2009 Home To Do List - Closet Organization

Happy Tuesday Everyone!

I bet you thought I had abandoned my 2009 To Do Lists, didn't you? The 2009 Home To Do List and the 2009 Sewing To Do List are now located at the very bottom of the blog. It was an accident that they got moved down there, but for now that's where they are.

I'm not putting any pressure on myself to finish everything on these lists before the end of the year. I am hopeful that will happen, but if not, there's always 2010.

It reminds me of a joke I heard once: The last thing they will do to me when I die is throw dirt on me, so a little dirt now won't hurt me. :o)

This week I am tackling the closet that hubby and I share. I am so thankful that the the closet is a good size. Hubby gets the side with the shortest hanging rod. I get the other side which has a slanted ceiling, so the rod is hung lower. If I need to hang any long clothes I hang them on an over-the-door hanger behind the closet door or I steal some of hubby's rod space.

I am currently not motivated enough to work on the closet for a long stretch of time, so I am working on it in sections. Last night I worked on the end of the shelf on my side of the closet that contains folded clothes. Hubby and I call these kind of clothes our "lounging wear". Sweat pants and shirts, pajama pants, long and short sleeve tee shirts, etc. These are things I sleep in or wear around the house on the weekend and after work at night.

I'm too embarrassed to show you the "before" picture! But, here is the after picture.


AFTER



You can see that I already had some good closet organization going on in there. I just needed to purge and straighten up some. There is a hanging shoe organizer on the end, a hanger that holds scarves and belts, and a hanging basket that contains miscellaneous items such as a "dressy" pocketbook.

I already have two large piles of items to donate to the thrift store and have only done a small part of the closet.

I hope to post more pictures this week of the organization of this closet. My hope is to not only purge and straighten up this area, but to make it (my side, anyway) more feminine and pretty.

So check back for more posts on this subject!

2009 To Do List Countdown - Laundry Room Cabinets

Here's a picture of what I saw when I looked out my backdoor this rainy Saturday morning. This is Spot, the bottle fed goat. Can you believe he sleeps in an Igloo dog house? He is growing so fast I'm afraid he'll get stuck in there and we'll have to call the fire department to get him out! At least he is able to get out of the rain. He is still kept in this smaller pen until we can trust him to hang out with the other goats in the big pen. He is in the process of being weaned from the bottle and eats solid goat food really well now.

Its a rainy day and I'm planning to stay home all day. My hubby took my car to town and had the oil changed and filled it up with gas. He also bought groceries and dropped off some donations at the thrift shop. He even swung by a fund raiser bbq plate sale and brought home our lunch. The food was good and I especially liked the fact that the portions were normal sized and I didn't do too badly on my eating plan. Normally I would have complained about the plates being a little skimpy, but now I realize those portions are really the correct size!

I skipped last weekend as far as any sewing or decluttering/organizing, but got right back on the wagon this morning.

I have some before and after pictures to show you of my laundry room cabinets. These cabinets are where we store things like light bulbs, extension cords, batteries, candles, the battery charger, telephone wires, cell phone accessories, trash bags, and all kinds of miscellaneous things.

I wanted to organize and declutter these things and so I bought some stackable bins and some more see-through plastic shoe boxes at the dollar store. It looks better and I think we'll be able to find what we are looking for easier and faster.

BEFORE: LEFT SIDE ABOVE THE DRYER



AFTER:



I am going to pick up a couple more stackable bins for the top shelf to replace the cardboard boxes up there, but not today!


BEFORE: RIGHT SIDE ABOVE WASHER



AFTER:



The bins and shoe boxes can be pulled out, looked through, and returned to the cabinet.

2009 Home To Do List Countdown - Laundry Room Closet

This weekend's project from my 2009 Home To Do List was the Laundry Room Closet. It was a busy weekend, so this project fit right in "time wise" with my plans.

No sentimental clutter in here!!!!! That makes it so much easier and faster.

Here is the before picture of top portion of the closet:



Here is the before picture of the bottom portion of the closet:



This picture shows the upper portion after I removed everything in it. The wire shelf is a new addition and I put down new shelf paper.



AFTER:



AFTER:



This over the door hook that I bought at Dollar General works great for the brooms and mops. It is made from metal and has two slender hooks. Most brooms and mops have a hole in the top of the handle so they fit nicely on the hooks.



Next I will organize the laundry room cabinets.

2009 "TO DO LIST" Count Down

Earlier this week I promised "After" pictures of the storage area underneath the stairs. I worked on this today and got it under control, but there is so much "sentimental" stuff in there, I just put most of it back in! At least it now looks neat.

I will be going back in there in the future to get rid of some stuff and store items in better containers. At least now I know what's in there and what I'm up against! :o)

BEFORE:



AFTER:



BEFORE:



AFTER:

Organizing Plans For This Week

OK! I'm almost finished organizing my fabric and sewing room, so on to the next item!

These are before pictures of the storage space located underneath the stairs, behind the living room closet:






Its not as bad as it looks, because I just need to take everything out and put back the things that need to be stored there. I plan to re-think this storage space. I do want to keep the photo albums in there, but I am seriously thinking about storing all my Christmas things in there, as well. Currently our Christmas things are stored in three different places. I want to get rid of the things we don't use any more. I plan to eliminate and concentrate! Only those things we use and love will be kept and then they will be stored here. I would be able to get to them so much easier and therefore enjoy Christmas more.

I'll be brainstorming to come up with storage solutions this week and hope to work on this over the weekend. Speaking of the weekend, our temps are forecast to reach 70and it will be sunny both Saturday and Sunday! This may tempt me to the outdoors, because I really need to do some work out there too.

I hope to post "AFTER" pictures by the end of the weekend.

"To Do List" Progress

I'm almost finished organizing my fabric! I knew it would be a lot of work, but never knew it would be such an undertaking. I am going to work on the few remaining bags of fabric and scraps this week and I hope to soon be able to mark that one of the list!

I'm already enjoying the benefits of having the fabric organized. One example:

I decided to finish one of the easier projects on the 2009 Sewing To Do List. This is the John Deere Quilt my mother started a few years ago and wasn't able to finish because of health problems. She purchased the top fabric, backing fabric and the batting. I pin basted the quilt, machine quilted it in a 2 inch square grid and then made a binding. When it came time to find fabric for the binding, all I had to do was go to the stacks of fabric that had "greens' and "beiges" and quickly found this green and beige checked fabric. It turned out really cute and I had just enough to make the binding.

Before I organized the fabric, I would have been rummaging around every where and may not have even run across this particular fabric.

Another example:

I have been working on two baby quilts, a pink one for a girl and a blue one for a boy, for a while using the leaders and enders system. Now that I have all my medium size scraps in one place I was able to go through those (2!) totes and find lots of blue and pink strips in the right size for this. Here is a basket of blue strips I have beside my machine, ready to be used for leaders and enders when I am sewing other projects.





Here is a drawer of pink strips for the girl quilt:





Here is some of my progress on the boy's blue quilt. Some of this work will be trimmed to the correct size with the rotary blade. The stack of white fabric was also easy to find in the medium size scraps totes, as well.



Its great to have some sense of accomplishment, isn't it?

Decluttering Kitchen Cabinets

Today is Kitchen Tip Tuesday so please go to Tammy's Recipes for more kitchen tips.

I wanted to finish showing you some of the kitchen cabinets that I have organized.

My main tip in this process is to eliminate and concentrate! I have made sure that ONLY THE KITCHEN ITEMS that I use on a day to day basis are front and cener in all of my cabinets.

This picture shows one of the cabinets with pots and pans. These are the three frying pans I use most. These pans are pretty old and stained, but they still work great. :o) I Need to add scrubbing and soaking their outsides to the list! Maybe new ones will be on my shopping list soon. Just keeping it real for you!

In the back are two pots I use almost every day. I had an old plate rack that works perfectly for lids. Above all this on the shelf is the George Foreman Grill. Its big and heavy and I don't use it all that much. This shelf is large enough for it and yet its still easy to get it out when needed. I placed the two large frying pan lids on top of that for convenient storage.



This picture shows the two larger pots, two small pots and two colanders that I use nearly every day. Behind the two large pots is the crockpot. I don't use this every day, but do use it at least once or twice a week. Its in a convenient spot, but not in the front.



This is the corner cabinet where I store every day plates, bowls, and miscellaneous items. In the front are the ones used daily. There are many items that we don't use all that often in the very back of each shelf. I can still get to them if I need them without too much trouble, but the ones we use every day are easy to just grab and go. I used one coated wire shelf to separate some bowls and small plates.



It is amazing how much more I enjoy cooking and cleaning up the kitchen now that things are more organized and streamlined.

You can see other "after pictures" of my kitchen cabinets on the side bar.

Have a great Tuesday!

Sewing Room Progress

Organizing my fabric is listed as one of the items on the "2009 To Do List" on the side bar and I've been working diligently on this. The only thing is that in order to organize the fabric, I had to organize the sewing room. I still have a lot fabric scraps to organize, but wanted to show pictures of the changes I've made so far.

This is my main sewing area.



A close up of a thread organizer hung on the wall to the left of my sewing machine. Its so much more convenient to change thread without rummaging through a box or bag.




This is an updated picture of the shelves with folded fabric on them. I only folded pieces that were at least 1/2 yard here. I'll be adding more as I go through more bags of fabric and scraps.



Here is another storage area, but I haven't finished working on it. The plastic drawers hold different sizes strips, projects in progress and five inch charm squares.



These two drawers hold 2 1/2 inch strips. One drawer is for light colors and the other drawer is for dark colors.



KEEPING IT REAL!

This picture shows a large box of scraps to be ironed and organized, a bag of clothing to be repurposed as fabric and a stack of long pieces of fabric to be rotary cut into strips. All of this is stacked on the treadmill, which I need to be on right now!



I just need to keep remembering "baby steps, baby steps, baby steps!"

Snow Days in the Sewing Room

We got a much anticipated snowfall yesterday which gave me two more days off work this week. I'm sure I'll be going back to work tomorrow, but I can handle a "two day workweek" any time!

I finished organizing the kitchen cabinets over the weekend, except for a couple of small things.... I need to clean the crumbs from the silverware drawer and the spice cabinet area.

Yesterday and today I am working on organizing my fabric, which is always in a perpetual mess! I've got fabric in boxes, bags, on shelves, in plastic containers and these are scattered into several closets and attic spaces, as well as in my sewing room. I really want to get it all organized and stored in my sewing room so I will know what I have and start SEWING!

I read this article at Quiltville which tells how to fold fabric so it looks pretty on your shelves. Its also very helpful to be able to see what fabric you have at a glance, instead of rummaging through it all the time like I have been doing.

This what some of my folding and sorting looks like so far. I should have taken a before picture!



I'm going to continue working on folding more fabrics today and I also want to sort the different fabrics by color. For example, I have a lot of blue fabric that I want to arrange together. I'll probably arrange all of it by primary colors. I will have groups of blacks, browns, reds, blues, oranges, yellows, greens, purples and neutrals/beige/white. Of course some of them won't fit into any of these colors exactly, so I'll have a floral/odd stack too. All of the denim fabric I have been accumulating by cutting up old jeans and clothing will go in its own stack.

This article at Quiltville describes how Bonnie stores her scraps. So, am ironing any scraps that are at least 12 inches long to be cut into 3 1/2 inch, 2 1/2inch, 2 inch and 1 1/2inch strips. I will store these into plastic drawers or shoe boxes by size and also by lights and darks. This will help me be able to spend more time sewing in the future because my scraps will be organized and ready to go.

I am storing each of my UFOs in a zip lock bag or plastic storage box, along with the fabrics needed to complete them.

Well, I gotta go get to folding, ironing and cutting!

Decluttering and Organizing Kitchen Cabinets, Part One

I'm moving right along on my 2009 HOME TO DO LIST!

This week I worked a little in the laundry room cabinets, doing one shelf at a time a few mornings before work. I'll show you before and after pictures of that when I finish.

This morning I got completely sidetracked and started working on an item that wasn't even on the list, but has now been added! My kitchen cabinets.... because my hubby and I are both going crazy try to find and put away the baking dishes, mixing bowls and plastic resealable containers!

I picked up a few kitchen cabinet wire shelves and baskets from Dollar General, hoping they would work and this is what I came up with:

BEFORE - BAKING DISHES, MIXING BOWLS, PLASTIC CONTAINERS AND LIDS


AFTER - BAKING DISHES AND MIXING BOWLS



I used two of the wire shelves I purchased in this cabinet so I could place large baking dishes on top or underneath and still make the best use of the storage space. I was so tired of having to empty out the whole shelf to get the right size baking dish when cooking a meal. Now it will be so much easier to get to the item I need withut lifting a whole stack of baking dishes or mixing bowls. They are heavy!

AFTER - RESEALABLE CONTAINERS



In the past we have tried several different storage ideas for the plastic containers and they all end up being a mess and an aggravation. I went through all of ours and got rid of any orphan lids and bowls. Then I cleaned out another entire cabinet to use just for plastic bowls like Tupperware, Glad and Ziplock containers and other generic ones we have.

The wire basket slips onto the bottom of the shelf above it. I put all the lids that actually fit the bowls in the basket and have sorted them by size and shape. I left some of the lids attached to the bowls or sat them underneath, such as some long rectangular ones. Now, if we can just keep putting them back in the same manner, I think this will be a keeper system.

I didn't take a "Before Picture" of this cabinet. But, just trust me when I say it was bad! And such a bad use of the space. I took out everything in the cabinet and either threw it away or put it where it needed to be.

Now cooking and emptying the dishwasher will be so much more pleasant!

I haven't finished all the cabinets, but have a great start. I need to pull EVERYTHING out of the pots and pans cabinet and see what I can do in there to make that a better use of space. I can't wait to transfer that item from the "TO DO LIST" to the "COMPLETED TO DO LIST"!

"Home To Do List" Countdown - Number Two - Sentimental Clutter

Today I cleaned and organized the living room closet, also known as the coat closet. This is is also where the vacuum cleaner is stored

I thought I was choosing another "easy" closet to clean, but when it came right down to it, it took me several hours. Why? Because this closet is the dumping ground for all the envelopes of pictures that I have taken over the past several years and I kept looking at them! I can't believe how much everybody in the family has changed!

One good thing about cleaning this closet is that it has given me a head start on organizing the photos, which is also on the "Home To Do List". But, for today's purposes I just gathered up all the packages of pictures, envelopes of school pictures, pictures included in Christmas Cards, etc. and put them in a pretty new striped canvas storage tote that you can see in the "After" photo. Also there is a pretty striped photo storage box that will be a good place to organize some of the photos that have been stuffed in there haphazardly.

I was excited to find FOUR brand new photo albums, three of which were Christmas gifts from the past and one of which I bought and had forgotten about. So I now have my pictures and photo albums in one container. This could be a project to work on while watching T.V. with my hubby.


BEFORE:



AFTER:



The main job in organizing this closet was straightening out the photos. Once that was done I removed some odd pieces of clothing that had found their way in there and put them where they needed to be. Some were stored in an extra bedroom closet, such as my son's high school graduation gown from 2005. A couple of things went to my closet. I put a long wool coat with a matching pink scarf in a "donate" box. This coat is about 20 years old, but is SO warm and still looks decent. I hope it will keep someone who really needs it warm this winter. I left only the coats and pull overs that we actually use and put them all on good plastic hangers to make a neater appearance.

I pulled the vacuum cleaner out and used the crevice tool all around the edges of the floor in the closet and vacuumed it. I repurposed a plastic shoe box I had on hand for storing the crevice tool, dusting tool, etc. that go with the vacuum cleaner and placed it on the floor in the corner. I then coiled the hose up neatly and put the whole thing back in.

This closet is located underneath the stairs and in the back of the closet, behind the coat rod, is a door which opens to additional storage space underneath the stairs. Here's a picture of the door.



This area is also on the "Home To Do List". It is filled with photo albums, books, VHS movies, framed pictures, and LOTS of miscellaneous stuff, none of which has any monetary value, but does have lots of sentimental value.

You see the sentimental clutter is the hardest to clean and organize of all! That's why it took me so long to finish this closet. When trying to declutter sentimental clutter, I dwell on each item like my life depends on it. I recently read a Flylady testimonial about a lady who had been taking care of her wedding dress for years. It moved with her every time she moved. It was stored in a box that was like a tomb. She finally gave it to charity, stating that she had plenty of pictures of herself wearing the dress and plenty of memories of it in her head. I probably won't get rid of too much of my sentimental clutter, but hope to organize it and streamline it some. There is valuable storage space in this area that I need to use for other things besides sentimental clutter!

I'm already wondering what I'll do with the VHS movies. I don't have too many, since I never saw the benefit of buying a movie to just watch one time, but we do have some children's movies. Our DVD player is a combination DVD player and VCR so we can still look at them for the time being, but they will be obsolete before its all over. I could donate them, but I don't know if anybody would be interested in owning them.

In working on my "Home To Do List" it looks like I am moving from one area of the house to the next area located nearest to it. So, it looks like I'll be tackling the storage area located in the back of the living room/coat closet. Maybe I'll get that next weekend!

"To Do List" Countdown - Number One

I'm working on the list!

In an effort to have some sense of accomplishment I chose one of the easier items on my 2009 HOME TO DO LIST. "Clean Linen Closet" (See Side Bar)

BEFORE:

Note: This is what happens when you work outside the home, help care for an elderly parent and try to do too much sewing when you should be cleaning house! AND I have more closets that look just as bad, or worse! So stay tuned....





AFTER




I plan to work on each item on the list, one at a time, until they are done if it takes all year. Some of them will have to be done in baby steps. I am envisioning doing one shelf, cabinet or area at a time when time permits.