff! I love the cake stand/serving platter section. This cabinet was MADE for things like that.

Aaaaaaaand the best part is that I was able to weed out a few things I didn’t need!

And while I started pulling things out to sell, I headed over to this cabinet and did some rearranging & purging.

In all, this project took about 2.5 hours. It was well worth it!

Still some other cabinets left to do…stay tuned!

Let me introduce you to a few drawers in my kitchen that drive me BONKERS. Haha. Bonkers. I totally typed that word.

First up. This “equipment” cabinet/drawer situation up there. It’s a cabinet that has two pull out drawers and I always JAM it with things instead of putting things back properly. The problem is that there’s too many things in those shelves that don’t belong. SORTING TIME!

Here’s the grand BEFORE. This is the top pull out drawer. Yikes.

I took everything out. Cleaned the drawers…OF COURSE. Then I analyzed what was in there and decided to move stuff around and free up space.

Here’s the after of the top shelf. Having negative space around the items is KEY. That way when I go to put something back I know where it came from in the drawer. One of the big changes I made was relocating my juicer to the lazy susan cabinet to the right. It fits in there perfectly. The problem was that I had to disassemble it to fit in this drawer so it wasted too much space. Now that it’s gone I can see things clearly.

This is the bottom part…

I made this section the food processor section. My big one and little one fit perfectly in here. I have a bunch of parts and operator’s manuals that were all over the place. I put everything in a freezer bag and it’s stored in the back of this drawer.

To the right (below the tea drawer from last week’s post) I had 2 drawers to go through.

There was NO rhyme or reason to these drawers. They are pretty shallow so it was hard for me to figure out what to do with them. I put placemats, juicing filters and other random things in them.

I decided to make this drawer a napkin drawer. I have cocktail napkins, paper napkins & napkin rings stored in here now.

And this drawer had lots some odds & ends in it too….

I decided to put all of my little bowls/plates that I use prop-wise in this drawer.

Pretty proud of this beauty! I normally stack everything in my prop cabinet, but it’s always hard to see what I have in my arsenal because I stack things too high.

Let’s look at it from the side. Uh huh. You know it.

OK! Part 2 is done!

WHAT’S LEFT?

• under sink cabinet (totes scary)
• cabinet where I keep the cutting boards (legit mess)
• prop cabinet (not tooooo bad, but needs sorting)
• cabinet above the fridge (I dread this one…)
• straighten up the cabinets with the dishes/glasses (easy stuff)
• cabinet with the mugs…..oh boy….
• cabinet with the crackers & stuff
• cabinet where we store booze (major sorting needed)

I’m hoping one day to do a little kitchen tour on my blog so I’ll use this as motivation to power through!

I was going over my list of Organizing Goals for 2012 and thought I’d start on the kitchen drawer cleanup. This is going to take a few parts to accomplish, so let’s get started!

I have A LOT of drawers in my kitchen and they’re are all pretty much a mess because I’m too focused on creating stuff in the kitchen rather than putting things away.
Instead of attacking it all at once, I decided to give myself a challenge of getting the equipment drawer done today. I secretly knew that I couldn’t stop at just ONE drawer…

Here’s the BEFORE:

SIDE VIEW:

DUMPED OUT.

CLEAN UP!

Putting everything in little piles and evaluating what I need and what I don’t.

Starting to put things back…

AFTER:

I could stare at this all day.

It feels good to know that everything has a place now. And I don’t have things hidden waaaaaay back of the drawer like I used to!

Phew.

Why stop at just ONE drawer? Full steam ahead!
Here’s my utensil drawer. The container that holds all of the utensils has been really gross for awhile. So much so that I cringe everytime I see a guest reach into that drawer. I secretly pray that don’t see the crumbs that are in it. I can rest easy now. It’s done!

So I took everything out.

Washed the separators.

Sorted/got rid of things we didn’t need. Like chopsticks that don’t match & itty bitty baby spoons…

I didn’t know all that stuff was in there!

And then I put everything back.

So after I did those two drawers I decided to go ahead and work on the drawer to the right of my oven. This is where I keep oven mitts, toothpicks to test the done-ness of baked goods and a whole bunch of RANDOM things. This is half junk drawer half baking drawer. It is now just BAKING drawer with a few knife sharpeners.
BEFORE:

AFTER:

Then I got to thinking about junk drawers. Everyone has to have one. I used to have one…

This drawer used to be our junk drawer. I knew where to look if I wanted batteries……

But then my husband turned it into the beverage drawer when we got our espresso machine. It was nicely merchandised for awhile and I liked it, but I don’t think we need to use that much space for our tea stash. Let’s get functional!

I grabbed all the random bits from other drawers and created this Junk Drawer!

It has Casey’s wine opening stuff, kitchen appliance manuals, a lint roller…my camera batteries…tape…

You know….JUNK.

This drawer is where I found most of my stuff for the junk drawer. I decided to re-purpose it as the tea drawer!

Old tea drawer becomes junk drawer and now we have a smaller tea drawer.

TADA!

With both drawers open…MUCH BETTER.

So organizing one drawer turned into organizing 5 drawers. This whole project took about 2 hours. I’m glad I got my organizing mojo going.

All of the top drawers in my kitchen are organized! Now I just have to make my way down…and then tackle the ones up top.

STAY TUNED!

I’ve never been exceptional at meal planning. Just when I think I have a good system in place, something throws off my routine and I’m out of the zone! There are SEVERAL different ways to meal plan, but I’ve been eying this technique from my friend Helen Jane (aka my meal planning guru) and thought I’d give it a go. I like that it’s pretty simple and makes a BIG impact!  The trick is…sticking with it! But we’ll talk about that later.

STEP 1:  Compile a list of all of your tried & true meals.  Bonus points for healthy/easy meals that you can use as leftovers for a new meal the following day!

Get the input of your family to see what they’re craving during the week. This can be dangerous.

STEP 2: Survey your fridge & freezer. See what’s in there! Figure out what day you will grocery shop for the week and meal plan around that.

Go through the pantry/cupboards to see what you have in there too. I keep a post-it notepad on the wall of my pantry so I can write down what I need for groceries the next time I go shopping. It’s handy!

The pantry is where I find all my “filler” for weeknight meals. Pasta, rice, spices, canned goods, soups etc.  It’s nice to see what you can use as a base for your dinners or as a meal accessories.

STEP 3:  Get our your planning sheet!

Create a template on your computer of all of the days of the week. I just used Microsoft Word and one of my favorite fonts to make it look cool. You could totally write it out by hand…I just feel like having a template makes it more legit. It helps get me in the organizing zone.

STEP 5: MEAL PLAN!

WHAT TO THINK OF WHILE MEAL PLANNING:

-What events are happening this week? Will you be out for dinner?

-What fruits & vegetables needs to be used ASAP?

-What day of the week do you go grocery shopping?

-Which days of the week will you NEED to make an easy meal?  Mondays are hard.

-Which days of the week do you have more time to enjoy cooking? Sundays are fun!

-What do you already have in your fridge/freezer to access?

-How long can items last in the fridge to use for another recipe?

-How can you use leftovers for your next meal?

When I was planning out my grocery shopping for this particular week, I wanted to use a bunch of things I already had in our freezer. I highlighted everything that needed to be defrosted in pink. It lets me know what I need to do for the next day.

Now make your grocery shopping list (another post entirely!) and get to shopping.

I followed this particular meal plan for a week.

How did it go??!

Not too bad! I still could use some work. 

MY THOUGHTS:

-It’s going to take a lot of practice! The activity of meal planning isn’t necessarily easy and it requires some time. I need to carve out a good half hour to figure out meals/grocery planning each week. Last week was super busy and I wasn’t home much for dinner so I didn’t really meal plan. I could see how much my life was affected by not having a meal plan!

 
-If I don’t make something I intend to make on the night I intended to make it, it’s OK. The world won’t end.
Life is busy and things come up, so I can’t stress out if things don’t go according to planned. If I end up making something else on a different night, who cares! As long as I’m not wasting food, that’s all that matters.

-Having an outline of the week is WAAAAAY better than not having an outline.

Do you meal plan? Do you have any tips or tricks? Let’s discuss!

I got an email a few days ago from a reader asking how things are going with my organized spaces. Let’s check up on things with a progress report, shall we?

FRIDGE:

It’s been a week since I cleaned out my fridge. Things are going well! I started meal planning last week so it’s been making fridge management pretty easy.

I’m dedicated to keeping it up. It’s refreshing opening up an organized fridge because I can see exactly what’s in there! I’m also teaching myself the beauty of an empty fridge and have adopted the idea of only going to the grocery store when I really NEED to.  To keep it in order, I’ve been more thoughtful about putting things away properly and make sure that everything that goes back in the fridge is free of gunk. As a result, it’s still pretty clean inside.

More on meal planning next week!

KID’S TOYS:

It’s been two weeks since I organized Cooper’s toys.

Things are looking good!

We ALL remember to put the books back after we read them so they don’t pile up around the room.

After Cooper’s bath at night we read a few stories  and now we’ve added the act of putting away his toys before he gets in bed to our routine. I’m hoping that he understands how nice it is to go to bed in a clean room. I’ve also been really good about enforcing the rule of one activity/toy out at a time. He can’t play with the trains until he puts all of his construction toys away. He’s starting to pick up on this now and I can see him making a better effort not to take too much out at once.

I hope to get proper laminated labels on his boxes soon because one night of the humidifier made some of the making tape labels peel off. Lesson learned!

BATHROOM SHELVES:

It’s been three weeks since I cleaned out my shelves and it’s going REALLY well. Sometimes I look over at my shelves and don’t recognize them.

There were a few small things I did when I organized (like moving shelves and adding that extra stack of storage containers) that made a HUGE impact on my life. There’s really no excuse to not to keep things organized.

I still have to find a place for my Clarisonic. Gotta make some room!

It’s also so refreshing to know exactly where to look when I need to find something.

THE PANTRY:

Every time I go into my pantry I make sure things look right. Things have been going really well because I’m taking my time putting things away properly. I’m also trying to use up items in the pantry so I don’t run out and buy things I already have. I like that feeling of “grocery shopping” in my own pantry.

MY DESK:

Since I cleaned up my desk/office area I’ve done quite a few projects. It’s really nice to have extra desk space when I’m working so whenever things start to get a little unkempt, I quickly tidy things up. I also find that when I’m started to get stressed out while working I take a break and put things away that don’t belong on my desk

There’s a stack of books sitting on my desk that need to go downstairs on my bookshelf, but other than that my desk is pretty clean.

The drawers next to my desk are still pretty tidy! Cooper isn’t allow in this drawer, which is why it’s still clean!

When I’m working on something and need to put something away in this drawer, I’m very deliberate about where things go back. It’s working.

This tupperware of all of my nail polish has been EXCELLENT. Whenever I paint my nails I’ve been really good about putting everything back  in the container.

I also decided that most of my nail painting should take place at my desk so I don’t have an opportunity to leave polish throughout the house.

The shelves above my desk are still organized. I don’t look at them as a place to put stuff where Cooper can’t reach!

PAPER STATION:

The paper sation has changed my life!! We have significantly less paper littered throughout our house as a result!

It’s made a fantastic difference. Cooper’s art drawer is piling up, which means I have to go through that soon, but other than that we’re good.

The recycling bin right next to the paper station has also been a wonderful addition. When I enter the house through the garage, I bring all the paper/plastic that needs to be recycled right to the bin. It doesn’t even ENTER our house. I love that.

MEDICINE CABINET:

Still going strong! We’ve added a few products and things are constantly changing in this cabinet but it’s going really well.

When I’m brusing my teeth, I usually open up the cabinet and straighten things up.

That’s how I keep it up!

So there you have it. That’s my progress report. I’m still doing a pretty good job on keeping my PURSE ORGANIZED. I make a point to clean it out every Sunday to get ready for work on Monday.

If you are having a hard time maintaining your freshly organized space:

-Share your accomplishments with others!  It will help hold you accountable for your actions.  I know that I’m working hard at this because I have other people looking at my projects. How could I give people advice if I don’t practice what I preach?

Take pictures. Post it to your blog or facebook. When other people are watching you’re way more motivated.

-Have company over. It will help motivate you to keep things clean. Most of my friends are familiar with what I’m doing on High Straightenence. And even if they aren’t, I pretend like they’re going to look through my stuff when they get to my house. This helps keep me on my toes. I want to prove to them & myself that I’m dedicated.

-Be thoughtful & don’t hurry. Things have really approved around my house because I’m not trying to do too many things at once. When I set out to put something away I really THINK about what I am doing and as a result I don’t make lazy decisions.

-Don’t get discouraged! If you start slipping and start falling into bad habits, take it easy on yourself. Get back on it and maintain! You have to remember that it will take some time to make your new behavior apart of your routine.

And remember:

You can always tell how busy/lazy I’ve been if you look in my fridge. I had company over a few weeks ago and when I opened the fridge while we were all hanging out in the kitchen, a few things fell out while I was in mid conversation. Woops! Sign I need to get a grip and handle my fridge business? YES.

On Sunday Joy & I unplugged from the internet/computer/phone. It was tough and what really helped through the unplugging process was cleaning my fridge out. I had no idea how emotional I would get during this project. I spent half the time sorting and cleaning and the other half evaluating my habits & behavior. Why do I fall behind on cleaning out the fridge when food is so important to me? Why don’t I look at what I have in my fridge before I add more items in there? I had a bunch of deep thoughts and we’ll get to that soon. But first!

THE BEFORE:

It’s kinda like a big game of JENGA. I haven’t had a good system in place for awhile. There are a general AREAS where I keep food, but the past few months I’ve been using the JAM IT WHERE IT FITS system. It’s totally not sustainable. Nope.

First item of business. Take everything out! I started one row at a time, cuz you know…things still need to be kept cold. Everything that was on top got pulled out and sorted.

Kinda like this. Wait. Exactly like this.

If it had mold or expired obviously it was GONE. If it was almost finished, I evaluated if it was worth wasting space in my fridge.

I emptied stuff out and recycled. My recycling bin filled up FAST.

And while I was sorting, I cleaned out all of the shelves with hot soapy water.

I dried each shelf and put them back. Before I put ANYTHING back in the clean fridge, I made sure each item was clean and clear of any gunk. My jam jars were a disaster and my hot sauce containers were pretty cruddy.

I also cleaned the inside of the fridge with warm soapy water and took out all the bins and washed those too.

It’s amazing what cruds up your bins!

So let’s talk about bins for a second…this one was a nightmare. This is a very large pullout drawer we have. I keep Cooper’s stuff in it but because I didn’t have an organized shelving system in place, things that didn’t fit in the upper half of the fridge ended up in this drawer.

Here’s the before:

This is what it looks like now. Now I know EXACTLY where to find what I’m looking for. It’s easier for me to look at this drawer when I do my grocery shopping for his foods because I know what’s missing.

This is the deli drawer before.

This is it afterward. I can see everything I have and there’s a system! Meats on the left, cheese on the right and anything that’s in a tub gets stacked in the bottom right hand corner.

My unruly produce drawer got a makeover too. Things that need to be used right away go on top.

Pro tip: It’s much easier organizing a drawer when it’s not in the fridge.

Another Pro tip: Exploit containers.

I had some rogue bags that took up too much wasted space in my fridge.

I put them all in a container and now I know where to access them.

Also- I have a very deep fridge and it’s really hard to know what’s hiding out in there. It’s also a pain in the butt to have to move 5 things to get to the item I want. Now I have all of the stuff that gets in the way in one place. If I want maple syrup all I have to do is pull out the bin, grab it and put it back when I’m done. It’s such a simple trick and it makes a big impact.

Playing around with the shelves…before I put everything back…

http://pinterest.com/shutterbean/k-i-d-z/

I have designated shelves now AND I decided to take out a shelf and make more room for my leftover area.

I realized that it’s important for me to have room for bigger dishes & storage containers of leftovers. That’s usually what throws off my organization because I don’t want to take the time to pull everything out so my containers will fit in there.

Here’s another thing I thought of. I thought that I HAD to use all of the shelves. Like…maybe I wasn’t going to maximize the potential of this fridge. What I realized is that you have to find how YOU use your fridge and make it work for you. Having one less shelf and moving the rest of the shelves around to suit my needs has made a HUGE difference. Don’t assume that the factory placement is the right way to exploit your fridge’s space.

I also made a system for my shelves on the right.

Most used items are at eye level.

Here are the shelves to the left. We have to keep honey in my fridge. Ants…sigh…

Now that that’s done, let’s get to my emotional experience.

It was really hard to throw away all of the rotten food. I felt ashamed for letting my fridge get so messy that I couldn’t see what I had in there. I realize that I’ve been living like this for awhile because I don’t MEAL PLAN. I don’t shop smart and I don’t always use up what I have before I go out and buy more food.

So the day after I cleaned out my fridge I was anxious to go grocery shopping and I decided that I was going to use everything that was in my fridge to make a meal. Let me tell you that it felt great. So not only did I finish this project with a clean slate, I realized some of my bad habits that I want to correct and I challenged myself to start meal planning (I’ll talk about that more next week). Having a clean fridge feels like I’ve hit a really good RESET button in my life. I’m really ready to make some good changes.

Organizing Goal of 2012 : sort thru Cooper’s toys & clothes that he’s outgrown=1/2 DONE!

When I was pregnant with Cooper, I had the foresight to buy this IKEA bookshelf & a bunch of sturdy brown storage bins from Target (they were from the dorm section!) because I knew that with kids comes clutter. If only I knew what a pain in the butt it would be keep on top of organizing my kid’s toys! I’ve been hiding most of the chaos under those bins for awhile. Now it’s time to get motivated and sort through it all!

Yesterday morning I set a timer for an hour to see how much I could accomplish.  After the hour was up, I KEPT GOING and after two total hours I had a lot to show for it. Hooray for perseverance!

So you can see above what the shelves looked like. A mess! I HATE it when books aren’t displayed nicely. It drives me CRAZY. Because we’re busy parents we don’t always get around to putting the books back nicely, hopefully will be better about that now that we have a clean slate.

Here’s a corner of stuff. There’s really no rhyme or reason for it. I already spy 3 things that Cooper doesn’t play with.

I took all the bins off of the bookshelves and surveyed the situation.

The toys are concealed but you can never find what you are looking for!

So I put some music on and started sorting. I made little piles of things, sat in the middle and just went to town going through each of the bins.

Examples of piles: GADGETS, BLOCKS, ROGUE PARTS, BALLS, PEOPLE TOYS, ETC.

Ahh the letter/magnet/block situation. These things LITTER MY HOUSE. Hopefully now I’ll be able to reign them in.

The second I find one in the house, I’m bringing it directly upstairs.

When I was sorting the train/train track situation, I decided to put all the trains in a small pouch so we can easily find all the parts when we’re playing trains.

After about 40 minutes, I came up with a plan of how I was going to use each bin.

I also decided to put all the blocks/letter cards/magnets in one easy to access bin.

On the top part of the bookshelf, I have a little caddy where I put all of Cooper’s toiletry items.

Meds, hair brushes, thermometer…etc. It’s been FOREVER since I went through this.

I got rid of a bunch of expired/unnecessary items (we don’t need butt cream anymore) and found a surplus of a few things.

This is the worst part of organizing. Finding out that your disorganization meant that you bought multiples because you had no idea what you had in your house! I hate that.

Ahh nice & neat! Now I know where to find what I’m looking for in a pinch.

And this little bookshelf we have…it was such a mess inside so I decided to go through it and get rid of a bunch of books.

Cooper has outgrown a bunch of them. Although it’s sad to say goodbye, I know that some other child will enjoy them just as much as he did.

OK so here’s my BIG TIP.

I really wanted to take a picture of what was inside each bin, have the picture laminated and stick it on the outside of each bin so that it would be obvious what was inside. I thought that it would help Cooper with the whole sorting process. BUT I realized that my dream was keeping me from actually starting the project. I let that task hang me up. So I bit the bullet and labeled the outside of the bins with masking tape & a sharpie. It doesn’t look that bad!

Here’s the AFTER!!!!

Wait. Let’s have the BEFORE for you to see:

I put Cooper’s Fire Station on the top of the bookshelf.  It’s out of his reach on purpose. The fire station has been in my office since he got it for Christmas and he has a habit of taking all of the furniture and parts out and spreading them throughout the house. Now I’m the one who is in charge! I just spared SOO many future messes with that trick.

The masking tape isn’t such a big deal, right?

The books are nicely organized now. That makes me feel much better.

Over near his bed, I fixed up the tool bench.

There’s some function to each shelf. Hopefully we can keep in clean.

This is what I’m left with. A bag to donate, one for trash & a collection of stuff to sell.

This is just the start. We have more stuff in the basement to deal with & his clothes to sort out (which is another post entirely).

But here’s one thing I’m trying to deal with. We have a bunch of stuffed animals that all have sentimental value. I am the one who wants to keep them BUT Cooper is totally not a stuffed animal kid (except for his Curious Georges).

That’s something I have yet to figure out….but for now, they are all contained in this corner bin.

So that’s it. That gives us a good start on keeping his room cleaned & organized. When he came home from preschool this afternoon he was super excited. He loved all of the labels and asked me what each one of them said. We made a point to put everything back where it belonged before he went to bed so hopefully he’ll learn these good habits.

I should note that I put some of his toys in his closet so I can rotate them into play a few weeks from now. It keeps him less bored!

Organizing Goal of 2012 COMPLETED:

get rid of unnecessary items in the bathroom & organize!

You saw me organize the medicine cabinet in my bathroom, now it’s time to organize my bathroom shelves.

Here’s the deal. We have a master bathroom but there’s nothing master about it. It’s actually pretty small! We have a pedestal sink (means no storage), a medicine cabinet and this little section of shelving next to the door. It’s kinda cramped! We totally want to re-do our bathroom some day but for now we have to live with it! I thought about covering the shelves with a curtain, but it’s too narrow. So basically it’s always EXPOSED! This is the main reason why I keep guests out of my bathroom

This is the BEFORE. There was absolutely no styling involved in this mess.

Nope. It’s au naturale!

I once thought I was being all neat with these gray bins for organizing.

After a few years of use & abuse, they’re full of CRAP.

I recently went on two trips and suddenly there are 4 travel bags littering my shelves…

Miss Lazybones didn’t feel like unpacking!

My makeup section? I don’t want to talk about it. Oooh! That’s where those Angry Birds Band aids are!

I spent about 3 1/2 hours working on this project over the weekend. Let me walk you through it.

My main goal was to GET RID OF STUFF I DON’T WANT/NEED/USE.

STEP 1: CLEAR OFF SHELVES (and clean them!)

STEP 2: SORTING (I secretly love this part until I get overwhelmed).

I started with the hardest part first. I knew that if I was gonna commit, I was gonna CAH-MIT.

I couldn’t leave this on my bathroom floor all night, now could I?

I started with my makeup drawer and found a bunch of Halloween makeup from over 3 years ago. BUH-BYE.

There were also a few eye shadows that were waaaaay past their prime and some things I would never wear.

Oh! There’s nail polish in there. Nail polish belongs in my nail polish container!

I paired down my makeup drawer to this!

The great JEWELRY sort! This one took me awhile.

In the end, I was able to figure out what it is I need/don’t need. Why should I organize things I’m never going to wear?

PURGE! I could stare at this all day.

And here’s what all three of those drawers look like on the inside.

STEP 3: PUT EVERYTHING BACK & START ON ANOTHER SHELF!

I moved onto the makeup shelf/section. The hub of clutter!

I had thrown a lot of stuff in this area because I’ve been in too much of a hurry to bother.

That’s really why we get so disorganized in the first place, isn’t it?

If you don’t put stuff back where it belongs, it piles up and then things gets OUT OF CONTROL.

After I got the makeup section organized, I went up another shelf and hit up one of those gray bins.

It was full of cold meds, q-tips, shampoo & pills! It was totally overflowing!

Time to SORT/PURGE/ORGANIZE.

Now it looks like this inside. I can totally manage that. The husband knows where to find things now…

I also put the travel bags away in the linen closet upstairs (another organizing project to do!)

Why was I wasting soooo much room? Pure laziness.

When I was almost done, I had a bunch of items leftover with NO PLACE TO GO. I re-purposed another one of my Tupperware bins and stacked it on top. I HAVE SIX DRAWERS NOW!

I made a whole drawer for hairbrushes! You have no idea how much this excites me.

While I was at it, I decided to bust out my label maker. Why yes! My label maker IS labeled!

And here’s what that stack looks like now! All I had to do was move the shelf up a little and TADA!

A thing of beauty…

Drawers for: MAKEUP, JEWELRY, SPA STUFF, TRAVEL STUFF, REFILLS & HAIRBRUSHES

Let’s look at the overview now:

Let me just stare at it for a moment…

So that makeup section…

It’s all neat & organized now. I got rid of a few things and put stuff away. I cleaned out my brushes while I was at it.

I’m totally going to keep like this. NO EXCUSES.

The top shelf used to house a bin full of cleaning supplies. I moved them to our laundry room for safekeeping.

THAT SHELF IS PRIME REAL ESTATE.

I also re-purposed three bins I had in other parts of my house.

The floral bin holds my hair dryer & flat iron (they used to be shoved somewhere in between the Tupperware drawers).

The blue bin holds soap refills & the white bin holds dental stuff. They’re labeled!

The bottom shelf holds our towels & our scale.

Even if the master bathroom doesn’t look the way we want it to, it’s looking fresh with a new organizing system!

Soo worth the effort.

I’m tackling my Organization Goals 2012 list!  I’m starting with this item:

CLEAN OUT MY PURSE MORE OFTEN

Let’s get started! This is my fantastic Kelly Moore purse/camera bag that I’ve been using over 6 months (that’s a long time for me!).  What I like about this purse is that it has PLENTY of pockets. I always like that in a purse; it draws me in! The problem is…there might be TOO many pockets!  Crazy, right?Because I never set guidelines for myself of what goes into each pocket, I lose things CONSTANTLY. Quick! Ask me where my cellphone is! I couldn’t tell you. Oh wait…it’s prolly at the bottom of my bag because I’m too lazy to put it in the same compartment EVERY TIME.

Not only am I going to clean out my purse today, I’m going to give myself some rules for organizing!

Watch me.

I started by dumping out the contents of my purse on my coffee table and SORTING.

This is basically what I’ve been carrying around with me. Looks like a junk pile, huh?

We start with the paper…I kinda let it get out of hand lately. It’s because I’m in too much of a hurry when I’m leaving stores.

I just JAM the receipt in my bag instead of thoughtfully taking care of it.

In the process I figured out that I only need one receipt. Look at all that paper going to recycling!

Then I took care of the rogue change & that little stack of moola in my purse.

Fact: Wallet organizing is one of my favorite things to do.

Strange, huh?

In the process I uncovered a pocket full of jewelry! Leftovers from traveling a few weeks ago, buh-bye!

Hmmm. These two things sure don’t belong…

Ahhh makeup! In reality, I should only carry like one lip gloss but I CAN’T HELP but carry like 5.

I’m a girl!

I decided what my essentials are for my makeup bag and I’m sticking to it:

Perfume, lotion, lip stuff, hair clips, toothpicks, tweezers & a nail file. Must add my compact w/mirror in there!

Out of the makeup-y stuff I got rid of this. Oh and teabags! Why do I have those in there?

After all my sorting, I put together a visual list of all my essentials!

I also decided to put it in writing. GAME PLAN:

Then I gave myself a foundation for pocket usage:

Oh! One more thing. This is my pro tip! I always buy purses that have rings on the straps so I can attach my keys with a Carabiner Hook.

It means I never have to worry about losing my keys somewhere in my bag.

The trick is that you have to HOOK it onto your purse! Sometimes I forget to do that. I don’t like it when that happens.

So that’s it. I cleaned out my purse.

I hope to spend about 15 minutes a week (prolly during Sunday night TV time) cleaning out my bag.

I WILL NOT BE LAZY. I WILL KEEP THIS UP.

Wish me luck!

I was sitting on an airplane last week for over two hours while we waited in line to get de-iced. My good books were in my suitcase because I figured the brief flight home from SLC to SFO wouldn’t warrant enough time for serious reading. I closed my eyes to try to get some sleep (I can never sleep on an airplane!) and started mapping out all of rooms in my house in my head, visualizing my clutter. Deep in thought, I had an epiphany:

I already knew this, but for some reason with nothing else to clutter my mind, I realized this is why I’ve been so annoyed with the lack of balance in my life. I HAVE TOO MUCH STUFF. To evaluate my goals, I started to make a list of what I want to accomplish this year. Can you believe with all of these posts that I do that I don’t have a concrete game plan of how I want to tackle the clutter & reorganize my life? For the past two months I’ve been running on this notion: I have the time to do this, what can I get done in this time and post about.

All of the projects I’ve tackled thus far have helped greatly, but there are soo many more to go! So this is my course of action for 2012. Let’s start with the BIG list.

• clean out/organize the basement
• clean out the inside of my car
• scrub/clean/organize the fridge & freezer
• clean out/organize my crafts (and get rid of what I don’t use!)
• organize/purge kitchen cabinets
• fancy up the laundry room so I will actually enjoy the space
• sort through Cooper’s toys & clothes that he’s outgrown
• figure out an efficient way to grocery shop and stick to it
• manage my online life better (calendar, blog, information, ALL OF IT)
• get rid of unnecessary files on my computer and tidy up my folders & desktop
• go through my Aperture library and delete photos I don’t need (huge challenge!)
• sort through the linen closet
• get rid of books I don’t need anymore
• get rid of unnecessary items in the bathroom & organize!
• go through my closet and get rid of clothes I don’t wear

Then I realized that there are several things I can do on a daily basis to help reduce the stress I feel of being disorganized & clutter. So here they are:

• spend 10 minutes before bed every night straightening up the house.
• keep a list of things to pack & bring for work/preschool
• clean out my purse more often
• clean up my mess in the kitchen before starting something new
• be smart with my time spent on the computer (only surf if I have the time to!)
• make Cooper’s lunch the night before school. Even if I’m tired, I must do it.
• don’t buy new things unless I’m ready to get rid of something I don’t need.
• check the pantry before grocery shopping. Shopping smart means less waste.
• hang up clothes immediately when I get home
• take the time to sort things from the car so it doesn’t end up looking like another closet

One of the reasons why I love working on this High Straightenence column is that it holds me accountable each week. I have you watching my progress and it’s inspiring YOU to organize too.

A few of you readers/listeners have sent me twitter pics & emails of your organized cabinets & pantries and I want to say THANK YOU! Check out this post from Shana of Folks Gotta Eat!  Amazing, RIGHT?!!

I’d love to show your hard work to all of my readers. Leave a comment with any links or tweet me on twitter! (@shutterbean)

Let’s get organized together!

On this week’s episode of Food Hoarders, Tracy tackles her kitchen pantry. What better way to spend a Saturday night than cleaning out a kitchen pantry for 4 hours?

I shouldn’t kid, hoarding is a big problem. I’m not necessarily a hoarder; I just buy food because I think I need it. Turns out I already have those items but I can’t see them because my pantry is so disorganized. Wait? Is this a hoarding show or an organizing show? I’m confused.

The last time I cleaned out my pantry was probably 6 months ago when I had a serious moth infestation from buying bulk food items. As some semblance of a resolution for 2012, I’m trying to get my head in the zone and keep things in my kitchen organized. The first step starts with my kitchen pantry. Besides the fridge, it’s one of the main hubs in my kitchen. My kitchen pantry easily falls into a disorganized state because I’m rushing around doing things and not devoting time once a week to tidy things up a bit. After grocery shopping with a 3 year old and emptying the items that need to be refrigerated from the grocery store, I always get a bit lazy/overwhelmed with putting things away in the pantry.  In 2012, I’m hoping to be a little more thoughtful with how I organize/take care of my pantry so I can avoid things like:

• buying items I already have
• wasting precious space with expired items
• multiple items opened at the same time
• not knowing what my options are food wise because I can’t see them

Today I show the world (deep breath!) just how disorganized I’ve been.  Don’t worry there’s a SUCCESS story at the end and I’m pretty darn proud of it.

And so it begins…

Let’s do a little inspection…We begin with the top shelf of chaos. The baking section. I see 8 things that don’t belong.

This is the middle. This is what I see at eye level and it stresses me out. All the items in front are covering up the items in back.

You can also see how well I stack items on top of other items. Whoa.

This kind of stresses me out.

The last shelf…can you believe there are sweet potatoes somewhere in there? The cereals are blocking them.

And here’s the floor…if you can even see it. Also my spice rack is in a crazy state! Cinnamon spilled on the bottom rack and I need to clean it up!

First step. SORT. I worked from the top down and used my kitchen table as my sorting station.

Since I started with the top section (the BAKING section) I weeded out all of the items that didn’t belong there.

You can imagine how excited Cooper was to see a bunch of sugar, chocolate & marshmallows on our kitchen table. Keeping him from getting into my stuff was probably the most difficult challenge of this project! I took a break and continued after he went to bed.

Because all of the chocolate for baking was shaped differently, I organized them in a tupperware for safe keeping.

During this process, I had a few bags designated for recycling, one for garbage and one for composting.

I kept reminding myself that I’d eventually get through! I kept at it.

This metal bin here was something I designated a long time ago as my nut/dried fruit bin. Obviously it’s been heavily neglected.

In the process I found TWO packages of almonds & dried white peaches that were already opened. UGH.

I solved the problem by taking one of these plastic caddies I bought a few months ago at IKEA and re- purposed it for nuts & dried fruits.

Now I can pull out the caddy & carry it to my kitchen counter when I’m making something in the kitchen and I can easily see what’s in it.

When I finally finished sorting & putting everything back, I put all of the items that didn’t belong in the pantry on my kitchen table for sorting. All this stuff was wasting precious space in my pantry. No wonder I couldn’t see anything.

After 4+ hours of work, we have the AFTER!! I stood at the pantry the next morning just staring.

I’m THRILLED with the results.

Here’s the top shelf. The BAKING SHELF. There were items stored IN my kitchen mixer bowl. Shameful!

I know that Frank’s Red Hot sauce doesn’t belong, but it fit on the shelf so nicely!

And we look at the second shelf down. The MIDDLE!

You can see I found THREE bottles of apple cider vinegar in the process!

I love seeing all my soups & stocks lined up. It’s easy to grab one now.

To the left there’s more organization. Different sections for different needs.

And we work our way down to the bottom shelf. What a breath of fresh air!

You can see my nuts/dried fruits section now. Two caddies in action!

And here’s the FLOOR! You can see it! I have designated bins. I’m glad I know what I have now.

While I was at it, I organized the spice shelves.

I threw out old spices & condensed a few.

And here’s shelf dedicated to vinegars & oils.

The best part? I can see it ALL!

Now the next step? Putting a LOCK on my pantry door because someone gets into it CONSTANTLY.

Hope this helps inspire you to tackle your own kitchen pantry organizing project!

REMEMBER: How can you go grocery shopping if you can’t see what you have?!

I love traveling. I do! But the packing and thought process put into actually getting to my destination can stress me out! I get hypersensitive about over- packing and always try to create a challenge of packing minimally. I think it’s because one of my brothers scoffed at how heavy my suitcase was once and it did some major mental damage. I almost always end up UNDER packing but at least it means I have room for purchases on my trip (I never forget the essentials, though!).

A few weeks ago, I went with my family on a cruise and took pictures of my packing process so you could see what goes on in my crazy brain!

My goal is always to pack SMART! I have to use my brain even more because I have to pack for a kid now.

A FEW DAYS BEFORE A TRIP, I MAKE LISTS:

-TRACY (that’s me!)

-COOPER (the hardest list!)

-DON’T FORGET (things I would be sad/upset to miss)

-AROUND THE HOUSE (what needs to be done before we leave. Like…cleaning the cat litter, watering plants, etc.)

-ELECTRONICS (cameras, laptop, baby monitor, battery chargers, ipod, etc.)

-CARRY ON BAG (the most important bag of all)

-CASEY (had his own list in his head)

MY STEPS TO PACKING:

-DO LAUNDRY There’s nothing more annoying to me than waiting for clothes to finish drying so I can pack my suitcase. I try my hardest to get laundry done before I start packing to avoid this. Also, it’s important to find all of the clothes you want to pack!

-FOLD LAUNDRY and play around with outfits and come up with a game plan. I lay everything out on my bed for this purpose.

-SORT LAUNDRY

I forgot about shoes! Oh shoes! These are the shoes I ended up packing on my trip.

Take away one pair and you take away a few different outfits. It’s all about finding outfits that work well with shoes. There were two dresses I ditched because it meant I would have to bring two extra pairs of shoes. Instead, I picked dresses that could easily be jazzed up with accessories since they take up little space. Think black jersey knit dresses! They’re like traveling gold. So versatile and pretty much wrinkle free!

I always have high hopes for exercising while on vacation and my sneakers ALWAYS take up a serious amount of space. Maybe I should just resolve that working out & vacations don’t mix for me? I could have brought a cute pair of shoes instead!

ALWAYS bring flip-flops even if the weather is bad. They’re great “slippers” for yucky hotel carpets.

-PUT ITEMS IN A LAUNDRY BASKET

All of the items get put in a laundry basket for safe keeping until I’m ready to load up my suitcase.

This is also a good way to keep my cats from freaking out. The second the suitcase comes out, they get STRESSED OUT and then one of them craps on the floor. Real life!

I should also note that on this trip we decided to use duffel bags because they collapse easily under the bed in our room on the cruise ship.

Because they don’t have tons of pockets, I used little bags to contain items. It’s a great way to keep track of things.

This one contains Cooper’s pull-ups & wipes!

I also have a small bag for: bathing suit stuff, underwear/bras/socks as well as electronics (which travels in my carry on!).

They’re great because you can pull out exactly what you need if you’re at the airport.

NOW WE PACK!

When the bag is close to done, I add a note on top of what needs to be added. There’s always stuff I’m waiting on…

Since we went on a cruise, I have a few tips for you!

My sister-in-law saw on a few cruise review websites that people highly recommended an Over-the- Door Organizer for the teeny bathrooms on the boat. I picked one up at Target for the trip.

Let me tell you, it was a DREAM! There’s limited counter space in the bathroom, so things would have been super cramped if I didn’t attach this to our bathroom door!

We were also told that we could bring a small bag full of booze on the boat. We wanted to save some money and I had a bunch of gin & bourbon at home so I tucked a few of these “RUM SMUGGLERS” in my suitcase in addition to the half case of wine Casey shipped to the hotel we were staying at.

If you have children, you already know how important the snack bag is!

Heck, it’s important for adults too! Our snack bag stays in our carry-on suitcase.

Cooper loves a Wild Berry Kid’s Super Food drink mix so I brought those with. It’s a perfect way to mask the taste of yucky hotel/cruise ship water.

I brought some healthier snacks from home so Cooper had something to eat on the airplane.

Snacks help prevent public lack-of-food-induced-tantrums. TRUST!

I had a really nice passport case but it didn’t fit all of my documents and I became obsessed with using/not using the pockets. At the very last minute, I threw everything in one of my favorite plastic document envelopes so I could easily see where everything was. It was so nice to be able to grab it out of my carry on when needed.

When we flew with Cooper for the first time, we got one of these Go Go Babyz Travel Mate Car Seat attachments.

You can see it in the bag there. It’s basically like a dolly that attaches to your car seat so you can wheel your child around the airport.

It’s a lifesaver! If your child insists on walking, well throw your purse on it and wheel it around!

On our trip we took 3 bags (to be checked) a car seat, my purse & a carry-on bag.

Not too bad for 7 days away, right?

OTHER IMPORTANT TIPS:

-keep an extra fold up bag in your suitcase (comes in handy if you need to carry home a purchase)

-keep a few plastic bags in your luggage for shoes or containing items that may leak

-use the front pocket of your suitcase for dirty clothes

-always keep your phone charger/camera charger in your carry-on!

-give your family/friends your contact information for when you’re gone

-don’t underpay your pet sitter (ha!)

Do you have any packing tips? DO SHARE!

It’s New Year’s Resolution Time!

Do you have any resolutions? I’m still trying to figure out mine, but I know WORK HARD and PLAY HARD are both on the list. But then again, when isn’t it?

The biggest challenge of making resolutions is staying motivated. With all of life’s distractions, it’s pretty easy to get off track.

I find a good way to stay motivated is to have little reminders around my house/on my computer/phone wallpaper that help me remember what’s important and what I’m working towards. Today I put together a little roundup of inspiration posters I found on Etsy that will help you stay motivated whatever your resolution might be. I’ve got my eyes on a few of these, now I just need to come up with the wall space!

Hang an inspirational print in your office, next to your front door, in your bathroom, or wherever you are able to easily see it. The point is to stop, read one of these mantras and STAY ON TRACK. If you’re in a pinch and need a temporary reminder, a post-it on your bathroom mirror works wonders!

Make Every Day Count by GraphicAnthology

Take a Big Deep Breath by evajuliet

Everyday is an Adventure by GraphicAnthology

Playing It Safe by thebigharumph

Today is the Day by thebigharumph

Follow Your Dreams by YellowBrickGraphics

Remember Why You Kept Holding On   by happydeliveries

Let it Be by handz

Be You by yumalum

 IMPORTANT THINGS TO REMEMBER:

• Be kind to yourself
• Set obtainable/realistic goals
• Have Faith
• Don’t give up!

I have nothing to wear! How many times do you think you’ve said that in your life? I’m guilty of saying it CONSTANTLY, but it’s not true. I have plenty to wear! It’s just that I always feel so uninspired by what’s in my closet AND I’m not always able to see what’s hiding in there!

I’m currently in the process of figuring out what to pack for an upcoming trip and I realized that I have a great tip for you!

TAKE PICTURES OF YOURSELF IN YOUR FAVORITE OUTFITS!

A couple years ago, I started taking pictures of my outfits in the bathroom mirror at work with my cellphone.

I started doing it to stay inspired and challenge myself to come up with different outfits. A few months later I had over 50 outfits documented! It has proven to be a really good way to help remind me what’s in my closet.

It also really helps my crazy planning brain. Look! I’ve already figured out what dresses I’m packing for my trip:

HERE’S WHAT I DO:

-Get dressed (duh)

-Take a picture of my outfit on my phone

-Save it to a designated folder on my phone

-Upload it to my flickr account (that way I can browse it from afar on a computer)

OTHER USES:

-Take photos of your hairstyles/haircuts (this can be useful when you’re going to a new stylist and you want to show them how you like your hair)

-Take pictures of your shoes & accessories

-Take pictures of clothes your trying on in the store. You can figure out if you want to go back and buy them.

-See how much your style has changed throughout the year!

-Track weight loss!

It’s kind of addictive.

Is there a High Straightenence person in your life that you need to shop for? Are you waiting til the last minute? Don’t do that! Are you a High Straightenence person who desperately wishes there was a list full of geeky organizing items to give your friends/family/loved ones direction on what to get you this year? Let these lists be your guide! Because we’re getting close to the Xmas, I’ve hand-picked some awesome gifts from Amazon. They ship fast. Now….GET ON IT!

1. Zojirushi Classic Bento Vacuum Jar Lunch Box
Make organizing your lunch easier with this bento box set. The little containers will totally help you be more creative with your work lunches. Bonus: It comes with a spork!

2. Dymo Letra Tag Plus Personal Label Maker
It’s easy to go label crazy. Now you have an excuse…to go crazy…

3. NeatReceipts Portable Scanner
Feel like you’re holding onto too many receipts? Collect them, scan them, file them, recycle them! Be done with them!

4. Kindle Fire
Take the Kindle Fire into the kitchen with you. Load a recipe on the screen and get to work! You can check your mail, listen to a podcast and even send a tweet while you’re doing so. It’s the ultimate multi-tasker.

5. Desktop Cradle Kit for Apple iPhone
Can’t find your iPhone? Oh wait! It’s in the cradle on your clean desk.

6. Torre Tagus Retro Clock
The High Straightenence person loves numbers. This clock will please them. Trust me.

7.  Scotch Thermal Laminator Roller System
Think of all the possibilities!! This has been on my wishlist for YEARS. I fear that if I have one, I’ll laminate EVERYTHING. But hey, is that really a bad thing? First project to make? PLACE MATS. You think I’m kidding? I’m not kidding.

8. Wee Gallery Mobile, by Kikkerland
Have photos to display, but no wall space or surfaces to do so? Make a hanging mobile! It could also pose as a reminder mobile or a fantastic cat toy.

1. The Happiness Project, by Gretchen Rubin
The Happiness Project starts with a resolution to de-clutter your life. This book is a game changer! It’s changing my game.

2. Fine Point Sharpies
High Straightenence people loooove their Sharpies. It’s cuz we take the art of handwriting seriously. Sharpies are perfect for list making, card writing, note taking, address labeling, YOU NAME IT!

3. Listography Calendar
A calendar that encourages list-making! Track your year with lists! Hallelujah!

4. Fellowes Powershred Cross-Cut Paper Shredder
The paper lover needs a shredder; it’s a given. It’s a good way to balance it all out. This one cross cuts for extra security. Neat!

5. Moleskine Weekly Calendar
This is my most favorite kind of calendar. Even though I have high hopes of doing my calendar managing online, I still seem to go back to a paper calendar EVERY YEAR. I’m a paper lover…what can I say?

6. Smead Poly Color Envelopes
I can’t tell you how handy these are. If I’m working on a project, I throw everything in one of these envelopes & take it on the go. The best part is that they’re clear and colored. You can designate certain colors to specific projects so you know what to grab easily.

7. Small Object Labels & Stickers
Cute stickers & labels make the world go round. Am I right?

8. Moleskine Classic Ruled Notebook
Perfect for list making on the go. I always keep one in my purse because you never know when you’ll feel inspired.

9. Sukie Sticky Notes
Need to make a note? Try these Sukie Sticky Notes. I feel like a task on a sticky seems less daunting when there’s a cute squirrel chilling on it.

10. ALL OUT OF Notepad
This notepad saved my life in 2011. You can mark all the grocery items you need & bring it with you while you’re shopping. I always keep a few blank sheets in my bag for when I need to make a grocery list on the fly.

11. The Book of Awesome, by Neil Pasricha
Life can be rough. This book will help remind you of the awesome things in life, like popping bubble wrap & the other side of the pillow. It’s funny. It’s true. You’ll like it.

12. Organizing Plain & Simple, by Donna Smallin
If you’re looking to get organized & simplify, here’s a great book. Visual clarity? Mental clarity? De-cluttering strategies? This book has it covered!

13. Kam Kam Magnetic Cat Paper Clip Organizer
Corral those paperclips! This cat puts the FUN in functional.

14. Scotch Precision Ultra Scissors
FACT: The paper lover loves scissors. The paper lover can never have ENOUGH scissors.

15. Lotta Jansdotter File Collection
Get organized & make your files pretty at the same time. Make that your goal for 2012.

Guess what? I finished cleaning my desk a week before I expected to!

I was on a roll this weekend and COULD NOT BE STOPPED. Thanks to an understanding husband, I was able to work over 8 hours this weekend on my hot mess of a desk. Dang, it feels good.

All of my dolls are organized and my shelves are sparkling clean!

They serve a purpose again! They’re not catchalls for things Cooper shouldn’t get into anymore.

I hung up the word SIMPLIFY on the shelf as a constant reminder of my goal.

Remember that pile of garbage on the right? GONE! My scanner is put away (I don’t use it that often) and my broken-beyond- repair printer that I loaded things on top of is ready to be e-cycled.

On top of my cabinet, I have a little section for papers & pens now. I recovered the pen container that Cooper drew all over with a new piece of paper. It made me feel good that it has a “fresh start.” All of my notepads, stickies & post-its are within arms reach now and there’s also a dedicated section for where I charge my cellphone and I’m super happy about that.

Let’s take a look at the insides of the cabinet. They’re dramatic!

Here’s DRAWER 1:

And what’s inside of it? OFFICE SUPPLIES. I know where everything is now. Post-its, paperclips, paper, stapler, YOU NAME IT. Let’s see if I can fend off the grubby hands of a super curious 3 year old boy… He’s already gotten into this drawer twice!

Here’s DRAWER 2:

Nail polish in tupperware, batteries, important cables, blank cds & dvds live in this drawer.

Here’s DRAWER 3:

Cooper’s drawer! Filled with art supplies and activities for us to work on in the future.

So how did I get to this point? A LOT OF WORK.

This is how I “organized” myself:

I tackled one thing at a time.

I went through every little part of my office and sorted things into piles:

-THINGS THAT DON’T BELONG IN HERE

-TO FIND A PLACE FOR

-TO DONATE

-TO RECYCLE

-PENS/PENCILS & ART SUPPLIES

-JEWELRY THAT NEEDS TO BE PUT AWAY

-COOKBOOKS TO RETURN TO THE BOOKSHELF

-TRASH

-TO ASK MY HUSBAND ABOUT(everything went in a box for him to look through)

During my sorting I looked at the One Bite at a Time e-book  I downloaded from Simple Mom and was relieved when I saw this quote. It was exactly what I needed while I was looking through piles of buttons, pens, papers and office supplies.

While I was taking a break after hour 5 of working, I saw this:

Gretchen Rubin (writer of The Happiness Project) also kept me going with her tweet!

I was DEEP in mess by the afternoon.

One of the most OVERDUE chores was sorting through my pens. Many of them don’t work anymore because SOMEONE forgets to put the caps back on… It was good to reduce the stress of using pens that don’t work. This is a big deal, believe me.

Let me tell you…IT WASN’T pretty. Many times I wanted to just walk away and shut the door.

I almost thought about stopping and picking up another day but I powered through. I had to!

Now I have this clean desk and life is good! No clutter with a lot less paper.

I was even able to do a craft project (which I quickly cleaned up) on my desk today.

There you have it. The beauty of a clean desk. It makes such a difference, doesn’t it?

Once upon a time I had a clean desk. Everything had its place and everything was superbly organized. I would only have to spend a maximum of 15 minutes per week to straighten things up that were disheveled. Then came a baby and it all went to hell. When my son started to stand, he’d constantly pull things out of the drawers and scatter stuff around the house. I would tidy things up but it always felt like I was constantly treading water and making no headway. At one point I decided to let it go and wait a few YEARS to do a office revamp because I realized what’s the point? If you have kids, you know exactly what I mean. So, I easily let my desk go…

Cooper is now 3 and I finally feel like THIS IS THE TIME I can motivate and clean my act up. It will get trashed no doubt, but sitting at this desk writing this post is STRESSING ME OUT. There are soo many things out of place/don’t belong in here. I feel like I easily end up in creative blocks and can’t focus because I’m sitting in a pit of clutter. It seriously makes my blood pressure rise.

So, this is where I am sitting right now. This is my “work area.” I see an empty glasses case, a rando roll of tape, a sample of Barkeeper’s Friend (what?!) a rogue nail polish bottle, some business cards and look what’s hiding under my screen- a little tub of almonds! None of this belongs there.

To the left I see this. Where’s my desk? Who knows? It’s filled with papers and cookbooks and all the random things I have to leftovers I have to put away from the my Paper Station project.

I have shelves above my desk. They were organized once, but now this particular shelf is a place to shove all the things Cooper shouldn’t get into (pens, scissors, gum, weapons, etc.)

One day he’s going to stand on the desk and have full access to this. I just know it. Also- do you see that I haven’t changed my calendar since July? Sigh.

I have a Blythe doll collection. They suffer the most from my cluttered ways.

And to my right, this is what I see. A clock that needs to be plugged in, a tupperware full of nailpolish, an empty box that needs to be recycled, a printer that doesn’t work and a scanner that is being used as a surface to rest things on. Oh! I also see two kid’s books that don’t belong there as well as a hot glue gun.

All that chaos sits on top of this dresser. This dresser is THE GREAT CHAOS HIDER. What’s in it, you ask?

A whole lotta nothing! CDs& a baby book that I need to work on (ahem, 3 year old)

Random papers in this drawer and an empty filing folder that I had grandiose ideas for. What a waste of a perfectly good drawer.

Some magazines and more chaos. UGH.

Oh and here’s what happens when you take your eyes away from a 3 year old for 2 minutes

I’m giving myself two weeks to complete this project. I really have to evaluate what I use this space for and sort through all of the things that don’t belong here.

To get started, I made two lists so I could wrap my head around this endeavor:

1. WHAT DO I WANT OUT OF THIS SPACE?

• A place where I can easily find a pen, paper & any other office supply I might need
• A place free of clutter
• A place where I can be creative, surrounded by things that inspire me
• A place that has organized kid’s art supplies so they don’t spill out into my work space
• A CLEAN DESK!

2. WHAT DO I USE THIS SPACE?

• working on my website
• podcasting
• a catch-all for papers
• a place to put clutter piles from the rest of the house (ie: where we hide stuff from company!)
• surfing the web
• writing emails
• wrapping presents (if there’s even space)
• making art with my son
• crafting

I suppose that once it’s all done, I will have another list of RULES for using this space.

Alright folks, I’m going in. Say a prayer for me!

Next week we’ll be discussing the organization of holiday wrapping. Stay tuned!

Last week you may have seen my Tackling Paper & Piles post; I have a LOT of paper piles scattered throughout our house. What’s my biggest dump zone? THE KITCHEN TABLE.  It’s where I immediately dump stacks of mail & papers when I enter our house through the garage. My goal this past week was to rid our kitchen table of my paper piles by creating a paper station IN our garage. Realistically, some paper will enter the house, but it doesn’t have to be the cluttered mess it’s turned into.

I decided to re-purpose this dresser I’ve had since college for our paper station. It takes up a big chunk of space in our garage and it’s about time I put it to good use. But! I don’t like that shade of wood. I want my paper station to be bold & pretty. Cue the spray paint!

Here’s the before:

STEP 1:

CLEAN! I took everything out of the cabinet and cleaned it inside & out.

STEP TWO:

PRIMER!

I sprayed two coats of gray primer spray paint (1 can total) on the cabinet and let it dry.

STEP THREE:

PAINT. It took about 2-3 coats (2 cans total) to finish.

And here’s the end result after the paint dried.

I setup the paper station immediately and lived with it for about 4 days so I could see what worked & did not work.

This is what we have now! As you can see I have a place to put my keys (the coat rack was already there). I also hung a bag on the coat rack so I can put aside papers that need shredding. I have designated sections for catalogs, bills & important papers as well as a small area where I will put things to mail.

The most important section of the paper station is the RECYCLING bin. We now stop unwanted papers dead in their tracks!

If you open up the first two drawers of the cabinet, you’ll find a section for magazines & toddler art. When I pick Cooper up from school I always have a handful of new artwork and it always gets scattered throughout the kitchen. Having these two drawers will prove useful because I can conceal & sort when I have the time to do so.

The trick is to not let these drawers get out of control!

The rest of the drawers serve other purposes. Finally I’m getting organized!

While I was at it, I decided to organize my collection of napkins & tea towels I use on my blog. For awhile I had them hung over the main clothes rack and it was a pain to get to the napkin I wanted to use. I re-purposed skirt hangers from IKEA and separated all of the napkins by color. It is now incredibly easy to find what I am looking for.

Finally…I can SEE MY KITCHEN TABLE. Project Paper Station is totally working!

ORGANIZING TIPS:

When you are embarking on a de-cluttering/organizing project, make a list of what’s important to you in your space and get started. Live with your adjustments for a few days and then evaluate your placement. Keep moving things around and you’ll have your area primed for your specific needs. It’s also a great idea to re-purpose stuff you already have. That way you aren’t bringing MORE items into your house that you’ll have to deal with later.

Next week we’ll tackle the bottomless pit (aka my desk!).

The other morning my husband staged an intervention at our kitchen table. He kindly addressed the issue of my incessant pile making. Apparently having to move two stacks of papers so he could sit down for breakfast was the last straw. I quickly chimed in with the “I’m busy. You have no idea how much I have to think about and do” argument and then I stopped myself. He was right. I do have a problem and it’s not because I’m too busy; it’s because I don’t take the time to layout a good foundation of organized behavior. The root of my problem is that I try to do too much at once and the little things, like putting stuff back where it belongs gets lost in the shuffle. In turn, stuff piles up and the chore of organizing becomes extremely daunting.

Today I’d like to talk about DUMP ZONES and how I plan on attacking mine. Are you familiar with a dump zone? It’s basically what it sounds like– a zone/area where you dump stuff. These zones aren’t necessarily the right place for you to dump your things, but for some reason you can’t help but put stuff there.

I have quite a few…
Say hello to the biggest dump zone of my house. THE KITCHEN TABLE.

Casey is working from home today and his laptop is on the table. I’m stressed because he has turned our table into an office but I should be more focused on the fact that there’s A LOT of unnecessary paper & random items on the table. It’s funny how one can completely ignore their OWN mess and focus on someone else’s. (GUILTY!)

This small dump zone takes up precious kitchen counter space… We shove stuff in this pretty box when we don’t know what to do with it. Our keys get thrown in this area too. Toothpaste, gum, Netflix discs, pens & sunscreen DO NOT belong on the kitchen counter.

I’m also an expert of the bag on a chair trick! Do you do this? I load up our kitchen chairs with bags and clothing as if they’re coat racks.

This drives my husband CRAZY.

And we work our way into the bedroom. This is my current pile of stuff… I’m not reading all of these books. I clearly need to put some away. I should do that now. It will only take a minute.

Here’s a small stack of magazines next to our couch. I recently recycled a ton of magazines so this stack is smaller than normal. I fear that it might get bigger and I desperately hope it won’t….

Here’s a little peek into the upstairs bathroom. Our son Cooper leaves books all over the floor when he’s using the bathroom. I usually trip over the books and get upset. I need to put some books away and give him a little box to put a few in. We need a rule about how many he’s allowed to have in the bathroom at a time!

Here’s a typical stack of papers, pens, thank you notes & random belongings on my desk.  I’ve been neglectful of this room because a certain 3 year old likes to trash this area and undermine all my work. More on that soon!

I think the first step to tackling my PAPER issue is to make only ONE designated dumping zone in the house. Since we enter our house mostly through the garage, I figure I can re-purpose this dresser and make it into a PAPER STATION. If we deposit all of the incoming/outgoing mail in organized sections as well setup a station to sort/recycle, I can prevent the paper & magazine pile up I constantly battle with inside our home. That means no piling on the kitchen counter! You hear that, honey?!

So this is my project for this week. Tune in next week and I’ll have a new PAPER STATION for you to lay your eyes on.

Today’s mantra:

What you do every day matters more than what you do once in awhile.

Let’s tackle our dump zones together!

Do you know that over 40% of house guests snoop in their host’s medicine cabinet? Kinda scary, right?! If you were to open my medicine cabinet a few days ago, items would have fallen out onto the sink and you would have totally been CAUGHT snooping! That’s what you get, snooper!

Yesterday I set out to reorganize our medicine cabinet; it’s embarrassing how long it’s been on my TO-DO list.

First things first. CLEAN OUT MEDICINE CABINET.

I dove right in and removed all of the items & took out the shelves.

I cleaned the inside thoroughly with a hot wet rag & a bottle of Simple Green.

(I kinda love that smell!)

Sorting time! I recycled empty containers & evaluated the necessities. What to keep??

I decided to change out the old paper backing. It’s been like 4 years since I put it in.

Here’s the new backing. I used Martha Stewart’s faux bois wrapping paper because it’s nice & thick.

Because the backing of my medicine cabinet is a thick cardboard, I used push pins to secure the paper. This means I don’t have to deal with tape not sticking & paper unrolling in the future.

Sorting out all of the products was a great thing! I realized how many items I didn’t need/use or didn’t belong in my medicine cabinet!

All of these items didn’t belong in my medicine cabinet:

When everything was dry from cleaning, I put the clean shelves in and started to organize.

I took a pictures with my phone during the process so I could step back & examine what I was working on.

At one point I looked at the bottle of ADVIL and thought it was an eye sore. Who wants to look at that bottle? No one.

I decided to consolidate and put the pills in a smaller travel container I had from the Container Store.

(write the expiration date on a piece of masking tape/label and stick it to the bottom!)

Problem solved!

A little less than an hour later, I was left with THIS:

The top shelf is the HUSBAND SHELF. His items live way up at the top. It matches his height.

Second shelf is HAIR CARE (communal) and SKIN CARE (my territory).

I put the MOST USED ITEMS on the bottom shelf for easy access.

And here we have the section of necessities/tools.

Finally! Everything has its place. Now when I open the cabinet door, I don’t have to worry about things falling out. This takes away some of the stress of getting ready in the morning.

Hope this gives you a little motivation to tackle your own medicine cabinet! Or maybe you’re just looking to punish snoopers? The trick is to clean out your cabinet every 4-6 months!

RESOURCES:

Acrylic Containers

Deep Drawer Organizers

4 Section Box

Sectional Box

Low, Clear Acrylic Box

4 inch Tall Acrylic Box

Before I show you how I try to balance my crazy/cluttered life, let me start by telling you that the first step to getting organized always starts with a TO-DO LIST.

Every morning I sit at my kitchen table with a cup of coffee and start a new TO-DO list. This 5-10 minute activity helps set the pace for the day.  I recently discovered/fell in love graph paper Post-it notes for my list making. I’m a sucker for graph paper; it makes me happy. They’re great because they’ll stick anywhere.

There are 3 Basic Lists I like to make:

1. CURRENT DAY:

This list charts out my game plan for the day; it’s a list of specific things that need to get done. On this list, you’ll find my chores like laundry, emptying/loading the dishwasher, putting away toys, blog work, paying a bill, straightening up the house etc. Everyday there’s something new to add! It never ends…

2. LONG TERM:

This list consists of things I’ve been thinking about doing. These items don’t necessarily belong on my current day list because I need to plot out a day/weekend or large chunk of time to accomplish them. Sometimes they’re lofty ideas and sometimes they’re things that need I desperately need to get done to gain balance in my life-ahem, cleaning up my office, cleaning out the piles of clothes I’ve thrown in my car or tackling my paper problem at home. It’s important to remember your long term goals because every now and then you might have a free weekend/block of time and you can refer to the list to help give you a game plan.

3. ERRANDS TO RUN:

Yup. Just that. My crazy-brain likes to plan out my erranding so I have a well planned route for my destinations. I absolutely hate backtracking so this list is super important to me. When you have a child, you always need to account for bathroom trips, snack/lunch time and nap time into your scheduling. I usually write down what I need to do and then put a number next to each item to chart out my driving route. This list KEEPS ME SANE.

TO-DO LIST TIPS:

• Keep a pad of paper on your night stand!  If you’re losing sleep over what you have to do the next day, write it down!  You’ll get to sleep faster if you have your action plan for the next day.

• It’s OK to write things on your TO-DO list that you’ve already done. It’s positive reinforcement AND at the end of the day you can see a whole list of your accomplishments. It feels good.

• Always keep a notepad & pen in your car. Some of the best ideas happen when you’re traveling. Just be safe and write something down when your car isn’t moving.

• If you don’t get something done, add it to the top of the next day’s TO-DO list.

• Don’t forget to leave the house with your TO-DO list. If you think you might forget it, plan ahead and take a picture of your list with your cellphone. It’s a savior!

RESOURCES FOR TO-DO LISTS:

-TeuxDeux  is a great app that you can put on your iphone, ipad or use online to manage TO-DO lists. I tend to use this program only I’m working on my computer.  You can quickly add/cross off things you need to accomplish for the day/week. It’s simple, super functional and you can access your ongoing list from any computer.

-If you’re a loyal paper list maker, Simple Mom has a bunch of downloads to help with your paper list making. I highly recommend the Daily Docket!  It helped me balance my life after I had a baby.

-Graph Paper Post-its are awesome. I found mine at Target.

Got a great list making tip? Let us know!