I like placing small items in a container of some sort. It makes things look a lot neater. I bought a set of 3 little red baskets at the Dollar Tree and was able to put them to good use on my surfaces. The first basket is in our big bathroom near the sink. I have a set of drawers that I was placing my jewelry on, but it was too easy to knock it off in the floor, and after a while I tend to get a few items there, so it looks messy. So my solution was to place this basket here. It will save the jewelry from falling in the floor; plus it helps it too look as though it belongs there. And after a while, I can just pick up the whole basket and put everything away.

The second basket was placed on my dresser. Our house doesn’t have a lot of storage space, so I decided to place my perfume bottles on the dresser. (It’s also a good to have them there, because I’ll see them there and actually remember to put on the perfume.) But I hate having a bunch bottles laying around. Somehow containing them in the little red basket, helps my brain to tolerate them and it makes the space look a little neater.

The third red basket is being used at my kitchen sink. And as you can see, I’m using it to hold my sponge, scrubber, and drain-stopper. This small thing is a huge improvement not only because it contains the stuff and makes it look less cluttered, but because it helps to keep the actual counter top and sink clean, because any excess water and soap is on the bottom of the basket rather than making spots and rings on the sink and counter.

I also organized these lotions and body sprays that were on my dresser into a basket. Here’s a before picture:

And here’s an after pic:

And finally the thing that actually took a bit of time: The Clothes Dryer. I’ve been using the dryer to lay out my beads and jewelry tools and projects. I lay them out here because it’s the only place where I can guarantee my cats won’t get to them.

And I try to clean up after I get done working, but sometimes I quit abruptly or right in the middle of a project, and stuff tends to get left out, as you can see here:

I worked for quite a while to get all my stuff re-organized. My beads are in little plastic organizers that I’ve placed in a drawer, and all my finished products are stored there as well. And all my charms/findings/tools/etc. have been re-organized in this little caboodle from yester-year.

Now that’s definitely a lot neater! My goal is to keep it this way!

Stop by Org Junkie to see all the other organizing projects at the round-up.

-Jerri

I love organizing products. Whenever we go to Wal-Mart or Target, my husband does his best to keep me away from the organizing section! Below are some great organizing tools that you may like for your kitchen cabinets.

UNDER SHELF WRAP RACK – I actually keep my wraps and baggies in a drawer, but I used to keep them in a cabinet and probably still would if I had one of these. It makes it easy to grab what you need and keep all the stuff contained in an area without having to worry about stuff falling out.

Copco 2555-9424 2-Tier 12-Inch Non-Skid Cabinet Turntable – I have one of these for my spacies. I use the bottom shelf for cooking spices and the top shelf for baking spices. It makes everything easy to find and access.

Tagco Spice Stack – White – If I didn’t have a turn table like the one above, I’d probably store my spices is a rack like this. It’s very compact and makes everything look neat and orderly.

Double Chrome Helper Shelf – I’ve been thinking of purchasing one of these. I can think of a lot ways that I could possibly use this. This is a great tool that helps you to take advantage of all the vertical space in your cabinets. And you can use them for food, dishes, or even for bathroom storage.

Cabinet Door Lid Rack – One cabinet that I want to work on in the future is the one where I keep pots and pans. And I love the idea of a rack to keep all the lids together. This particular one mounts one the door of your cabinet, but they make other kinds as well.

Door mount 8 Shelf Pantry Rack – I had one of these in our old apartment. The amount of cabinet space in the kitchen was terrible. So I had one of these on the door, on the inside of the laundry room. It was perfect for cereal, pasta, and other boxed items. And if you’re lacking in space, you may want to try this.

Chrome Pantry Can Goods Rack – This is another item I’d kind of like to try. We have a pretty good amount of cabinet space, but I probably don’t store as much as I could because I’m more concerned with it being organized. (All the green beans are in a row. All the corns are in a row. And I do stack everything, so even though it’s organized, it still looks crammed.) This could be a helpful tool make everything look a little more orderly.

-Jerri

My goal for this round-up was to take the space I have and re-arrange items within the space so that the space can be used to contain more items. So while, my tranformations aren’t very dramatic, I did at least accomplish this goal.

Also, check out my post on Cabinet Organizing Tips and Kitchen Organizing tools. Now onto my project:

Cabinet Above Stove: Before

After: I removed a few items from this cabinet and placed them in drawers or in the “spice cabinet” which you’ll see in another photo. And meanwhile, I took the baking mixes I had in my spice cabinet and placed them in this cabinet. The result: A neatly arranged cabinet of baking mixes and breakfast items.

Spice Cabinet: Before

After: I did some swapping around with some of the items from the cabinet above the stove. Result: The bottom shelf of this cabinet is a lot neater.

Bowls, Etc. Cabinet: Before

After: In this cabinet, I have my storage containers, baking dishes, bowls, and a few serving dishes. The only thing I did here was a little re-stacking, and I took some items from another cabinet and placed them in here. The Result: More items in one place, and I now have a little space to work with on the top.


Food Cabinet #1: Before. I went through a process with this one. I have a small pantry, so I store some of our food in this cabinet, as well as vitamins and prescription meds that my husband takes each day. And for the round-up project, I decided to clear some of this space so that more food could be stored here.

In this pic, as you can see, the top left hand shelf has been cleared of the bakeware that was there, and it now contains food. Also, the can goods that were on the bottom right have now been contained on the left hand side.
Later in the month, I decided to store some snacks in this cabinet, and bakeware on the middle right hand shelf got moved (to the cabinet with all the bowls and stuff). And come to think of it, this third picture looks worse than the original picture.

And finally I took the snacks out of their boxes and plaed them in the little white basket. I also managed to do a fix my husband’s medicine shelf with a little basket. The Result: A much neater cabinet with a little extra space to spare!

-Jerri

This week I’ll be posting my Cabinet/Closet entry for the Organizing Round-Up. Here are a few general tips for organizing your cabinets:

• Go through each cabinet and purge it of items you no longer need. If you haven’t used something in over a year, this may be a good time to rid yourself of it. (Place everything in a yard sale box, or give it away to a friend or family member.)
• Match up all your containers with lids. Throw away anything that doesn’t have a mate.
• Create a system for organizing your plastic containers and stick to your system. (I use gladware containers because they’re cheap to replace, and I can easily make 2 or 3 stacks of them in my cabinet.
• Place items that you use most often on lower shelves and in the front of cabinets so that they are easily accessible.
• Place items that you use less often on high shelves, in the back of cabinets, and in places that are harder to reach or get to.
• Group similar items together.
• Stack items to ensure that you take advantage of all the vertical space you have available.
• Place items in a logical location. (Example: dishes near the dishwasher/sink, pots & pans near the stove, etc.)
• Define the space & set parameters. (Example: This shelf will be used for mixing bowls. And this shelf will be for glasses and coffee cups. Etc.)
• Use shelf dividers, baskets, and organizing tools to separate items, and use labels if necessary. (In an upcoming post, I’ll be featuring some great organizing tools for your cabinets.)

-Jerri

This month’s project for the Organizing Round-Up was definitely something I had been putting off for a while: Pictures and Memorabilia. I had a ton of pictures without a permanant home, and I also had a ton of scrapbook supplies and just….junk to go through. So while I was putting pictures into books, I felt it was the perfect time to go through this stuff too.

I started with a box full of pictures:

And a small drawer full of pictures:

And here’s a couple more stacks…

I went through all the pictures and placed them in order by date, and I’ve now tucked them away in these books:

The “doubles,” including a bunch of extra wedding photos were placed in this blue box, which is much smaller than the brown one from the top. And they were all placed in order with the envelopes labeled.

Now for the challenge. I give you the drawers of death. In these drawers was a combination of scrapbook paper, stickers, empty photo albums, greeting cards, office supplies, keepsake items from birthday parties and other events, even a few cds, and some other stuff. They’ve been hiding out in my closet (of all places) for the last two years, and it was time for this stuff to go!

(I took pictures of the three individual drawers as well as the contents of the blue box on top, but you really couldn’t tell much about them, so I’m leaving these out of the post.)

This set of drawers was completely emptyed! It’s a miracle! It had been a cluttered mess for about 2 years, and I finally tackled it. (Now I’m using this set of drawers to store some of my clothes. Yay!)

Now I know your wondering what happened to the contents. First of all, there were a few really nice albums that were empty. So I removed these and placed them on a bookshelf in my office for future use.

The few keepsakes items I had were placed in a little plastic shoebox. The greeting cards were filed away in my file cabinet. (Eventually I’m going to put the cards in a book and possibly use some of them for projects.)

And the office supplies and a lot of the other items were either thrown away, placed in the yard sale box, or moved to various locations in my office. (In fact, at this time, I also took the opportunity to organize my extra/reserve office supplies, which I’ll have to share at a later time.)

I also had a whole shoebox of these little photo books that come with your prints. Over half of these had photos in them until last year when I decided to put them into large albums. Now I have no use for these, so I placed them in the yard sale box.

And all my scrapbooking supplies are now in this more compact 12X12 3-drawer bin.

Head over to Org Junkie to see how others organized their pictures and memorbilia. And don’t forget to read my post on Picture Organizing Tips.

-Jerri

• Choose a system and stick to it. Decide if you want to use albums, scrapbooks, or both, and make it a commitment to stick to the system you choose.
• Before you start to organize your photos into books, decide how you want to organize the photos and the books. (Is there a theme? Will you have a scrapbook for each kid? Will you be organizing your books by year? How many events do you want to be contained in the book? How many pictures do you have versus the space available in your albums?)
• Place limits on how many pictures you print from each event.
• Place photos in album or scrapbook as soon as possible to avoid accumulating stacks of pictures.
• Plan a day each week or each month to have a scrapbooking session. This can be as short as an hour or even just 30 minutes! Put it on your calendar like a a regular appointment and make it a priority. If you plan regular sessions, it will prevent you from accumulating massive stacks of pictures to organize.
• Write dates and other relevenat information on the back of photos. Even if you have the best memory, you may not always remember everything. Plus, your kids will have the photos long after you’re gone and they may want this information.
• Date and label your albums.
• If you keep doubles or extra copies of photos, be sure that these are organized in a photo box. I keep mine in the original envelopes they come in, and I label the packets and place them in order by date into the photo boxes.

Dealing with Digital Photos

• Plan times to upload pictures from your digital camera.
• Don’t let too much time pass between uploads or you will be overwhelmed when you start to organize your photos.
• Immediately place your newly uploaded photos into folders and sub-folders.
• Delete bad or unnessesary photos before or after uploading.
• Always keep an extra thumb drive on hand, in case your current one gets full.
• If you’re using photos for your website or a project, upload them to photobucket, flickr, or another photo site. This way you can access them anytime, and you can delete them from your computer or thumb drive, leaving more space for your family photos.

-Jerri



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I’m linking this post to WFMW at We Are That Family