Week 5 Goal and update

Well, I thought I'd let y'all know how much I love my spice organization! I tweaked it a little bit today (not enough to need a new picture, though!) and it's even better. I had a couple of doubles in my spices, so they were taken out and thinks fit a little bit better now. I baked a cake from scratch on Sunday and was able to just pull out my baking basket, make the cake and put it all back quickly! It streamlined the process so much! Yay for good things!

Week 5 is pretty much just a continuation of Week 4. I didn't get anything done in the pantry last week, so I've been working on it today. It included moving the recycling from next to the garage door, so that I could move a shelf there to keep paper towel, toilet paper, plastic utensils, etc. on. That cleared out so much room in my pantry! I have my garbage can in the pantry now since Baldy (who's about 9 months old and has been standing up for two months now!) pulls himself up on the garbage can, which then falls over on top of him and he hits his head on the tile. Not good. So we put it somewhere where we can close the door. So far it's working well. I rearranged things so that the garbage can is no longer blocking my kids plates, cups, and bowls so they can set the table for themselves and get their own sippy cups. Anyway, things are going well on the organizing front!

My hubby's also been very helpful this week getting some stuff done. It's been a pretty productive week. We put a shelf up over our t.v. to put the blu-ray player and wii on so that the 9 month old would stop hitting them. My brother also helped me get blinds up in my kitchen, which has definitely lowered the amount of time that we've had to have the air conditioning on. It was also my son's birthday, so I made him a super-cute cake and cleaned the place up for that. It's almost back to looking that good and it's only been two days. :) Anyway, things have been going well so far this week and hopefully I'll be able to find batteries for the camera so I can get an after picture of the pantry up tomorrow!

Picture of Chubs with his birthday cake: Pillsburry Funfetti with vanilla ice cream. The outside is covered with KitKats and the top has M&Ms all over it. It was so yummy, but so rich!

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?