Organizational Tip

Take some time each day this week to clear out your email in-box before the new year. This week I deleted thousands of emails to clear my in-boxes for the new year. Email can be just as annoying as junk mail when you just ignore it and leave it in your in-box unread. Sometimes I tell myself, I'm not interested but maybe another day I will be interested in checking out the sale or whatever it is. The truth of the matter is if I don't read emails when I get them it's usually too late by the time I do get around to them.

So a new year's resolution of mine is to stay on top of emails. I plan to make it a priority to keep my in-box clean and uncluttered. Care to join me?

Bathroom Cleaning- Organized Bucket

With 5 bathrooms to clean now (which include 7 sinks, yikes!) I've decided to get my cleaning supplies a bit more organized.

Now I have all of my bathroom cleaning supplies in one bucket so I can just pick it up on the day I have assigned to clean bathrooms and do my rounds.

I have my bucket clearly labeled so no one decides to dump it and use it for another purpose. I also put a laminated "Bathroom Cleaning Checklist" so if anyone else is assigned bathrooms they will know exactly what needs done.

See below for what I am keeping in my bathroom bucket.

First, toilet bowl cleaner and a brush. I used to have a brush by every toilet but then I decided that was just gross. I never got around to disinfecting them all, the bathroom harbors so many germs and I had to move it to sweep and mop around anyhow. So that is the reason I now use one, I can bleach the one when I finish cleaning all of the bathrooms.

 Next is my shower and tub cleaner, sponge and expandable scrubbing tool.

 Followed by Windex and a squeegee. I have tried many glass cleaners and have never found one I like as well as Windex. And since I use Windex on the facets I like this multi-surface antibacterial Windex best for the bathrooms.

 Usually the boys empty all of the trashes in the house but I do keep a baggie of trash bags in case I need to collect trash from the bathrooms (no reason to make multiple trips out with the trash cans I just dump it in a bag and continue filling up the bag). I included rubber gloves in the bucket as well because you will never see me cleaning without them on!

And the last thing I made to keep in the ziplock bag are some reminders to leave behind in the boys bathrooms that I wrote on index cards. Here are examples of the ones I will be using this week.

So there you have it, my bucket of bathroom supplies.

I sweep and mop the bathroom floors every other time I clean the bathrooms (unless they look like they need it!). So if i need to mop I grab my MOP BUCKET.

 In my mop bucket I have an all purpose cleaning solution that I use and my mop. I fill this bucket up with hot water and make the rounds after the bathrooms are clean. Since I actually use the bucket I don't keep anything else in it.

What kind of system do you have for cleaning your bathrooms?

Time to get ORGANIZED

Because I don't have a single spot left for an icon on my computer desktop...

Because every time I reach into my purse for something, something else falls out...

Because I have so many stacks of paper around my office, it looks as though I'm about to have a bonfire...

Because my new family school year calendar, doesn't have a single thing written on it...

Because last week I forgot about my son's orthodontist appointment, opps...

Because I'm so much happier when things and people are where they are supposed to be...

I have decided to spend some time getting organized this weekend. Whatever you are doing this weekend please know it is WAY more exciting than what I am doing!

Organizing Restaurant Coupons

First just let me say, I HATE eating out without a coupon. That is why it's important to me to keep our restaurant coupons organized, so it's easy to find one when we need one.  To keep track of these coupons our family keeps a notebook (with clear protectant pages) to store them in.

This is not the three ring binder type. It's just one solid notebook with the pages built in (portfolio style)

The notebook also houses all of the menus of places that we enjoy eating at (but does not store any other type of coupons). If we have a coupon for that restaurant it sits in front of the menu. As we get new coupons in the mail I just swap out the old for the new.

When we are having dinner out we can flip through the book and decide on what makes our tummies sing the most. And this style of notebook makes it easy for use to grab if we are headed to a movie and aren't sure where we will eat afterwards (nothing falls out!).

At the back of the notebook we keep the stray coupons, of places that we would like to try sometime. Rule #1 for this book is we never put a coupon in that we have no interest in using. Just because it's a restaurant coupon, does not mean it's going to make it in our book.  I always keep a few choice coupons in my wallet too, just in case! I told you I hate to eat out without a coupon right?!

How do you keep your restaurant coupons organized?

Linking to: Lucky Linky Tuesday, Take a Look Tuesday, Lettting the Creative Tuesday Juices Flow, and Toot your Horn Tuesday,

Spring Cleaning/ Organizing in the garage

I FINALLY finished painting the inside of the garage! White just makes everything feel fresh, roomy and clean. Originally, I decided to paint it because we had some extra white paint around and I need a clean canvas for the Jayhawk mural. 7 gallons of paint later... it's finally done (and actually I could probably use another gallon for some touchup, but I am tired of painting right now).

After I finished the painting my 'soon to be hubby' and I started organizing the garage. We are delighted with how versatile the Rubbermaid Fast Track wall organizers are. Check out the system on their website here, Rubbermaid.

We purchased what we wanted to start with from Lowes and plan to add to it as time goes on. I have my eye on the ball holder (only I need more than 1) and a few other accessories.

As everyone knows organizing is a process. We have a long way to go to be completely organized, especially in the garage where most of our junk (of all shapes and sizes) seems to gravitate to.

I told you in an earlier post, More Storage Space, how we added some space above the actual garage door. We liked it so much that we put in a another one recently.

Here are the pics....

NOW

NOW: The Wheelbarrow holder is one of our favorites!

NOW

NOW

NOW

NOW

NOW

BEFORE: As embarrasing as it may be!

BEFORE:

Quilt and blanket Trunk

We are in the process of getting the basement finished, which means we have to get the final items out of there. One of those items was this nearly 8 foot long trunk that the prior home owners left behind. It is heavy and we didn't know what we were going to do with it. Well, today we gave it a new home. The soon to be hubby, my oldest son and I carried it up to our second floor landing.

It looks handmade and I have no idea what it was originally intended for. Today it became our quilt/ blanket storage. Something we have needed for a while!

It's in a central location for our bedrooms so we can now easily grab an extra blanket or pillow. When I was collecting quilts from multiple places around the house I ran across this quilt that I had sewed in the 80s with my great grandmother. What an amazing woman she was. It took us about a week and when I look at it I can still remember the many stories she told me.

I only wish we had used prettier and better coordinated material, but hey I was a kid and didn't care at the time. We used all kind of scraps that she had and the quilt is very dated looking. However, I wouldn't have traded the experience for anything!

All done and ready to move on to another project!

Eat in Month has come to an end!

Eat in Month has come to an end, and that's good because I wasn't completely successful. I failed about 4 times, but for an entire month of breakfasts, lunches and dinners, that's really not all that bad.

At the beginning of the month I cleaned out my pantry because it looked like this...

And I blogged about how I cleaned it out (http://creativeinkansas.blogspot.com/2010/01/in-honor-of-eat-in-month.html) so I could get a good start on eating in.

Unfortunately, it's time to clean the pantry out again. I guess I really should do this monthly.

The best part of eating in for the month of January, is that I wrote down what I made every night for dinner. Now I have those 31 meals for ideas when I am trying to decide on dinners for February and every month thereafter.

It really was a great experience and I appreciate Diana at 'The Chic Life' for the challenge. I love visiting her blog and she was one that inspired me to start blogging myself. Go check out her blog... 

http://www.thechiclife.com/

1 Day Closet Makeover

I've been pretty busy lately so I've been behind in keeping up a few areas of my life. Today, I decided to to spend my Saturday taking care of one of those areas, my CLOSET. It could have been an overwhelming task but I knew if I broke it into smaller tasks that I could get it done in a day. One of the reasons I told myself the closet was getting so bad was because there just wasn't enough room for all of my fiance' and my clothes. The closet is a decent size but it just seemed like it needed to be laid out different. I've been thinking for months of a way to add some more hanging place, and make the closet feel bigger. Today I accomplished that.

Step 1: Examine the situation.

Ahhh. Have I really been living like this??

Step 2: Clear out the space.

After clearing out my closet I decided to take a peak in the attic space above it and see if I could use any space up there for our luggage that keeps getting moved from one closet to another.

Sure enough.. there was plenty of space just no flooring. So... I made a trip to the hardware store and picked up some!

Perfect!

Step 3: Plan out the space.

Step 4: Create more practical space (I added a shelf and moved an existing shelf).

Step 5: Sort and get rid of what you can (unfortunately I'd already donated a bunch of clothes recently so I kept most of everything).

It's hard to believe there is a king size bed under there!

Step 6: Move back in, and organize as you go.

Step 7: Smile and pat yourself on the back, mission accomplished.

1 Day + total cost of $33. I saved money by using what I had and buying just what I needed to get the job done. If I hadn't planned I may have spent money on things that I really didn't need. I also thought long and hard about how to put all the space to good use, even looked outside the box, (or in this case, the closet) and considered the attic for additional storage.

Found a home for my cookie cutters!

I have been working on one of my new year resolutions this evening... Getting organized.

An essential part of getting organized is of course finding a home for everything. We have many items in our house that don't have a proper place. One of which, is my cookie cutters, who have been living boxed up in the basement. Why have they been in a box? They live in a box because I have long outgrown the glass jar my mom stored our cookie cutters in during my childhood (the one pictured below with a hand painted flowery lid that she most likely painted in the 70s). So today I purchased a larger glass jar hoping they would all fit and the problem would be solved.

 No such luck.

Apparently, I have enough cookie cutters now to fill up my old jar and my new jar and no room for my collection to grow.  I also couldn't decide what to do with the jars, so I temporarily placed them above a cabinet in my kitchen. I don't think this will remain their permanent home but for the time being it works. They are clean, stored properly and out of the way.

And I found some Valentine's Day cookie cutters I can't wait to use!

More storage space

My honey and I added some storage to the garage last month. It doesn't look like much but it actually holds quite a bit. We bought the unit at Lowes and installed it over part of our garage door. It holds up to 500 lbs and the best thing about it is when the garage door is up no one can see our junk! Okay at least that part of the junk! I was planning to paint the garage as my winter project but it's WAY to cold in there to be painting! Guess I will continue it as my early spring project.

In honor of Eat in Month

In honor of Eat in Month I took 30 minutes and cleaned out my pantry...
I took EVERYTHING out of it, grouped things on my countertop, and made an inventory. Then I put it all back in there, with a few exceptions of things I decided to use today. I have this week's menu planned out and I'm headed to the grocery store in a few hours to purchase what I need for the week.

BEFORE

I found a few items to use up, looks like we are going to have some rice krispy treats today. And I completed my grocery list for this week after knowing exactly what I have on hand.

AFTER

Join the Eat in Month Challege with me! In order to succeed I'm planning ahead each week!