Area #15: Girls' Closet

I've already put a couple of systems into place in their closet to help keep things organized.  The first is the small clear containers on the top shelf.  One holds cloth diapers that I use as swim diapers in the summer.  One holds books that are longer than Evelyn's attention span.  I'm saving them for when she gets a little older and will actually sit still for the whole book.  Another holds baby bottles and feeding items, and the last holds toys that are currently out of circulation.  Most had multiple small pieces that just ended up everywhere and were hard to keep picked up.  Maybe I'll rotate out some different ones and put these back into circulation, or maybe I'll just get rid of them. I haven't decided yet.

Closet After

Closet Before

The other system that I just recently perfected is to keep clothes that they've outgrown or have yet to grow into in order.  I set up 4 totes and labeled them on the top: "Too big for Elsie", "Too small for Elsie", "Too big for Evelyn", and "Too small for Evelyn".  Now when either girl outgrows something, I just toss it into the appropriately labeled tote. When that tote gets full, I neatly fold everything in it, label the sizes and store it in the basement replacing it with a new empty tote.  When I empty out the tote labeled, "Too big for Elsie", I go downstairs and get the next bigger size and bring it up to add to her dresser.  I've been doing this since shortly after we moved to our new house, and it has saved me tons of time and kept things much more orderly than piles of clothes everywhere, or diaper boxes packed with miscellaneous sizes.

Area #14 & 14.5: Girls' Bedroom and End-of-Hall Closet

I was going to add an extra area for the closet I forgot to number, but I decided I like having an even 25 areas.  So I just joined it up with the girls' bedroom.  I have tried to keep their bedroom free of toys because between clothes, shoes, blankets, and stuffed animals, their room becomes a mess all to quickly without toys.  I keep a small basket of toys for Elsie and some books upstairs, and all the rest in the basement. (coming up in area #16)

The biggest thing that has helped me to keep their room in order is this shelf that I designed and Kevin built before Evelyn was born.  I have it mounted right above Elsie's dresser which is also the changing table.  The best part is that the girls can't reach it, so it stays organized.

The closet at the end of the hall is still a work in progress.  I'd like to add more shelves and convert it into more of a linen/storage closet than a coat closet.  Until then, I'll keep utilizing it as it is and look for ways to make it more usable.

Area #13: Main Bathroom

The bathroom was a rewarding area to tackle.  The main spots were the linen closet and behind the mirror.  Unfortunately I didn't get any pictures of behind the mirror, but I got plenty of the closet.  My biggest trouble area in this closet is with extra stuff.  You know, the bottles of shampoo, soap, rubbing alcohol, deodorant, toothpaste etc. for when the one you're using runs out.  I moved a lot of them behind the mirror.  We have shelves the full length of the sink and up to the ceiling behind the mirror, so there's a lot of space to utilize (and keep organized).  Here are the before and afters from each shelf in the closet from top to bottom.

Before

 Top Shelf:

 The big glass jar was Evelyn's potty reward jar.  It was a lot fuller when we started, but definitely needed to be downsized.  I've been wanting to start making Kombucha again anyway so I need my jar back.

After

 Moving the Kleenex boxes to another shelf opened up space for the treats to tuck in the corner leaving the rags accessible.


 I think I have too many rags.  I need to go through them and throw away the really bad ones and the ones that are really the wrong material to be rags, and maybe donate some to the garage rag tub.

Second Shelf:

Before

After

The second shelf holds a lot  of extras.  Feminine care items, soap, epsom salts.  A lot of them are things that don't get used on a regular basis.  I tried to tuck them as far back and out of the way as possible.

Before I had some soaps here and some soaps behind the mirror, and some soaps on the next shelf.  They all got relocated to the corner of this shelf.  Now all of the soap is together.

The bottom container with the green handle holds all of our first aid items.  It was hard to get at it with the hair cutting supplies tub sitting right on top of it, so I moved it and keep that area clear.

Speaking of first aid supplies, I reused some plastic zippered bags I had found in our bedroom and use them to hold bandaids.  I've been getting tired of opening the box with the picture of the bandaid you're hoping to use only to find that that box is out of that size.  This way I can see exactly where each bandaid size/type is and grab the one I need on the first try.  I also tucked in a tube of antibacterial ointment so that it's handy for those cuts and scrapes too.

Third shelf:

Before

After

This shelf holds things that I use most often.  Some things daily.  It also holds a lot of 'extras'.  I ordered up many of those extras into categories, and put all of the smaller and most frequently used extra items in the blue covered tote.  It now holds toothpaste, contact cases, toothbrushes, q-tips and floss.  The white plastic pull out drawer container holds all of our natural remedy items.  Essential oils, salves, herbs etc.

Last but not least are my hair items.  When they were stored right in front of the drawer to the natural items, it was always a pain to move them in order to open the drawer.  I cleared the area to the right and tucked the hair items in there.  Now I can open all drawers and containers without too much shuffling around.


Fourth Shelf:

Before

This shelf experienced the least transformation in this closet.  It was and still is the towel shelf.  The only thing I did was remove any things that aren't towels or washcloths.

After

I did see an idea after I took these pictures to roll the towels instead of fold them and I might try that.  It would just look a lot cooler to have them rolled and then stacked.

Before

Bottom Shelf:

After

I'm not really sure why I was storing sheets in the bathroom.  In our old house the linen closet wasn't in the bathroom and all these things were in there.  I just tossed everything in the same closet like I had before. I moved the sheets into the bedroom containing the size of bed for each set of sheets.

I decided to reserve this bottom shelf for extra toilet paper and kleenex boxes.  As you can see in my after picture we're almost out of tp.  Having everything organized like this makes it very clear when we're almost out of something.

Having the tp on the bottom will also come in handy for those times when you're using the facilities and realize that the tp is out.  Evelyn can very easily reach them here. :D

It has been very nice to have the bathroom in order.  Even though we have 4 bathrooms in our house, this is the one we use 99% of the time.  Once we have moved into the master bedroom we will use that bathroom more, but until then we've got everything crammed in this one.  Hope that might give you some ideas for your bathroom closets.

Busy Busy Dreadfully Busy

That title comes from a song in the Veggietales movie "Are You My Neighbor?" If you haven't seen it, I recommend watching it with your kids, nieces/nephews, grandkids, whoever.  It's one of Evelyn's favorites.  The song accurately describes me.  "Busy, busy, dreadfully busy.  You've no idea what I have to do."

Well, my house that cleans itself project got put on the back burner for a bit.  Spring just hit us so fast and Kevin and I have been pretty crazy answering phones and organizing work for the year.  I got one more area done and I'm working on the last few upstairs, but just haven't had time to post them yet.  I'm hoping to find time soon.  My 'to do' list fills up all 32 lines on one side of my notebook page, and half of them on the back side.  It seems that for every item I cross off my list, two more get added to it. 

And then yesterday I got an offer from Shutterfly for a free photo book.  I have to have it all made and ordered within 5 days.  Those tend to take me roughly 4-5 hours to complete, so I need to get cracking on that.

Well, it's nap time which is my go to time.  Both girls down for at least 2 hours.  Gotta run - literally - and start crossing things off my list. 

Area #12: Our Closet

Our closet was another trouble spot for dumping.  It also held a lot of non-clothing items.  Not anymore!

Note the messy floor.  I decided to try and keep the floor clear as I did in coat closet #2.  Moved a lot of unnecessaries, and voila!

After I had it all finished, I realized that the only things that are in the closet now are clothes.  I'm looking forward to the day when we move into the master bedroom of the house and Kevin and I will each have our own closets, but until then this is what we've got. 

I decided to try arranging my clothes by color.  I've been hanging them by the type of item (sweater, button-up, long sleeve, etc.) but I think I'll like this way better.  Now when I need a shirt to go with something specific, I don't have to try to remember all the different shirts I have and where they might be hanging. I can just go to the color section and see what's there. 

Many items got transferred to the closet at the end of the hallway which I didn't originally number because there was nothing there before.  I will have to add a 26th area and organize that closet too.

On to the bathroom.  I've discovered that the further I go in my house, the longer areas tend to take.  This is because I keep deciding on new places for things that are in areas I haven't organized yet.  So then when I finally get there, there's twice as much stuff to sort through.  I don't even want to think about when I get to the basement rooms.  Yikes, I've been stashing a lot of stuff downstairs.

Area #11: Our Bedroom

I had a revelation while cleaning and organizing our bedroom.  We store and bring in a lot of things into our bedroom that don't need to be there.  Why are we storing things like elementary school art drawing, child birth info, ski goggles, bike lights, and many more misc items in our bedroom?  I wasn't sure, so I decided to limit what gets stored in our bedroom to those things that we use on a daily basis.  Wow, that was a lot of stuff to get rid of or find a new home for.  The main places for me were our dressers and the closet, but the closet is area #12, so I'll wait to tell about that one.  Here's what our dressers looked like before.

My Dresser

Kevin's Dresser

I probably didn't need to label whose is whose.  The items on them kind of give it away.  I actually really enjoyed going through our dressers.  I finally parted with the tacky looking bracelet holder that I made in high school.  I don't wear bracelets that much, and it took up a lot of space. 

Here are the dressers after my clean off.

I added a small jar to each of our dressers.  Mine is to hold bobby pins and chapstick.  Those are the two little items that I use daily that seemed to be spread all over my dresser.  Kevin's holds, you guessed it misc. ammo and ear plugs.  These items are frequently found in pockets and were more abundant than any other items I found. 

I am loving the look and looking forward to sticking with our goal to not clutter up our bedroom with things that we don't use on a daily basis.  We own an entire house and our bedroom does not need to be our dumping spot. 

Packaging

Almost a month ago, I came across two examples of packaging.  One that I love, and one that frustrates me.  The former was a Target find.  I didn't even realize it until I got home and opened my giant bag of pretzels that there was this sweet sticky strip that you can peel off the bag and use to keep the bag sealed.  That way you don't have to use a clip.  I heart Target and Market Pantry.

The other example of packaging that frustrated me was from, you guessed it, Menards.  I went there to get a few screws, washers, and nuts to hold down the cover of Evelyn's car seat.  Here's what I had to buy:

All the same size, but I ended up with 9 screws, 10 washers, and 8 nuts.  BAHHH!  It's a good thing I didn't need an even amount of any of these and there were more than what I ended up using, but still.  I know it's just a scheme to get you to buy more than what you'll need, lose what you didn't use, and have to buy more.  Or if you needed say 10 screws with washers and nuts you'd have to buy an extra package of screws and nuts and have tons left over, but no left over washers.  This is where your local hardware store is a much better option than Menards.  I always forget that we have a little True Value hardware store just a few blocks away.  I need to go there more often.

Yay for Target and Boo for Menards.

Area #10: Other Coat Closet

Our house has a plethora of coat closets.  Makes me wonder if my grandparents had a thing for lots of coats.  There are three coat closets on the main floor.  One by each entry door, and one at the end of the hallway.  I'm guessing that eventually we will turn the one at the end of the hallway into more of a linen closet with more shelves.  It just isn't very practical to have a coat closet at the back end of the hallway by all of the bedrooms.  All of our off season coats go in the basement anyway.  Here's what the closet looked like before I touched it.

I heard one idea for having orderly closets is to have nothing on the floor of the closet.  I think that it really does help the closet look and stay less cluttered, but I also don't think it's 100% practical.  I did decide to limit what gets stored on the floor.  If it can go up, it does, otherwise it can stay.  I moved all of the duffel bags to the end of hall closet along with our beach towels.  There were two fans in this closet that will be handy to store here during hot summer months, but we don't need them here in the winter.  I rearranged some things like putting the folding chairs where you can easily get to them, and simplified the hangers to be all the same type.  Here's my result:

Now there's plenty of room for guest coats if they come in our front door.  The floor is pretty clear, and things are orderly.  The only thing I need for this area is a better bin to hold all of the hand vacuum attachments.  They are all just tossed in the box that came with it which is too small for some of the pieces (as you can see).

This was one of the areas that was fun to tell Kevin, "Go look in the closet."  His reaction to each of my areas has been fun.  Sometimes he exaggerates his surprise at the cleanliness so that I grin from ear to ear even though he's half teasing.  Most of the time he's genuinely impressed with what I've done.  Husbands are great.

Area #9: Dining Room Desk

This cute little desk comes in very handy.  I've seen homes with a desk in the kitchen area, and never really thought twice about it, but now that I have one I really like it.  I think it's especially nice in our house because our business office is down in the basement, so without this desk I would either have to go all the way down stairs to get something or clutter up a kitchen drawer with office things.  After throwing out many things, moving some over to the real junk drawer, I now have one practically empty drawer.  I'm not sure what will have it's home there, but I'm sure I'll find something.  The top drawer is my main desk drawer.  It has a nice big organizer that holds pens, pencils, paperclips, note pads, rubber bands, etc.  The only other things that I want to add are a stapler and a business checkbook for paying business bills. (We already have a personal one there.)

One point that the author makes in the book is that horizontal spaces (such as this desk) tend to be dumping spots that gather things.  This desk has been a victim of that quite a bit. I haven't come up with a system to handle it yet because I still need to determine what types of things gather  here.

Area #8: Dining Room

Our dining room is a pretty simple area.  All that's in there are chairs and a table. This room usually stays relatively clean (as long as I remember to clean off the table after meals).  There were no big  projects here, just a little sweeping (notice my big helper double brooming it) and straightening.

I do want to add some decorations to our dining room.  I found a really cute idea on Pinterest and know it would be super easy to have Kevin help me with.  Here's a picture of it:

The silverware outlines are cut out of a piece of wood and then painted.  I'm going to try to do it soon I think.  :D

Area #7: Kitchen

Well, I finally got it done.  The kitchen ended up being about as big of a project as I expected it would be.  It took several days mostly because I didn't have all of the supplies that I needed on hand to finish everything up.  My first project in the kitchen was to create a 'hot drink' station.  Before, the coffee maker was in one cupboard, the tea/hot chocolate was in the cupboard by the stove, the coffee was in the pantry, the mugs in the cup cupboard, you get the picture. Before picture on the left.  After on the right.  Now everything is right there when you want a hot drink.  I'm not sure what I'm going to do with this cupboard during summer time when we don't drink hot drinks, but I'll cross that bridge when I come to it.

 The second area I worked on (with Ellen's help) was our junk drawer. While I was cleaning it out, I realized that I really like having a junk drawer.  There are always going to be those things that need a home, but need to be handy, but don't really have any other home because they're unique and can't be grouped in with other things.  Here's what my drawer used to look like:

Everything that didn't have a home got tossed here.  Several things got thrown out, or relocated and now it looks like this:

I even found $5 while sorting through stuff.  I decided that I like my junk drawer a little too much to get rid of it, and that it would take too much of my time to put all of these things in another place.  Besides, I have too many drawers in my kitchen anyway...

Next area: under the sink.  I've seen so many cute ideas for organizing under a kitchen sink.  None of them I was really able to apply to mine, but I still like how it turned out.

Before

After

This is the first time that we have actually hung up the metal rack hanging on the left door.  I've already used it a ton.  It helps keep the everyday things off the sink, yet still within reach.  This helps the sink area to look a lot neater without really changing much.

Here are two other areas that I completed recently but didn't get a before picture of.  The first is our 'toast' station.  We used to keep the butter and honey in that cupboard that now holds hot drinks.  The bread and toast were over on another counter across the kitchen away from the table.  The counter I moved them too was just a collector of tools or misc. other items.  Now it looks awesome and is super functional and close to the table.

Our 'toast' station

The other area is the counter space right when you walk in from the entry room.  Here I implemented an idea I saw in BHG to have an 'inbox' for all papers that come into your house.  This way you can sort and take care of them before they become a huge pile.  Kevin made this inbox for me and I put it here because it's where all of the papers end up anyway.  Now they look nice and contained.

The last project, and the one I'm the most excited about is my baking cupboard.  I've tried to keep it somewhat orderly, but it never really stayed that way and tended to get cluttered.  Here's my before picture:

I have a thing for glass jars (as you can probably tell already from the before picture).  They just look so neat all in a row and you can see right through if you're getting low on something, and you can see which item you're grabbing.  I also want to eliminate as much plastic storage as I can as it can leech things into your food.  My goal is to go all glass.  Eventually.  I'm taking baby steps to get there now.  I took all of my spices and many other items and put them into glass canning jars.  From 1/2 pints to quart jars depending on the item.  My spices now look like this:

I found the template for the lid labels on Pinterest.  They originated here and I just had to print them and fill in my items.  I'm loving the look.  Now my baking cupboards look like this:

And I even had to use the cupboard next door for enough room to show off all my cute jars.

I got two more areas done today, but no more time to write now.  Tune in next time.

Area #5 and Area #6: The Living Room

I'm not sure why I divided the living room into two sections.  I guess I was anticipating it being a bigger project than it was.  Maybe because the room is so much bigger than the other areas and I wanted to narrow in on even the small areas in our house.  At any rate, these two areas were completed all at once, and I love the results.  The two biggest parts were the game closet (which holds a lot of other things too), and the girls' toy area.  Here is the closet. 

Before

After

Notice my cute basket holding stuff in the closet? :D ---->













I set up my 'gift wrapping station' here in this closet.  I've got all my wrapping paper, bags, tissue paper, ribbon, bows, tape.  Now all I need to add is a pair of scissors and it will be set.

The toy area/corner cupboard has been an eye sore for me for, well, since we moved.  Kevin insists that the speakers be elevated to approximately ear level in order to achieve the best sound.  So the speakers have been sitting on the rectangle shelf he made for our first apartment that has since been used as a stand for painting things. 

We haven't really found a specific purpose for the corner thing.  Not really sure what to call it.  We picked it up off the side of the road for free last summer.  I love the look of it, but now it actually has a purpose.  I put blankets on the top shelf, and hid all the toys underneath.  Evelyn is tall enough to open the doors, so they can still get to all the toys, but you can't see them when you just walk in the room (as long as they're all picked up).  Speaking of which, the first thing Evelyn did when I showed her the new spot for the toys was pull them all out and onto the floor.  Good thing this house will clean itself right?

I took that old painted on support for the speakers and traded it in for the coffee table that we don't use as a coffee table anyway.  I have a speaker stand on my list of things to look for at thrift sales, because ultimately I would like to move the desk under the pictures to the right of the mirror, but it won't fit right now with the coffee table there.

The other part of our living room really didn't need anything done to it.  It's filled with big furniture and we don't do much there except for read and talk. I do want to get some sort of magazine rack or place to hold books that we're in the process of reading.  I also want to find a log holder to put by the fireplace instead of that nice high-quality banana box.

On a side note, I got part of the kitchen done as well today and hope to finish and post about that tomorrow.  This is moving along a lot quicker than I thought which is exciting.  On another side note, the shelf and coat hooks Kevin is making are taking longer than expected, but are still in progress. 

Area #4: Pantry and Small Cupboard

I have to skip area #3 for another day or two because Kevin is working on some coat hooks and a shelf for the entry room.  As soon as they're done I will tell about that area.  The pantry was a fun project.  Everything was pretty orderly, but I realized that I was keeping every last pantry item possible in my little pantry.  I sorted through things and took some of the bigger items and items that were plenteous (15 jars of spaghetti sauce) down to the food shelf I have set up in the basement.  This gave me a lot more room to organize and label what does need to stay right on hand.  Here's the pantry before I did anything:

I used some free labels I had seen in Better Homes & Gardens a few months ago.  They are available to download and print from their website.  I used the basket label, toy bin label, and the rectangle tag label in case you're interested in doing some of your own.  Now my pantry shelves look like this:

And like this:

 The other part of this area was the little cupboard right next to the pantry.  It's above the stairs to our basement, so it's a little hard to get at and has been a dumping spot for a lot of random things.  Here it is before.

I decided to move several things and narrow down what gets stored in this cupboard.  The basket right in front got simplified to hold batteries, string, and tape. I went through the light bulbs and got rid of several that we don't even have lights for.  Here's the cupboard now:

Tomorrow's area is the Kitchen.  This one may be more complicated, but my sister-in-law Ellen will be coming over to clean, so we should be able to get a fair amount of it done.