Week 4 Reveal

Okay, it's not much of a reveal. I got the spices organized (this morning...what's that saying? A day late, a dollar short? Oops!) but not anything else. My hubby didn't have the week off like he thought, although he did have yesterday off at least, before he started yet another class today. Unfortunately, I'm running way behind on the nursing covers that I'm making for a boutique that's two weeks from today, so the time yesterday was spent making those nursing covers. I've gotten two done in the last two days, though, so at least that's finally coming along! Well, here are the spices.

I got the containers for 2 for $1 at Walmart and got an extra small set as well for other projects. I like these because they're just the right depth for the cabinet and two can fit side by side. They're still not perfect, but I know that the one on the middle shelf on the left is for baking, the one on the right is my cooking spices that I use most often and the stuff on the top shelf is the stuff that I don't use as often. (I know, a lot of unused spices, but I do use them occasionally, so I can't just toss them!) Hopefully I'll figure out a better system soon, but for now, this should work just fine. Clearly dishes got lost in the shuffle since there are no cups on the bottom shelf! Oh, well, the dishwasher's running right now, so it's okay. Also, I'm thinking about getting another set of the baskets for my medicine that's up above the microwave so that I can separate them into kids' medicine and adult medicine. I did go through those and throw away the expired stuff, so it's all nice and safe to take. Hopefully next week will be better.

Week 4 goals

Well, we'll see if I actually accomplish as much as I'd like to this week. Hubby's coming home tonight finally and has the week off, plus Bubs is starting preschool, so it might be a busy week. But ideally, I'd like to organize my spice cabinet and the cabinet above the microwave and the pantry. The spice cabinet and over-microwave one are definitely the priority though, since I think I need some more containers to organize the pantries well. There are just too many little packets running around in there! So here are some before pictures. (Yay for doing before pictures before the project! Woohoo!)

Before: This is actually only the part of the pantry that you see when you open it up, but it's the part I'm going to focus on. Some of the stuff is just overrunning the whole thing! It's driving me a little nuts. Now, organizing this might involve containers, plus cleaning the chest freezer in the garage so there's a place to freeze more bread and buns, so it's last on the list.
Before: Currently the recipe books are to the left (which still haven't all been found in the move, but the most important one is there...and no, I don't mean the cookie one!) and the medicine's on the right. They're kind of spilling out of their container and I need to do something about it...we don't even take medicine, so I really don't know why I have so many. There are more on top of the fridge, so they need to be consolidated. In the cabinet further to the right are the spices and my glasses. I just moved the glasses there because it's next to the fridge where we get all of our water from (since the tap water in this place is nasty!), so it's more convenient for me. We'll see what Hubby thinks when he gets home tonight! :) But it meant moving spices around and I don't like it one bit. My measuring cups ended up in a better place, but the spices are a mess. So that's it for this week!

Fireplace Before and after

Okay, I decided that I had a little extra time since Baldy's been taking some decent naps lately (not to mention the nap that Chubs took yesterday! Heaven!) so I added a project. The fireplace is where the mail gets dumped, so a lot of mail had to be gone through and I added a basket that I had bought a while back for the mail to go in and out of. Between that and the letter holder in the mudroom, hopefully we'll be able to keep on top of the mail a little more! Wish me luck with it! :) I also was inspired to finally get the zucchini off of my fireplace as well, so it was a very good project...from the big zucchini alone I grated seven cups to make zucchini bread from and to freeze for later.
After: I know it doesn't look like much, but we keep our church magazines on the fireplace so they're out for us to read whenever we find time and our Netflix movies are in the basket, waiting to be returned.

Mudroom: Here's the proof!

Okay, I swear my kids keep stealing my camera. The mudroom is actually going to be its new home so that it's high enough that the kids can't reach it anymore. So, here's the proof. I did take care of the mudroom and it looks so much better now! I also took care of my fireplace (which is electric) since it's our dumping ground for mail (or I should say my husband's!). Here are the before and after pics.

Before: (Excuse some of the blurry pictures, lighting wasn't good at all!) A dumping ground, the land of the lost craft projects and place to keep the recyclables that hadn't made it back out to the garage pile yet. (The garage is another project for another time, yikes!)
The bench and shelf still need to be painted, but I had my dad build them and they didn't cost too much since the previous owners had left tons of wood (including the shelves themselves) in the garage! Yay for free wood!

After: The key rings and letter holder on the right still needs to be finished, but I figured it was better to put it up and use it until I actually get around to that. It's going to be so nice finished (once I make a few more decisions about this room!).

The baskets on the shelf were a prize that I won at a family reunion raffle. There are three there that are approximately the same size and then one that's about 2/3 the size of these that I have down in my craft room.

Look how clean it is! Too bad the pictures fuzzy. I'm thinking about putting shelves or a bench in the corner closest to the doorway that I stood in to take the picture. I can't decide which, though. Any suggestions?

Week 3 Goal

Well, the camera seems to have been misplaced...again. You'll probably notice that this is a recurring theme. One of these days my organizing goal will be simply to find a good home for the camera to live in. That's not this week, though. My goal is going to be my mudroom. It's right next to the mudroom and has piles of, well, crap in it. (Now no one call DCFS, it's not literal crap! I'm not that bad!) It has become the home of the unused laundry cart (which some of you may remember from week 1) and numerous diaper and church bags, not to mention craft projects that were waiting for a home while my craft room had lighting installed. Ah, but you haven't heard about that project yet...we'll get to that tomorrow. Meanwhile, we're going to be focusing on the mudroom...as soon as I find the camera to take a before picture. I know it's here somewhere...

Find your Style

So, I'm not good at figuring out which style I like. I'm kind of a it's-comfortable-and-the-kids-can't-kill-the-fabric kind of decorator. Unfortunately, our last couch set was not so kid-friendly as it turns out, so it looks awful now. Oh, well, now I can move on and figure out what I'd like better next time.

So I took a quiz that my friend had linked from on her blog. It turns out that I am 50% Cottage chic, 25% Nantucket Style and 25% Rustic Revival. Now the next trick is figuring out what that means! :) I'm just kidding.

According to the quiz, Cottage chic is lighter colors, with intimate seating arrangements and somewhat ocean-inspired. Well, I agree with the last two, but I definitely do not do light colors with kids if I can help it. Maybe someday when I have no kids at home...nope, grandkids'll ruin it too! Oh, well. Nantucket Style doesn't actually seem to be that different from cottage chic, so maybe the two would've been better combined, but either way, light, airy and intimate seems to be the running theme. Rustic revival is a combination of city and country, bringing together the best of both worlds, but also very light colors. I'm not sure it knows me very well! ;)

Check out how well it works for you here.

Yay for comments and a preview!

Thanks everyone for the comments you're leaving! I love knowing that other people are looking at this blog. My other blog doesn't get many comments, but it's mainly for journaling purposes so I don't care, but I'm grateful that other people get to see this one. So thanks again and feel free to leave as many comments as you'd like. I love 'em! :)

Meanwhile, here are some befores from some projects I'm working on. Hopefully I'll have afters up on Saturday, at least of the desk.

Week 2: The cabinet

The cabinet really should be followed by some eerie sound effect from a horror movie. A good "dun-dun-dun" would not be uncalled for. Every time we had family or friends come over, my husband would shove stuff that was cluttering the counter into this lovely box that fit right into the cabinet. Granted, it kept it close and easy to get to, or at least that was the thought. I think he figured that if we needed it on the counter that it should go someplace close. But most of the time, it wasn't anything that we really needed in the room to begin with. So, we had lots of things shoved in there, including a sprinkler for the kids to run through, jewelry boxes, etc. Well, without further ado, here's the before:

And here's the after:

Anyone who paid close attention last week will recognize the file box from the laundry room. The stuff on the top shelf is filing stuff. The red binder has medical records in it for our information. Unfortunately there's a whole boatload of papers between the binder and the file box that need to be filed and there's just no more room in the file box. It might be time for another. I started to go through the original file box, but a lot of it is stuff I need to go through with hubby, and he's out of town, so it'll have to wait. The boatload of papers consists of stuff for our new house, including inspection info, paperwork, floor plans and manuals from the old owner (which I was very grateful for the other day, when the oven starting beeping at me for an unknown reason...still unknown, but at least we got it to stop!). The green card file boxes are actually quotes that my hubby's grandmother collected during her life, and I have an ongoing goal to put them all on the computer and get a cd of them to her grandchildren. I think it'll be nice for them to know what kinds of things their grandmother thought were important, and since I never met her (just her husband), it's been kind of fun for me as well.

The bottom shelf is not stuff intended to stay there. I think once the kids are older, if we still haven't remodeled our teeny-tiny, poorly laid-out kitchen by then, this shelf will have some art supplies. Right now, with three kids ages four and under, that's just asking for trouble. So currently the stack on the left is computer supplies (which will move downstairs once the basement is finished enough for the computer to move down there), the stack next to that is phone books and the thing on the right is actually an alarm system key pad that kept beeping at me that I was sick of. We don't actually subscribe to that alarm system, so it was a pretty pointless keypad in the dumbest spot to get to. So when it kept beeping, I didn't feel bad at all ripping it out. Currently it's staying under there until I can decide if it's worth keeping it or getting rid of it completely, which will probably mean talking to hubby about it. Meanwhile, it's close to its old home, not in the way of anything else, and nothing else was really going to fit there, so I figured it wasn't a big loss of space. I think I'd like a container for the computer stuff, but meanwhile this works for now. I'm loving this challenge right now, but I'm so grateful I picked something small for this week since my hubby's out of town and Baldy and I managed to get sick. This was just the right sized project! I'll decide tonight what next week's project is going to be and post it tomorrow with a before picture!

Week 1: Laundry Room

Well, Melinda over at Coming Clean is hosting an eight week organizational party. I'm a little late jumping on the bandwagon. We were supposed to post our goal last week and before pictures, but I didn't find it until after that, so I'm hopping in with my before and after pictures now and posting my goal for this week. So this week I decided to go for the laundry room. My laundry room was a bit of a mess, as evidenced by the unfortunate before picture. Here it is (I'll go hide my head in shame while you look...let me know when to come back!)

Oh, you're done! Were you frightened? You should be! My laundry room had clearly turned into a dumping ground. Tools were in there, a cart that wasn't being used at all, let alone to its full potential. The washer and dryer were completely covered with clean clothes (why, I don't know, but they were there...probably out of season stuff waiting for boxes).

Well, step one was to clear the floor. Which took a while. It also meant putting Baldy somewhere else for a while. Daddy had to watch him for a bit. Thank heavens for Daddy being home! Well, we got most of the stuff into the garbage. Some of it was clothes that hadn't been unpacked since we moved in three months ago, so those were unpacked and stuck in the hamper. The tools were moved out to the work bench that my dad brought us for the garage a little while ago. The filebox, unfortunately did not get moved. The next project should probably be the cabinet in the dining room, since that's where the filebox should go, but can't currently fit! Anyway, extra surfaces were cleared and things were put in their rightful places. So here's the after.

I have to admit, the candle falling off the washer this morning was helpful for finishing getting the floor cleared. It's amazing how much you get done when you realize that you'll cut yourself if you walk into the room in bare feet. (We never wear shoes at our house, so this is a big motivator!) In the bottom picture, you'll see the tippy-top of a bag next to the washer. That's in the trash can. Yep, I finally put a trash can in there for just the laundry room. Through that door is a half bath and we kept trying to put the lint from the dryer into the trash in there, but if the bathroom's being used you can't do that. The lint just kept getting stacked on the dryer and then falling on the floor. So the trash can was added. And do you see that lovely table in the picture above that? My daddy helped me with that. I wanted a table in there to fold laundry on (for when I actually get my act together enough to fold clothes as they come out of the dryer), but I didn't want it down permanently, since I have a clothes sorter under it. So that thing can actually fold out of the way. It's great. A little smaller than we'd hoped, but you do what you can. It's become a drop spot, though, so I was grateful to get it uncovered. The towel hanger in the pictures is actually not for towels. We actually have towel racks in our bathrooms (unlike the apartment we lived in when we bought the towel holders) so it wasn't being used. I decided it would be perfect for a clothes dryer, for those pesky line dry clothes. Really, let's face it, I use it for bras. I don't believe in line dry clothes with three little kids. There's just not enough time for that. Anyway, this is a pretty exciting thing for me to have done. It's the cleanest the laundry room has been since we moved in! That's very exciting for me. Now, for next week I should probably just go with the cabinet under the counter in the dining room. It's a little overflowing for some reason and needs to be taken care of. Hopefully it's not too bad a project, since hubby's going out of town for two weeks. We'll cross our fingers. Stay tuned for before pictures (when Blogger's working a bit better for me!).

P.S. I forgot to mention the cost of this organizational project: $0! I had everything I needed in the garage! Yay!