Bathroom Update

Back in our one bedroom basement apartment days, IronFish and I used to decide on Friday after work to invite people over.  We'd scurry around and get the whole place picked up and completely cleaned in about an hour.

Flash forward a few kids and we now live in a 3 bedroom townhouse.  With more space comes more things (more kids also bring more things) so I'd be doing some serious stashing to get the house in tip top shape in an hour.  We aren't planning a party, but we are expecting grandparents next weekend.  Truth be told, if you're family, you know how my house is.... however, when you add two people to the space for a few days, things feel even tighter, so I do really try to get a handle on things before people arrive.

I have a lot of work ahead of me but needed a feeling of accomplishment.  So I tackled the downstairs bathroom.  Within the past few months, IronFish has tiled the floor, painted the walls and put in new trim.  It looks great!  The problem?  Everything that was in there on the walls, cabinet, etc is stashed over the house.  As it was needed in there, it got brought back in with no place to put it away.  As usual, I was avoiding it.  Big surprise to me, it only took me about a half hour to get it into shape... that's a feeling of accomplishment!

Wanna see?

This cabinet is over the toilet.  It still looks a little cluttered, but it pretty organized.  Pull-up and things necessary to get O-man potty trained (which will hopefully be sooner than later, then I'll have another half of the cabinet freed up!).  I shouldn't have to buy hand soap or lotion for at least a year, not sure how I ended up with so many bottles.  I stuck the one random towel on top for now.  I like the little bottles, they came from my grandma and her sister.  Rolling up the hand towels in the basket made them look nice and within reach of the girls if they need a clean one, without them opening the cabinet.

Here is what my counter top was looking like at first.

Putting things in the correct home helped.

I finally got the picture hung as well as the towel hook.  Previously we had two towel rings and the girls never hung the towel back up.  They told me if I used a hook this time, they would be able to hang the towel up... I hung it at a level that all 3 kids can reach... I'm holding them to it!

 I love Command Strips, they make it so easy to hang the picture quickly!

I re-hung the hot/cold knobs on the side of the medicine cabinet.  I'm not sure what I'm going to hang on the other side yet.  I guess this will have to go on my project to-do list!

So why am I showing you this corner of my bathroom?  Well, the white column on the right holds tissues and 4 rolls of toilet paper in a pretty slim space... the $15 I spent on this 7 years ago was well worth it!

 Open up that little door on the left and you'll find:

I love it!  It is recessed into the wall, painted to match and holds cleaning supplies.  So worth it.  I really want to put one in each of the bathrooms... that might take some convincing for IronFish.

Here's the secret, under the sink has looked like this for 7+ years and now....

Well, it still looks like that, it's just not a priority yet.  Sorry to disappoint.  Well, I'm on to cleaning up my kitchen which went against my Flylady rules and did not get a shined sink last night...

Peace be with you,

Another snow day, another space organized

This time there's no school because of the ice storm, it's starting to seem like every Wednesday there's no school.  While, I don't mind sleeping in, I've always considered snow days to be like free days, stay in your jammies and snuggle under a blanket watching movies all day.  But no more!  (OK, not completely, we're still in our jammies, I've got a blanket on and there's a movie on two of the three TVs in our house...)

But, I'm proud to say, I have accomplished organizing another space today!  Here is what I started with:

This is the corner of the kitchen where everything ends up.  Now, many of the items have a home, but not everyone puts them where they belong.  There are also several of things that end up here because they don't belong anywhere.  This is where other family members put things when they are "cleaning up" and it drives me crazy!

I took everything off the counter and cleaned it.  I got rid of whatever I could (trash, give-a-way and put-a-way) and thought about how I'd rather the space be used.  I know no matter what I do, this will continue to be a catch all space, so I need to be able to better contain the (for lack of a better term) crap!

I must admit, I've been thinking about and planning cleaning this space for a few days, since Friday actually, as that is my clean the kitchen day on my "chore chart."  After spending some time in local stores and online, I still wasn't finding the "perfect containers."  Turns out, I had a few things in my basement that will serve as a good start before I spend any money on the wrong kind of container/storage/basket or whatever.  This will give me a chance to see what works and what doesn't.  Here is what I found:

An older style plate/serving stand from Pampered Chef and some wire baskets from Avon.  I stuck plastic sandwich containers in the bottom of two to keep little things from falling out.  If this works, I'll make up some cloth basket liners, which will make it look so much nicer.

After a much longer time period than I wanted to spend on this area (that whole, kids home thing... why do they keep wanting me to feed them!?!?!), here is the result:

I ended up using a Longaberger basket I had to hold the pencils, pens, scrap paper that was previously in one of those silver bins on the fridge (that is what is black on the right side).  Since there were always too many, it made the bin too heavy, therefor within O-man's reach.  My old canisters that I had in a give-a-way bin but never managed to actually give-a-way now hold the bread flour (bread machine has recently re-surfaced and being used almost daily), Olvaltine and miscellaneous stuff.  One of the baskets has chargers that are always homeless, another one has the extra tissue packets, inhaler and a few other things that always end up stashed in this corner and the front most basket is full of "crap" that I don't know what to do with but can't get rid of.

Here is a little tip ya'll might find helpful when organizing while the bread machine is baking away... don't forget you're baking bread and unplug it... the doughy mess is now a funky looking blobby loaf that hopefully cooked all the way through in the regular oven...

Peace be with you,

PS - a month of eating "Lessmeatarian" style and reduced processed foods and I'm down a whole 5 pounds, two inches in the waist and an inch off the the arms and legs!

The Wrong Kind of OCD

I have a chronic disease I like to refer to as Hereditary Obsessive Compulsive Disorder.  Trust me, it runs in the family (any family members reading, feel free to compulsively deny and then obsessively ponder for a few days).  The problem is, it's the wrong kind of OCD according to my husband.  While there are some things in the germ/dirty category that completely freak me out (birds for example), I don't spend hours a day cleaning like crazy (hence, the wrong kind of OCD), which is why I'm trying to fly!

My kind of OCD involves suddenly getting an idea in my head and obsessing over it until it is done (or I start obsessing over something else....).  Here's how it all unfolded:

Friday: Flylady had me add a hot spot cleaning to my babysteps.  I successfully did two or three of these actually and the girls helped!  Well, with a few living room spots cleaned up, I decided it was time to get out the rest of the Christmas decorations.  I'd been procrastinating the tree for one reason:


I can't figure out how to rotate the picture! trOble with a capital O!  O-man hasn't left the tree alone since we put it up, he doesn't leave the tree at church alone either, so I knew it was bound to be a problem...

While getting out the decorations, I opened a few boxes in the basement, found a few things I had been wondering where they'd been lost to and quite a few things I was ready to let go of.  The end result?????

That is 4 large boxes/bins, two stuffed bags and a few outdoor decorations!

A pretty successful obsession in my mind, all picked up by the VETS the very next morning.  Baby step day 7, I woke up feeling pretty accomplished and was quite happy to add "Pick out your clothes" to my nightly routine.  Enter obsession #2 for the weekend....  One of the things I found the night before was a box of my missing sweaters, which got me back to thinking of my Clothing New Years resolution (more on this later), made me think of great Kohl's bargains with my friend Amy, brought me back to trying to figure out what to make her for her birthday, and with a few more mental jumps brought me to a weekend knitting obsession.

One little problem with the weekend knitting obsession... I didn't know how to knit!  So why would I obsess over knitting?  It's quite simple actually, I entered to win a free pattern while on one of my favorite blogs From An Igloo and I won!  Since I know how to crochet and have made up my own patterns, I had to challenge myself.  This was supposed to be a post Christmas challenge, but a best friend's birthday trumps that, right?  Of course once I started I had to finish.  I'm actually very pleased with the end result (just needs buttons): 

Tiny Sky Cowl by LaBoutiquedeJosefina

It's a really good thing day 8's baby step was to find a 3-ring binder and put paper in it.  Today is day 9, Decluttering a few minutes at a time, oh boy, this could be trouble.....

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