21 days to getting organized: Day Seven

The pantry. Toni from a bowl full of lemons challenged us to clean out and organize our pantries. There is little hope for my pantry, and I've tried everything. Except for installing slide out drawers in there, which I plan on doing myself pretty soon. I've been looking online, and found a few, but what I really want wont fit, and only by a few inches. But I'm keep my head up high, one day I will have a well functioning pantry. Another option is just dealing with it until we add onto our house (a new master bedroom and bath, laundry room, mud room. There has been talk of also adding another livingroom/den/play room near the kitchen also. Our current living room is in the front of the house, then there is a hall with the bedrooms, then the kitchen at the back.) If we add an actual laundry room, I could use my current laundry "closet" as a pantry, and I think it would work quit nicely.

The top part of the pantry cabinet, where I keep all the food I hoard buy. My mom was always one of those "we have tuna, but not any mayonnaise, tea, but not any sugar..." and I refuse to be one of those people. 

We. Have. Every. Thing.

Like, 12 cans of chicken broth! *Sigh* I have a problem. I know we don't have to room for all this food, but I keep buying. You should see the deep freezer. Oh second thought, NO, no, Toni, do NOT have us organize the freezer! It's one of the small ones, there is NO way to organize that sucker.

Oh, look! A cute kid! *Cheese!* Did that distract you from my horrible pantry?

This is the bottom part of my pantry. All the stuff beside the trash can is NOT trash. There are drinks in those boxes, the bag of napkins ('cause I can't find any where else to put them), puppy pads (even though I long ago gave up house training the dog and kicked him out side), the box of trash bags. Now I'm thinking of moving the trash can? Maybe under the sink? Then I will have to re-organize all that... eh. But I'm thinking of moving the trash can, so I can store MORE food HERE! (I love food!)

But, for now, everything stayed where it is. I pulled everything out, cleaned the cabinets out, put some more of the cabinet liner down in here, got rid of a few things...

And put it all back in. I tried to use some baskets that I bought with the intentions of using in my laundry  closet in here, but it didn't work out. So I took everything out of the baskets and put it back on the shelf.

I do this about every two weeks, about as often as I do a "big" grocery shopping trip. It never gets any better. Oh well, at least the cabinets are clean. And I have a really cute kid :)

so many plans and projects I want to do...

I'm having a really hard time with today's challenge from a bowl full of lemons. It's to organize the pantry, and to put it lightly...

My pantry SUCKS. It's a tall, deep cabinet. You can't see or reach the things in the back of it, no matter how hard I try to organize this space, it's impossible. Well, it is without the use of sliding drawers installed, which is one of my many, many plans. But not today. Or tomorrow. Or this month...

Hopefully some time in 2011.

I dream of a real pantry. Something like this. *sigh*

Now, back to work. But I am working on it. And if I could finish painting some doors tonight, that would be great.

21 days to getting organized: Day Six

I'm not too excited about today's challenge at a bowl full of lemons. I posted a few days ago about how much I hate my bed room and furniture, so, eh. So here goes.

 

See. Ugly. Yes, there are two Bibles on my dresser, AND a shotgun shell. The plan: If the good Lord doesn't stop 'em from coming in my home, the shotgun will.

It was a mess. Everything every where. I pulled it all out, got rid of a bag full of clothes, then organized them and put them back. Pretty simple.

Things grouped together and in neat stacks. And I'm done :)

21 days to getting organized: Day Five

This is the challenge I've been waiting for, and I was so happy when I saw it posted at a bowl full of lemons! Im enjoying this organization challenge so much, I'm going to be sad when it ends. This is what I need everyday, someone telling me what I need to do next.

I have people fooled into thinking that my house is clean, and it really does seem that way, until you open a cabinet, drawer, or closet. Clutter on counter tops and tables drive me nuts. I'm more into getting rid of all that (into a cabinet, drawer, or closet), and cleaning the counters and floors than anything else.

And the cabinet under my sink if one of the worse places.

As if this isn't bad enough, the mess has spread into the next cabinet also...

AGH!

Wow. I didn't realize it was that much CRAP!

Then the scrubbing started. Thank the good Lord for magic erasers.

I'm really loving this cabinet liner! It looks like bamboo. It's not the stick down kind, that stuff drives me nuts. It'll start to bubble and do crazy crap. I spent several days trying to get the contact paper out of these cabinets when we bought the house. They had put down white contact paper, and it had started to yellow, and bubble, and it had to GO! But this is great. And! It's machine washable! How awesome is that??

I really like those baskets, but I don't know if I can leave them in this cabinet where no one will really see them. I may do some moving around of baskets or something. And people, let's have a talk. We're coming up on the two year anniversary of when my husband caught my kitchen on fire (on that day, I will have a whole post just about that). Fire extinguishers are a must in a kitchen. I used my old dish rack for storage, because I know have one of these drying mats from Bed, Bath, and Beyond, because I have something against having stuff all over the counter.

I love this thing. Machine washable. yay!

This was all that was left over that didn't go back in the cabinets. The wood glue will be going in the cabinet above the stove that has all my DIY project stuff in it (also needs to be organized.) So will that spray bottle. What's in it, you ask? Oh, paint thinner. What? You don't keep paint thinner in a spray bottle? I paint that often, it's just easier. And I'm a messy painter, no matter how hard I try, it always ends up on the floor. The ferret stuff... well, I guess I'm going to toss it. I don't know anyone with a ferret, and ours passed away a few months ago, I thought we might get a new one, but we got lucky with that one, it was psycho like most.

And then there's the bottle of Liquid Fire. That stuff right there scares the pee out of me. Why?

It burned my bathtub. The label was all "Hold away from you body! Hold it at arms length! With a steady hand, poor directly down the drain, if you get it on you, you will DIE." I don't have a steady hand. I really don't have a steady hand after reading the warning label on this bottle. I don't know what to do with this now. I don't want to use it ever again, but I can't just throw it away. Ugh.

Oh, and the other cabinet. The basket on bottom holds all the extras and seconds of things I had, one on top has candles and smell good stuff.

One more shot of this awesome baskets, and the cabinet liner.

It doesn't take much to make me happy!

(It's midnight. I'm not reading over this, I'm just hitting the publish button. Don't make too much fun over any typos or just plain stupid things I've said. I can't help it.)

21 days to getting organized: Day Four

Today's challenge from a bowl of lemons  was to organize the linen closet.

After I picked myself up off the floor laughing, because we don't really have lien closet, I put everyone's sheets in their closets, but we do have a nightmare of a closet in the main bathroom.

(Another room that I hate in our house. There will be lots of little changes coming this year in that bathroom. I'm excited. But I want it all done NOW.)

This is the mess we started with. I hate this closet. It's really narrow, but really deep. I got rid of some of the wash clothes. I'm slowly trying to replace all of our towels with white ones, because I'm in looooove with white towels. I had an empty boxes, 5 wipe boxes, 2 toilet bowl brushes... it was crazy in there.

The mess then all over the counter. Some baby blankets, towels that I ended up refolding a different way so they fit into the narrow cabinet better, and other crap.

The boys' hooded "How to Train Your Dragon" towels drive. me. crazy. But, I finally figured out out to fold them, so all is well in the world.

Some how, we ended up with this. Not the best in the world, but an improvement. Now if I could only find the energy to clean Blythe's closet...

(Oh, the no door knob thing... I took it off to paint the door, and haven't gotten the new one for this door yet.)

21 days to getting organized: Day Three

Not much talk tonight, mostly pictures. I'm pretty tired and my bed is calling me, I just wanted to get this up before I head that way.

First off, I hate Tupperware. The stuff is evil. It multiplies. Parts get lost. When you throw a lid away because you can't find the bowl, guess what shows up the next day? Pure evil. There was also sugar, flour, cornmeal, ect., and hand towels in this cabinet.

I had to clean out the cabinet above it also to rearrange things. Don't even ask why I have so many glass mixing bowls, I don't know.

At about this point, I started hyperventilating, ooommmggg. I wanted to get more of my cabinets done today, like the pots and pan cabinet, because I know there are a few pieces of Tupperware in there also, but I didn't get to it. These kids wear me OUT, man. I had to make another run to Walmart (also evil) for more cabinet liner (and! I still didn't get enough! AGH!) and these pink boxes that I put the Tupperware, lids, and hand towels in. Why pink? Because it's my kitchen and I wanted pink :)

Again, I didn't time myself, so I don't know how long it took. But, it's done, and I hope that I can manage to do the other cabinets tomorrow.

The binder in this picture, on the bottom shelf on the left? I don't keep magazines. After their month is up, it's time for them to be out. I go through them again, and tear out any recipes, project ideas, house ideas, anything, and put it in this binder. They're all in plastic sleeves, so when I'm using it while I'm cooking, the pages don't get messed up.


So, that's the top shelf, I moved the sugar and flour up to this one, the hanging basket has some cook books in it.

And the bottom shelf. I added the little paper tags you see hanging from the handles and they say what's in each container. Trying to keep it simple for the husband ("Look! This is where the LIDS go!! NO, not over there HERE!!")

21 days to getting organized: Day Two

Day two of a bowl of lemons' 21 days to getting organized, and we're supposed to clean the top of our desk. Well, we don't have a desk. We used to have this:

back when we still had a desktop computer. Now we both have laptops, and the desktop computer has been moved to the attic. So this ugly thing became a catch all for everything, and last week I finally went through it, so I can now get rid of the ugly cabinet, and found new places for everything in it, except this:

Mostly my husband's crap (see, there I go again, blaming him for everything.) Remember yesterday, I showed you my bedroom? The dresser that I had the (ugly) brass door knobs sitting on, is completely empty. So, I stuck all this in there. Not the best solution, because I hope to have the new furniture soon, but until then, this is where it's at.

Another view. I took the red Christmas table cloth off, washed it, and put it in the box in my bedroom that's waiting to go in the attic (I can't live like this, people, it's driving me nuts.) I got this table at a rummage sale a few months ago, and I love it. It already had some scratches on it, which was perfect, because my kids destroy everything. There are three more chairs, but my father in law took them to fix them for me, so I'm waiting to get those back. Then I will be able to get rid of the kid table in my kitchen because we will all be able to sit at the dining room table! Yay!

I'm on a mission to use all the different cleaners that I have. I have a gazillion. I have one of every kind and brand, sometimes two of each. So, today on the table we're using Green Works. I think they've changed the formula. When it first came out, I bought some and it always left stuff feeling sticky. I decided to try it again, and now it doesn't. Or maybe it's just me. Who knows.

 Cleaning one surface turned into... cleaning all the surfaces in my kitchen. The kids stayed with their grandparents this weekend, and brought all these clothes back home (hey, they're clean! I love my mother in law!), and Jonah's great big medicine box (ok, it's not all his, just mostly), the stuff made it to the island last night, and that's it. So, put the clothes away, medicine box in it's cabinet...

And we used some Great Value glass cleaner, because I'm a cheap-o sometimes. I actually had two bottles in the cabinet. Why? WHY?! I finished this one off, so now I only have one. I have to use glass cleaner on these counter tops, because they have a shine to them, and anything else leaves streaks and makes it feel sticky.

Ok, this picture doesn't show how much crap was on top of the fridge... also, my husband's fault... and this isn't technically a surface... but I cleaned it too. I was on a rooooll people!

After. I also changed out the fruit bowl, the other one was Santa...

After. Much, much better.

Another crappy picture, brought to you by Jenna ;) I'm getting happier by the day, I'm ready for tomorrow's challenge!