One drawer at a time

You are about to notice a trend with my posts.  We are adopting and are in the waiting part of the process which has made me go into a bit of an organizing/purging fit.

Today's task was super simple and only took me about ten minutes from start to finish.  We have this cute little table in our entry way and hubs and I each have a drawer to keep stuff.

My drawer has gotten cluttered and full of all kinds of junk that didn't belong there.

First step, trip the dollar store. The nice people at the store are going to get sick of seeing me,  lots of my recent projects have included Dollar Tree storage. These two little sets were on an end cap and I didn't actually know what I was going to use them for when I grabbed them.

I cleaned out my drawer and these fit great! 

Now the fun part, putting back only what needs to be in the drawer.  Starting at the upper left and going clockwise. 

1. Some of my Scentsy smells and my extra phone screen protectors. 

 2. More Scentsy smells

3. Battery charger (I'm trying to switch over to all rechargeable because we go through them so quickly with little man's toys)

4. Batteries

5. Chap sticks

6. Gift cards (these get misplaced easily in our house)

7. Hand cream

The battery charger cord is run through a hole in the back and plugged in behind the table. 

Now I feel kind of guilty though.  I may need to make a trip back to the dollar store to get some bins for hubs drawer...

One last look at the organizational goodness...sigh, this makes me happy.

XOXOXO

Jeannie

Linen Closet Organization

Clever title for this post huh? 

I'm still on my nesting tangent that I mentioned here so I'll share another one I just finished.

Do you ever feel like one project will snowball into another...or in my case fifteen?  That is the case in our home right now.  I randomly decided to finish up painting the trim and ceilings in our hallway (after four years of procrastinating) and that lead me into clearing out this closet.  It used to hold random boxes of things and our board games and whatever else got shoved in at some point.  This wasn't planned ahead so I have no before pictures, sorry.

I cleared it out because, like our trim and ceilings, it hadn't been painted in a very long time and was an awful, dingy, off white color.  I painted it a crisp, clean white.  Ahhhhh so clean and simple. 

I knew I wasn't bringing the games or shoe box organizers back.  I wanted a real linen closet for once. This closet is placed between our two upstairs bathrooms so it makes sense to store toilet paper there.  I already had the basket and just changed its purpose. 

I'm going to go off on a rabbit trail here, stick with me for a minute. 

Notice the quilts?  We are very blessed to have a Grandma who quilts.  I love quilts!  I think they are the perfect weight for a nap or to snuggle under on the couch.  A bonus with all of our quilts is that they have memories attached to them.  I have the quilt Grandma made my mom when my mom was sixteen, the Strawberry Shortcake one she made me when I was little, the one she made my Grandfather before he passed away, each of my kids have a quilt from her and the list goes on.  Each time we snuggle under one of these it reminds us of my Grandma.  I have recently been pinning lots of beginner quilts because I really want to learn how to quilt and I want my kids and grandkids to also have memories of me that are warm and snugly.

Sorry about that, back to the closet.

I made another (one of many recently) trip to the Dollar Tree for these baskets.

The labels are chalkboard paint so I can erase them and fill the baskets with some thing new if when the mood strikes.  The baskets are for hand towels, dental stuff, soaps, first aid items, nail polish, and one for misc shampoo's and hand soap refills.

So simple but also effective.

I had visions of putting up wrapping paper or something fancy on the back wall but I just painted it so I'm enjoying the crisp, newness right now.

XOXOXO

Jeannie

Amanda's Cleaning Checklist

I am headed back to college starting this summer! Every semester when {D} goes back for his classes, I tell myself "you've got to go back and finish". Then I negotiate with myself and say "next semester". I seem to have conversations with myself like this a lot. I literally feel like one of those cartoons with a devil on one shoulder and an angel on the other. I have mental battles every morning when the alarm goes off to get on the treadmill too.

Anyway, going back to school is a goal of mine that I need to start on so I can be done by the time we have children.

I'm really nervous about going back to school.

I will probably want to quit come Christmas time. BUT to help prevent this quitter mentality, I am trying to plan for all the excuses I can think of now. My first excuse I could think of is: I won't be able to keep up with the housework and laundry.

What better way to keep track of something or keep up on something than a checklist!

I created a checklist with daily, weekly, biweekly, monthly and quarterly tasks. I searched the web for other ideas and made it work into my own. I am going to print this off and laminate it. This way I can use a dry-erase marker to check the items off as I do them.

Daily:
Tidy Bedroom
Make Bed
Tidy Bathroom/vanity
Load/Unload dishwasher
Take out the trash
Laundry

Weekly:
Fold Laundry/put away
Wash Sheets
Sweep/mop floors
Vacuum House
Clean our refrigerator
De-clutter kitchen table (we collect mail here)
Clean/disinfect bathrooms
Empty trash (Sunday night we put the trash by the curb)

Bi-weekly:
Deep clean kitchen - clear everything off the counters and scrub
Dust house/furniture
Clean windows/mirrors - and anything else requiring glass cleaner
Organize - I normally have a project of some sort going

Monthly:
Wipe down walls - especially the kitchen and the bathrooms
Wipe/sanitize switch plates and door knobs
Purge magazines and other papers - homework and newspapers collect on my coffee tables
Wash throw rugs - I only have them in my bathrooms and kitchen

Quarterly:
Clean oven - it's self cleaning so really I just have to wipe it out
Scrub inside of refrigerator
Deep clean kitchen cabinets
Dust/clean moldings around house.

What do you think? Am I missing any obvious chores? I hope this will help me stay on top of things around the house as I venture back to school. What do you do to stay organized when your plate is really full outside your home?

-Amanda