Project: Simplify 2012! The Counter of Stuff.

Well.  It has taken me 2 weeks to get this together and there is still more sorting and purging to do.  I wish my counter could stay like this forever.  Alas, we live here and it will be a mess again, though maybe not so bad.

Are you ready?  Deep breath.

BEFORE:

Kitchen counter that is the catch all of everything coming in the house.

Our calendaring area.  Yeah, not so much.

Okay, now that I have shared one of the messiest places in our house you, I hope we can still be friends. Actually, what I wanted to do this week is my sewing room.  Alas it was spring break and the kiddos wanted my attention, though I did get a start on that explosion of a space. One day it may be done enough to share.

Now onto why you are here and why I did this in the first place, other than sanity.  I need to share and feel like I accomplished something!

AFTER:

I know right!? There is a huge counter here!

Oh, and look a desk and a bulletin board. and an Easter basket!

Yes there is still a junk box on the top shelf. All those little bits and pieces that I just might need at some point.  But the drawers that were holding the kids school  paper is now holding the batteries, tape and small tools that we use frequently. The green basket holds markers and other art supplies.

Now the details:  I am still left with this huge pile to sort!!!! Argh.  I am working through it today and tomorrow.  So far and have a smallish garbage bag and a 1/2 full banker box to recycle.  So many miscellaneous bits and pieces that have no particular home.  Sigh.

THE PILE of STUFF remaining!

But wait there is more I want to share.

I took all the kids files of school stuff and bought clear hanging file boxes. My goal is to have one box for each child for their whole 12/13 years of school.  A file for each year of school and then a Pre-K file for everything before Kindergarten.

This is my 11 yo daughter's box.  I am going to need to go through all of their papers again.  In my dream world I would have a large flatbed scanner to scan everything in and save a lot of it that way.

The blue bin is all of my Box Tops for Education papers.  It will be gone and handed off in May! The clear tote is all the current school year papers and the orange sliver on the left is the new birthday card file folder.  I have cards for each month and I am hoping this helps me get them sent on time!

Four kids school boxes filled and labeled! And now moved to the basement.

For some reason a few years back I stopped throwing used batteries in the trash.  Well they are overflowing their shoe box waiting for recycling at the battery store.  They are now in a bag in the car to drop off on Monday!

The writing drawer.  Semi organized chaos.

Much better.

This feels great to have all of this cleaned up.  Now to keep it this way for more than the weekend.  I have other areas that have to be cleaned and purged before some items can be put away.  I need the mantra: "A place for everything and everything in its place" posted somewhere prominently in the house!!

Thank you Tsh for hosting again and getting us all excited about simplifying our lives.

Project: Simplify Week 2: Kitchen and Pantry

This week was the week of the pantry and fridge. We had an unexpected trip across the country last week and I missed out on tackling the kids stuff with purpose.  It might get done over spring break!
I came to the very sad realization that I haven't really scrubbed the fridge in a very LONG time.  Yikes.

Here we have the fridge and freezer. Not bad at first glance, but it was WAY overdue for a scrub. On top of the fridge are two sets of drawers that hold our serving spoons, hot pads, small knives, measuring utensils etc.  They too got a scrub and a re-organizing.

It may not look like it changed much but there is actually room to put things in now!  The freezer has so much space  and everything is back in its place.  

Outside.  I picked up this vinyl chalkboard decal at Target on clearance on  Wednesday night!  Sweet.  It will be interesting to see how it holds up.

Pantry.  I love the pantry in this house.  Last year I put in shelf liners that have held up well. I did a little tossing here but mostly just repackaging and reorganizing. I did move some items to the basement food storage.

Top where we keep snacks, bread, cereal and all the dry beans.

After.  Much nicer and consolidated.

Bottom of the pantry Before.

Bottom after.  Again so much more room!  Still not perfect but it's great. I can find everything again!

Project: Simplify 2012!

So it's that time again for a little spring cleaning!  Tsh is hosting the Project: Simplify again at Simple Mom.  I was noticing that I blogged quite a bit about this last spring and promptly stopped blogging.  hmm.  Guess I simplified that part of my life!

We'll be using the 10 steps to simplify our lives that she outlines in her book Organized Simplicity.  I have this book and it is great.  Straightforward and easy to read, though the steps require a lot of introspection as to the why of the stuff we have.  So, it can be a bit of a challenge to do the steps, especially when there are other peoples stuff involved! (husband and children!)

Hope you will participate and link up each week!

Project: Simplify Hot Spot #5: Choose Your Own Adventure

I decided to tackle the linen closet and the bathroom drawers and cabinets.  I could have picked anything on the list of suggestions as they all need to be done.  This was an easy place to start.

So to begin:  the linen closet.  The in between of seasons is challenging.  All winter we have pulled things out and shoved them back in.  Too hot one night and cold the next.  ugh.

Before:

 All emptied out.  So nice!

Stuff that may not belong:

After:

Next was trying to tackle the drawers and the medicine cabinets.  Being able to find things in the mess is not the best way to organize.  Now, they are organized and we can't lay our hands on the right thing!

Before in the hall (kids) bathroom:

After:

Notice one empty drawer!  I wonder how long before daughter notices all the empty wrappers and garbage are gone :)  This room didn't take too long but ours...

Master Bathroom drawers before:

Drawers after:

Medicine cabinet before:

The pink bucket usually has the cloth diapers but I spared you and just washed them!  I didn't think it was too bad but there was SO much stuff in there.  I tossed three grocery bags of junk (expired or never used or garbage) out between here and under the sink.

After:

 

Are you ready?  Under the sink is scary.  It was organized at one time but....

After:

I put a lot of the extra things (a whole shoe box full) down with the rest of the food storage. 

On another note not bathroom related I did finally get some of the things put into the household binder.  I have 11 categories. Is that too many? What did I forget?  Goals, schedule/calendars, birthdays, Christmas, Food Inventory (including menus, grocery list etc), Home maintenance, Garden/Yard, Home ideas, and budget/finances.

And one final finish for this week, I recovered the umbrella stroller we have had for 10 years.  I could have just bought a new one but I had everything to redo it at home.  Besides, we love the height of this one.  Tall enough for both of us to push.  I may be brave and post more process pictures.  Any tutorials I found said "simply take it apart (the cover) and use it as a pattern, then reuse the piping and belts" Voila!  More or less true but I would have loved a tutorial.  I'm a visual learner.  I ended up with 4 extra screws.  Hmm. 

Project: Simplify Hot Spot #4: Pantry and Fridge

I had to start with this photo because it is a huge job finally done!  So much unnecessary paper in boxes.  There will be more to do but that was an 1 1/2 hours of shredding.  Poor machine.  Now on to the Hot Spot of the week.

Simple Mom is awesome and had us do the pantry and fridge this week. The challenge was working around the kids this week during spring break.  It took longer than it should have but I wrote down everything we have that is food related.  Not sure when I'll catalog it all but its a start and I found things that we need to re-stock.  I made notes on most of the photos so click to read them if you wish.

Fridge Before.

After.  Cleaned and re-organized. AH.

In the basement we have the beginnings of long term food storage.  I love the space but it can get unruly too.  Before.

After.  Rounded up the vitamins to one box, the cleaning supplies to one area, and generally re-grouped all of the items we have.  It's time to get some more cereal and a few other staples.

Noticed more food on my way back upstairs.  The canning we did last year and the canning supplies.

I forgot the before picture here but it was a mess.  Everything is nicely contained now and labeled in the spice cupboard.

The beast...The pantry before:

After!!  I want a new shelf on the top right to house some more items.

My newly freed beans all beautifully labeled.  I had all of the jars in another cupboard.  Don't know why I was hoarding but they finally came in handy!!

Love how it all turned out.  So much work! Now to just enter all of the food items and make a food inventory that will work for us will be the really challenging part!  Maybe by this summer.