SIlverware Drawer mini challenge

Toni at ABFOL has challenged her followers to Mini Challenges, this is one of them!

Yet another Medicine Cabinet Improvement

It is a small space and was working very well for us, except the yucky little jar our toothbrushes stood up in. An impulse buy along with our new toothbrushes sparked this little update.

Before

 Bought a pack of these for $1.87 at Walmart

 I knew they would not suction to the inside of the medicine cabinet where I wanted them, so I pulled out my trusty Command Strips and cut one to fit the back.

 I pulled the suction cup off and attached the Command Strip

I did a test fitting of the toothbrush holders and sadly they were not big enough. I knew that I wouldnt bother returning them for a $2 refund so I decided to see if I could make them work. Cue kitchen shears. 

After

 A little recap!

You may notice that the magnet strip that hung in the top left of the bottom section of the cabinet is missing, yeah I love the command strips but there was a sticker on the back of the magnet strip that did not hold and it fell off. I need to hot glue half of the Velcro-type Command strips to the magnet strip so that I can rehang my metal bathroom tools. It is the project drawer for someday.

I actually did this quite a while ago (I'm a slow blogger) and I can say that the command strips have held on well and we are loving hanging our brushes up!

Back to blogging my flying!

I got the house all tidy before Mikey came home from Vegas. Not spotless and not detailed clean but it was a wreck before he left. It was nice to greet him in a nice clean home.

My goal this week is to keep up with the tidy home and to do some detailed cleaning throughout the week.

I plan to go to bed with a clean kitchen, clear couch and tidy bathroom each night.

Today I wiped the fronts of the lower kitchen cabinets, swept behind the couch and scrubbed inside the toilet.

Sunday is Aunt's Day and Id like to be able to focus on food and decorations rather than cleaning.

Junk drawer mini challenge

I thought this was the end of the challenge until a few days later when I decided I needed more towel/napkin storage in the kitchen.
These are the 2 drawers I decided to work with. The ziplock drawer which had wasted space, and duplicate items that could live elsewhere, and the junk drawer.

I pulled the junk out of the junk drawer and moved the essential ziplocks, saran wrap, etc to the more shallow drawer,

and moved the junk drawer organizer into a funky cabinet that we do not access often. The few junk drawer items we access got moved to more accessible places. I think I will get some sort of organization system inside the cabinet door for things too but that will come. 

In the old ziplock drawer got kitchen towels/cloth napkins. 

Week 1, the Kitchen, fridge front declutter

I am going to be focusing on the kitchen this week with A Bowl Full Of Lemons for the first week of the Home Organization 101. 

First up, something simple and quiet because the family is sleeping in. 

This is a regular job, I have decluttered the fridge outsides many times before but I think it makes a great impact for small effort. 

I moved some note pads to the side you can't see because it doesn't add visual clutter on that side. I took down some old notes mail and stuff. I moved the play magnets to the front door with the others. I took some potholders down and put them in the kitchen linen drawer instead.
On the counter next to the fridge I moved a few big bottles of vitamins up into the spice cabinet, where there was plenty of room thanks to my pantry organization.

This week of kitchen organization should be fun thanks to A Bowl Full of Lemons!

Silverware Drawer mini challenge.

I've been so busy in my craft room/home office lately, so I didn't think I'd stop to do the silverware drawer mini challenge from A Bowl Full of Lemons but I did and I'm glad. My daughter can reach into the drawer, by putting her silverware up front, instead of the straws, she can get her own out. She had been grabbing at the straws before, searching blindly for a spoon.

I already had the little purple baskets.

ETA a few weeks later and Its working great! I did use some cut shorter straws to divide the baby silverware purple basket for spoons and forks, I just slid straws between the middle row  of holes in the basket to make a little wall.

Pantry Wall in Craft Room / Home Office

Our kitchen doesnt have a pantry, as it is at the end of the great room that is our loft. We decided to dedicate a wall in our home office (just off the living room) to pantry, extra pans, and chest freezer, as we do not have a garage.

We bought a great can organizer from Shelf Reliance, and so did my In-Laws. My husband put theirs together and it was literally a pain in his neck, so he put off putting ours together. The boxes the can rack were in got shoved in a corner and used as a surface for the last 3 years.

The biggest problem is that the home office has been a chaotic hot mess pretty much since we moved in. I have cleaned up parts of it but never got the room finished, and there was never room to assemble the rack to get it into place.

A few weeks ago, we invested in an Expedit shelf from IKEA for my daughter's toys in the living room, with that, I was able to move some things out of the office, and got inspired to do more and more.

First, I cleaned, without trying to organize, I just put things in the dresser, shelf, or box they belonged in and got the floor clean. As I cleaned I chose items to get rid of, to relocate and to trash. Eventually the room was clean enough to move things around and build the can rack!

So without further ado, Here are some pics.

This was before much cleaning. 

The black book case in the corner was dedicated for food until we finished the pantry wall. The food, as you can see, overflowed onto my husband's book shelf on the left and a misc book case on the right. (and all over the room, this pic shows after moving 2 shelves of books out to the Expedit, and putting food from around the room on those shelves for the time being)

This was after quite a bit of cleaning but no recent organization. 

I had donated a bag of WIC babyfood to the Stamp Out Hunger program when the postal carriers take food donations, but was able to box up another 2 bundles to take to the post office a few days later. 

The corned where the can rack would go had been cleaned up

We recently did some rearranging in our bedroom, which meant my husband's computer no longer fit, but a dresser across the room would, so we moved it out and moved the gift wrap dresser (above) over to where it was. 

We pulled the can rack out and Hubby, Ellie and I assembled it. 

Assembling the can rack required evaluating my cans, adding contact paper to the shelves, and getting a top cut to fit. (the top is an extra accessory you can buy but we just had plywood cut at The Home Depot.)

We moved it into place and filled it up!

Check out other products here. 

Here are some close-ups

On top are larger food items, cereal, chips and popcorn tub, cookies and crackers. Behind are a pan that I do use but rarely and a refillable water jug. 

The rack came with the perfect little magnet labels for the spots.

 Extra magnet labels are on the side of the freezer near by. (I do not expect them to stay so neat, my daughter loves magnets!)

The top shelf houses all my baking supplies. Much of it is in Tupperware I invested in years ago, some are in recycled containers and the polka dot bins are from the dollar tree. The only baking supplies not shown are my sprinkles, cookie cutters, colors etc which are up in my kitchen. 

See them most recently HERE or in an old post about this wall is HERE and another really old post about this wall Here

The bottom drawer holds all my larger appliances (I have an orange juicer, hand beater, and space for a toaster in a cabinet in my kitchen). My KitchenAid stand mixer and Kuerig stay on the counter.

The wire shelf that was on this wall had some purging done, relocating done and shifted over a bit to make room. (before picture above)

 I hung some Command hooks above the rack for my less often used hang-able pots. Here is a tip for you, check to be sure that the hook will fit inside the pan handle hole or you'll have one mis-matched hook for the smaller handle hole. Speaking of hooks, the can rack came with some hooks to hang items from the corners. I have lunch boxes hanging near the bottom. Neither of us work outside the home, but they are great for taking snacks for the day at the park.

Top shelf holds excess spices, sauces, and salad dressing.

The next shelf holds a bin for candy making stuff (melting bags, sticks, and small packages of candy melts) next to that, 2 pickle jars of candy melting disks and a shaker. on the far right is a bin of (mostly homemade) jams jellies and syrups

Below that is a bin of condiments (my daughter stole the label and my label maker died on my last label so that can wait), pasta and a bin of pasta sauces and more pasta. 

on these shelves are bins for drink powders, ziplocks/foil/saran wrap, and a bin of candy (which was purged through to get rid of anything we wont eat). Below that are more ziplocks (they were on sale!), some misc items and some casserole dishes.

The bottom row holds large cans, a pitcher and some baking pans, The white organizer holding them up is actually designed as a vertical shelf spice rack type thing. I had it from my old apartment 4 years ago (I hoard organizing tools). I zip-tied it to the shelf. 

On the floor are over-sized pans and some more cake pans. 

Next to the wire rack is my chest freezer. I wish I had a stand-up freezer, but this was a gift from someone who won it, so I am very grateful for it. I have organized it countless times, its a pain to keep organized if it is full. 

This is a "During" picture. That wire rack above the freezer was just tossed up there one day. I used to hang my clothes drying rack up there on a Command Hook when it wasnt used, but it is being used most of the time now that it has warmed up outside. The rack was a catch-all and didnt really sit right on the single command hook. I emptied it and took it down. 

After. 

The command hook now holds a picnic basket, and it bugs me slightly that the hook is off center since we had to shift the freezer to fit the can rack, but I digress. 

The blue shoe organizer on the back of the door in the picture above was decluttered also. It has always been a place to put things that dont really have a place, or that do not belong to me. I purged some things and found home for other things. 

After. Im not sure if this will stay here, or be relocated, we dont have closets or a bedroom door, so there arent other doors for it to hang on, I have an idea for another wall in this room. We will see. 

So I cant express on this blog how happy to finally have this finished! The bonus is I was able to pull some items from the kitchen that were better suited in here so I have some empty space in the kitchen to work with now! 

I cannot wait to show you the rest of the room as we finish it!

Super Mario Birthday Card

My **Favorite** nephew had a Super Mario Galaxy Birthday Party this year. This was his birthday card. Instead of a vine piranha plant coming out of a ? block, it came out of a 7 block. I used my friend's Cricut Gypsy. She had the "rivet block" (I think that's what it was called), the leaf, the 7, the circle and the < shape. I lined up the leaves with dashes to cut out from a tag cut. I cut vinyl rivets out of leftover vinyl. The plant head was cut from polka dot paper and constructed using 2 mirrored heads glued together. The vine is dark green curling ribbon. I hand wrote the message.
My original idea was that these could be invitations, but it was a little too time consuming for multiples. The envelop was a reused envelop from a previous card, I had leftover red polka dot napkin rings that I used to cover the previous name, and more ribbon to fancy it up.

Command Clip knock off.

Back in this post, I mentioned wanting to get some clips for my rubber gloves on the cabinet door under my sink. After pricing them I decided to make some instead. That became a "someday" project. I knew it'd be easy, I just didn't do it until today.
Took like 2 minutes.

1-4-13 Ta Das

Day 2 part 2

After my work in the bathroom I didn't do a whole lot above minimum maintenance stuff. (not in order)- I recorded all the food I ate today, played Just Dance for 19 minutes with Ellie (after picking up some toys and sweeping the carpet) made a home cooked from scratch dinner, and didn't eat leftover Christmas candy. I washed lunch and dinner prep dishes while dinner was cooking. I spot mopped a sticky spot I found under the couch (no clue how it got there) and swept behind the couch (we had moved it for better movie viewing). Last but not least I washed dinner dishes and shined the sink!

Day 2, bathroom redo

So far today, I made the bed, and recorded breakfast. I did 10+ minutes in the office:

Day 1

Jan 1st. Shined sink early in the day and again before bed!