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.

A Basket and A Box

I didn't complete a HTCI area yesterday because I was too busy working on these:

This basket is made out of paper grocery bags.  I cut them open, rolled them up, sewed down the sides, and weaved them together.  (Thank you Pinterest for the idea) It's held together with hot glue to help it stay together.  I was going to use it in the game closet for organizing, but it's so cute I don't want it to hide in a closet.  We'll see if I can think of another use for it.  I'm already saving my paper bags to make another one.  It took 13 bags to make.

This is the box that Kevin made for me to help organize papers that come into our house.  They seem to all collect on one corner of our counter, so now this pretty box can sit there and hold them and look somewhat neat.

 

I think the best part of these two projects is that they didn't cost me a thing.  We had all the supplies here around the house and just needed to use come creativity to put them together.

Area #2: Entry Closet

This closet basically just needed some straightening.  It was packed with coats and shoes that didn't all need to be there.  There was also some stuff that had just gotten stashed on the shelves when we moved that really should have gotten thrown away.  So, we went from this:

Top shelves in the closet.

Packed coats and shoes below.

To this:

Shelves cleared off and coats thinned for the season.

 

Shoes straightened, and another view of the coats.

Now there is actually room in this closet for guests to hang their coats.  I think we could probably get rid of a couple more pairs of shoes too, but I just need to check with Kevin on some of his pairs.  I like the transformation though!

Area #1: Small Entry Bathroom

I started my HTCI endeavor with the little bathroom off the garage that we hardly ever use.  I thought that this room would be simple and easy because it's so small, and there's not much to really do in there.  Wrong.  Here's what the bathroom looked like before I did anything. -------------->

It doesn't look bad because there's not much there.  My problem came when I went to clean the bathroom before assessing it.  Here's what I had stored under the sink.  Extra toilet paper and some cleaners. (below)















When I went to clean the room, I realized that I need to add a few cleaning supplies to this bathroom.  I had to run to the main bathroom to get:
*scrub brush for sink

The bathroom after my cleaning.

*window cleaner
*a cup to rinse the sink
*rags
*paper towel
*toilet scrub brush

The book talks a lot about getting rid of rabbit trails.  My rabbit trail for this room was going to get all of the cleaning supplies.  If all of the supplies needed are right there, you will be more likely to actually clean the room.  I agree.

Before I could clean the sink, I discovered a crusty bar of soap that has been sitting on the sink since we moved in, and a very old bottle of air freshener.  We never use air freshener spray and we hardly ever use this bathroom.  So why was it here?  Don't know.  It got tossed

Besides the cleaning supplies I need to put in this bathroom, I need to get:
*a garbage can

Under the sink after a few additions.

*a plunger

So, the room I thought would be simple and quick took a little longer than I was expecting, but still wasn't much work.  I have my list of things I need to get and/or look for at thrift sales.  Now on to area #2!