Laundry Room - Under Construction

I really wish I could take part in this weeks challenge...the Laundry Room, however, I have a laundry room in the basement, in an unfinished area.  It's the ONLY part of the basement other than two closets that are not finished and has left me wanting to remodel.  I am looking to paint the floor (concrete), add a rug in the center of the room and hang panels to hide the unfinished walls and the pipes that run throughout the room.

Since this is what we want to do to this room, it is a project that will have to wait.  So for now it only houses a washer and dryer and a shelf that has some items on it (already organized).

For now, this area is "Under Construction" and once we do the makeover I'll be sure to post some before and after photos for you :)

If you have any ideas to help with an unfinished part of the basement that cannot be finished due to pipes in the way, please leave them in the comments below!

Until then...

The Office gets organized FINALLY! :)

Organizing the Office

Having recently moved, the office was being neglected while other area's were being worked on, so this challenge was a huge undertaking.  With being new homeowners, the previous homeowners left us all the manuals for everything in the house, which is awesome.  What wasn't awesome was that they were in a huge pile on the desk waiting to be looked at and decided if it was something we needed to keep or needed to throw out.  In addition to those manuals, I have been saving manuals for everything just in case.  I have had it happen before where I thought I wouldn't need a manual so I threw it out only to find out a month down the road I needed it!  What a pain!

So, I decided it was time to combine the two but before I could do that I had to go through them so I dumped them all over my desk which ended up looking like this:

After a very long day, I finally completed the task and am happy with my mobile manual keeper which we keep in an unfinished closet in the basement in case we ever need to get to it, but out of the way so it's not taking up useful space.

This is what I started with supply wise:

Check out the finished product here:

The next task was to go through our two 3-drawer filing cabinets and taking out the files that we both need to access and put them in our new 2-drawer filing cabinet that was going to be under the desk.  I was able to purge and shred quite a bit of old paperwork so that made room for everything we needed in the 2-drawer cabinet.

In order to keep both my husband and myself on target with being organized, I created two command centers.  One is in the stairway leading down to the office and the other is a file system on top of the desk.

The command center is actually pretty amazing and I love having it there.  It has a mail holder for the incoming mail that needs to be taken to the office, a dry erase calendar that keeps all our important dates in one location, a birthday calendar by month is next to that with the family and friends birthday's listed and then a big magnetic board holds business cards, appointment cards, and important things that we need to grab on the go.  I would love to put a wall vinyl above it but I have yet to determine what it would say...so that's on the list of wants, but I haven't figured out quite yet what it would be.

Command Center pull back:

Close up of the monthly Family Calendar and the Birthday Calendar (from Stampin' Up!, you just add decorations)

The file system on the desk houses receipts, temporary receipts (the ones you keep just in case you need to return something and then pitch after a month), to file, incoming mail, outgoing mail and my favorite the "needs attention" folder

Now to the nitty gritty...here is my desk before I got started in cleaning everything up...yes it's a mess, but there are two of us using this space daily and we have tons of projects going on so pretty much everything out was being used that week.

Desk after (yes we have two monitors hooked to one PC, it's for photo editing since we do photography)

This shot shows the desk, table, file cabinets and book case that holds the cricut and one of our printers on top

Close up of the shelf with the cricut items and the extra printer we have BEFORE I cleaned it, notice you see the battery charger and the box under that is an organizer that houses all the batteries by size.

Same shelf after it was cleaned

 Printer/File cabinets after

Media Tower After (it was empty before and all the stuff was in a box in the garage that I cleaned a few weeks back so they finally made it to their home)

 Close up of media tower so you can see the labels.

And that, my friends is one successful organization of the office FINALLY!  It feels good to not only have the office boxes out of my garage, but all the stuff that was in the boxes are now out of the boxes and in their homes permanently :)  AHHHH that feels good :)

Until next time....
Shonda

Week 03 - The PANTRY!!!!

One of the many reasons I fell in love with this house was the pantry.  I went from a small hard to use pantry to a glorious space that is not too big and not too small and for us is just right.

I eventually will be changing the way I have it but for now, it is functional and organized and I love how easy it is to find everything.  My goal is to get more of the Better Homes and Gardens Flip-Tite Storage Containers in all shapes and sizes.  You can see the 4-piece Storage Set shown in my photos at the following link:  BH&G Flip-Tite 4-Piece Storage Set

Pantry Before

Pantry Before

Pantry Before

Pantry Before

Grocery trip the day that I was working on the pantry resulted in items hanging out on the counter tops for a bit until I was done :)

Pantry After: 

Reorganized all the baskets, threw out items that were expired and moved things around a bit

Our pantry also houses our trash cans - black is for trash, tan is for recycling.  

I am working on labels for them now.

Probably one of my favorite new things in my pantry are theses spice racks that we mounted in the open space.  I got these at IKEA and painted them white.  

The jars I actually took from an old fashioned spice rack, donated the actual rack to goodwill and then took the jars and frosted the tops and added labels to the jar to show what spices were in them.  I also wrote on the backs of these with a dry erase marker the date the spice expires.  

I love the way these turned out and re-purposed what I had so I didn't have any extra cost.

I knew I wanted a quote in the pantry and this one that I found online is perfect!

One thing we are purchasing this year will be a buffet table for the dining room.  Once we have it in place, all of the paper products in the baskets on the top shelves will be moved into the buffet which will open up the top shelf for other items.

I am already getting more and more of the Flip Tite storage containers from Walmart and have started moving other items into them (new chip container is shown above).  My goal is to get all of my dry goods out of boxes and into these containers and slowly replace the baskets.

I hope you enjoyed the look into my pantry.  It is very functional for us and we use it daily so it's always good to go back in and straighten up and organize it every once in a while.  I have now put this on a rotation schedule monthly to keep things moving and used and help eliminate loss of food.

If you haven't already joined the organization challenge, I encourage you to do so.  You can join at any time, start on the week we are currently on and then catch up with the other weeks you already missed.  

Next week is the Office!

Week 02 - Garage Organization

Week two in the Organization challenge has found me a bit stressed. With having recently moved, the garage is a mess!!! It has most of the boxes that still need to be moved in, we went from having a garage and a shed to having just a garage so there is a lot more items needing to be stored in the garage as well. I have decided that this will be an ongoing work in progress as I cannot simply finish it right now due to time and budget constraints.

 Here are the before pictures:

A view from the kitchen doorway

A view of the wall with the existing shelving

From the outside looking in:

Overhead shelving:

Work in progress, first set of "after" shots:

View from the kitchen doorway

Outside looking in..Look to the right against the wall, there are a TON of paint cans that will be going away in the future that was left by the previous home owners.  We want to dispose of these in a safe way.  Behind the paint cans are about six to seven boxes of books we are going to donate.

Shelves above.  The shelf on the left has all the holiday decorations which will be reorganized during each holiday and repackaged into different totes to eliminate clutter and some boxes.  The shelf on the right has camping and beach gear along with the coolers.

This is the wall with the existing shelves and will become my overflow side with my bulk items that I get like paper towels, baggies, soda, water, etc.

So there you have it...my garage is not entirely finished but after 12 hours of working in it, you can already see a huge improvement :)

Yesterday's Adventures

So yesterday we started the garage organization.  I must admit I was a bit overwhelmed considering we recently moved and still had piles and piles of boxes waiting for us to go through, unpack, put away and decide what we want to keep, sell, donate and toss.  We have big plans for the garage, however, they are not scheduled to happen until sometime next year.  We need to get a workbench and some more shelves for my husband's tools.

We also have a TON of paint that was left by the previous owners that cannot be used.  We were able to dry up some of the paint and dispose of it properly, however, we still have a lot left that are almost full and colors we will never use.  We are currently looking for a place close to us that we can dispose of these safely.  The paint we are keeping and using (the new paint we purchased for the house) is being stored in the basement in our unfinished laundry room area.  This area doesn't get hot like the garage and will keep the paint at an even temperature all year long so the paint won't be ruined.

In the garage we also have 100's of books that we are wanting to pass on.  We are going to try to see if we can get some money from them from 1/2 price books, and then the rest (whatever they don't take) will be donated.  Both of us were book hoarders and we now have nooks and kindles that have our digital books on them so it's time to part with the books we no longer use.

I do have to say this, my husband was out there in the garage with me all day long.  We pulled items out into the driveway and brought things back a little at a time.  We are not finished, but it already looks 1000000 times better!  We can actually walk in the garage now which is even better!

I will post the before and after photos at the end of the week after I get rid of the paint and hopefully the books :)

Luckily, this time around, I only have to purchase one item for the garage from Home Depot and that is an organizer for the garden items (shovels, rakes, hoe's, etc.)

Such a great challenge we have this week!  A big thanks to ABFOL for doing such a great challenge!

Until next time,
Shonda

Week One - Kitchen

Having just moved in to our new home, the kitchen wasn't really as bad as it could have been.  We had a few problem areas that I knew I needed to recreate organization and I scoured Pinterest in search of some ideas.

You can see my organization board by visiting HERE

Here's a walk through my kitchen.

This cabinet stores my cutting boards, stoneware and bakeware.  It also had a rice cooker crammed on the top shelf.  Upon taking everything out of this cabinet to reorganize I discovered empty space behind my cutting boards that I didn't realize was there.  I took advantage of the newly discovered space and moved some small appliances from other cabinets to the space and added another rack to hold the cookie sheets resulting in even more space under the shelf.  With a new open area on the top shelf, I moved my serving platters to this area to open up space in the tupperware cabinet.

My tupperware cabinet was a HOT mess!  This cabinet I really hated.  I have been contemplating getting a buffet for the dining room so that I can move my serving (white) dishes there as well as some other items from the pantry like paper plates, cups, napkins, etc that are only used at parties.  Eventually we may go this route but until then, I need a home for everything.  I took the dishes out and moved them to the cupboard you see above.  This opened up the whole left side as you can see and it looks MUCH better now :)

The cabinet that housed the Children's items has always been over crowded.  So I added a wire basket and moved some things around.  Even after I took this photo, I did another move where the bowls went to the wire basket and the plates that were in the basket went where the bowls are shown below.  I am truly happy with this cabinet now and it's way more functional than it was.

The cabinet that held the pots and the crockpot along with some small appliances was the one that I called the dangerous cabinet.  Every time you'd open the door, something fell out.  Now that I have minimized what is in the cabinet, it is much  nicer and things don't fall out at me!  The command hooks now hold the pot holders which allowed me to put the extra towels in the drawer above it.

That dreadful under the sink cabinet.  Upon taking everything out so that I could line the bottom with some cabinet liner, I discovered that this area is in need of repair.  It was this way when we first moved her a few months ago, but now it has gotten worse due to the weight of my (too many) cleaners.  I have purged some cleaners and will purge again I'm sure, it's finding that magical cleaner that works with everything that I am looking for.  We also purchased some wire baskets that will be installed on the cupboard doors but that is something that will be done after we renovate this cupboard.

The medicine cabinet was moved to this bonus cupboard as a way to keep everything close when needed.  I originally started organizing with the baskets from the dollar store that I saw HERE, however, they simply did not work in my cupboards due to the size.  I have been keeping my eye out on new bins at Walmart with flip tops that I use in other areas and decided to move some around and test it out in my medicine cabinet.  I was shocked at the space it freed up which allowed me to reorganize the mail center (blank cards, birthday cards, etc) 

This cabinet also houses our extra Keurig Cups which are organized in the basket on the bottom shelf.

Here is a close up of the flip top bins that I moved to this location and added labels to.

Some cabinets stayed the same because they were already pretty organized and had already been purged. 

First up...The glasses and cups. I did add the travel mugs from the children's cabinet over to this cabinet and they like their new home.

 Plates, Bowls and Mixing/Baking Items

Wine Glasses, Shot Glass collection (we collect them every trip we take) and although you see some liquor in there, I can't remember the last time we even used this (at our new years party perhaps) we are not big drinkers (with the exception of wine every now and then) but we always have stuff on hand for our guests.

Here is a close up of our Italian Hand Painted plates on top of our cabinets.  

 Now on to the Fridge and Freezer

The fridge I had read you shouldn't keep your eggs in the door, so I moved them and put the butter in its place.  We usually have two dozen eggs at one time anyways so moving them is actually more helpful as two dozen will fit in the new spot next to the yogurt.

I also lined the shelves with plastic placemats bought from Target.  I got the inspiration to do this from HERE somewhere on Pinterest, and I thought I pinned it but cannot locate the original source, so if you know, please add a comment to this post with the link (I like to give credit where credit is due!)

 I also added one of the placemats in the freezer because I take the ice cream bars (low carb of course) and put them on the top shelf and they always fall through.  Now, they can't which I love.  Generally the big pan in the middle isn't in the freezer but we made a pie for a birthday so it is in there for now.  That shelf usually holds the hubby's lunch for work.

This is the top of the Fridge which holds our cereal and small decor items

And now some pull back shots...This is the coffee bar (which originally is a desk but we turned it into a coffee bar)

And the counter with the sink.  The fruit bowl is new (Target) and there is a wine rack to be hung yet from Ikea that is leaning in it's new soon to be home.

Thank you to A Bowl Full Of Lemons for such a great challenge and a great way to kick off the 14 weeks of organization.  We cannot wait to tackle on the garage next!