Getting Organized Day 10: The Laundry Room

It has been nice to see all the cool organizing prompts over at a bowl full of lemons and many of them have been put into action previously by my hyper-organized husband.

Finally, Day 10 - the Laundry Room, was for me.

Here is the before:

Pretty, pretty, pretty messy. And majorly disorganized.

Moved out the laundry cart, cleaned the floor underneath (eeeew) and voila:

Containers helped here quite a bit. All stain removers and pre-treaters are up top with dryer sheets.

Row 2 is cleaning extras (soaps, swiffer stuff)

and the bottom row is laundry detergents, softener, and bleach.

The boxes in the back were previously organized, so this challenge took a little less time than expected.

Linking to

Getting Organized Day 2 - Cleaning the Desktop

Literally the top of my computer desk.

I'm linking up to the second challenge at A Bowl Full of Lemons.

So my before:

Power cords, ipods, unnecessary accessories.

These had to go.

Took everything off, cleaned it all up with my Pledge Multi Surface Cleaner and...

 it's done! Got rid of the clutter and made that lamp look decent instead of falling apart.

I'm linking to

Getting Organized - Day 1

I'm taking the 21-Days to Getting Organized challenge over at a Bowl Full of Lemons.

This challenge promises to be filled with easy ways to get my life a little more ordered. Being that my husband is naturally organized, I felt I could try to be a bit more like him.

The challenge for Day 1 is clean out your junk drawer.

This ended up being easier than I expected.

Here's the before:

 Too many rubber bands (why do we have multiple bags of them????), owner's manuals, and menus in complete disarray. Purged a lot, moved menus and manuals to file folders at our desk, and voila,the after:

Like is with like, and only the things we need are here.

Looking forward to more challenges to get my stuff in shape.

Also linked to:

{not-so-neatly} contained

So, by popular demand, I reveal my jewelry organization. 

WARNING: To many, this will still look disorganized, so I feel the need for a disclaimer. I am not a naturally organized person. My husband, on the other hand, is incredibly organized. So organized in fact, that he will organize my disorganization because it gets a bit overwhelming for him. I am a piler. I put papers in piles, put clothes in piles, stack everything I can.  And it takes me a while to actually create systems that work for me.

This is my dresser top: 

One of two spots  store my flower pins:

Either in the lift up of the jewelry box. 

or, oddly enough, in my sock drawer in dividers. 

My rings are always on my Lenox ring holder. 

My watch (which I rarely wear anymore) is also looped there.

 My favorite storage piece is below:

 My wedding china is Oberon by Wedgewood. We received a grand total of two place settings (which is understandable, as we don't have a house or a dining room). But I adore the pattern, like love it. And my aunt bought this trinket box for my vanity. 

It stores all my necklace charms (Lisa Leonard, the Rusted Chain, etc).

 I keep one of each dangle charm (pearls, aquas, crystals) and the sterling tags in the  box. 

 The chains are kept on the back of my earring holder bird cage thingy(found at TJ Maxx). I keep 15 (special order, but a need for those tops that cut odd on me) 16, 18, 20, and 24 inch chains there so I can coordinate them with the charms.

Most of the shepherd hook earrings I wear are kept on the front of the bird cage:

 Earrings I rarely wear stay in the jewelry box sorted by hoops, shepherd hook, or french ear wire.

Beaded necklaces and chunkier pieces hang from my necklace holder (which was from Urban Outfitters a couple of years ago). 

Now, you're likely wondering why I have all this stuff out in the open. Although I am not a visual person, I have learned that if I store it away, I never wear it. 

Trust me, the jewelry box is loaded with necklaces that I really have no idea why I needed to purchase. Or maybe they go with one or two outfits so I keep them. By leaving out my go-to pieces it is much easier to coordinate with outfits. I don't need to dig through anything and I end up wearing more of what I have because I see it. Sometimes I will rotate in some older pieces so I enjoy them again too.

Well, like I warned, my organization is slightly disorganized, but it works for me.

I'd love to see some of your ideas, so feel free to link in the comments!!

Fall Clothing Switch-Out

Once we have a day that dips into the 60s, I'm ready to pull out all my fall jackets and get cozy for the cooler months.

My parents allow me to store my out-of-season clothes in their attic and this year I devised a little system for storage. All the clothes get put in Space Bags (I love those things!) and I label them with what they are, that they belong to me, and how many bags are in the lot. Obviously, I have learned from experience by spending a few months searching for that one jacket only to realize there must be a bag lurking somewhere. And it saves my parents going nuts deciding what's in the bag, getting annoyed that I even store them there, etc :)

A couple of weeks ago I picked up my three bags of fall/winter clothes. Mostly the bags are jackets, heavier pants, and lots of pull-over sweaters.

My family calls me Kathy...I've just embraced it. 

Then the process begins, pulling out clothes from the summer months, laundering them, and taking time to decide what might be needed for the next few weeks as it could stay a little warmer. I used to keep lots of tees, tanks, dresses, and pants out for the whole year. This year I've decided to only keep a few short sleeve tees 'active' as I rarely wear them in the cooler months and I will have clothes to look forward to at the start of spring next year.

It causes a disastrous mess!

I also take the time to check out the items I really never wore this summer and decide if they are truly flattering and comfortable. If I don't love them (for instance, a very bulky sweatshirt that says "be in gratitude" that I loved and had to have, but have not worn for two years) they are getting stored for next year's clothing swap (more on that in the summer 2011, I promise) or thrown away if they are discolored (why do I have three semi-white Jcrew long-sleeve tees???) or bleached (I haaaaate that!!!) .

And the closet even looks cozier with all the long sleeved items.

Then those wonderful Space Bags come back into play, storing all the summer and spring clothes for next year.

I must admit, I love autumn and all the clothes that go along with crisp temps and falling leaves. And I love putting outfits together with all the jackets!!

CD Storage Complete

So today I finally got to work organizing the massive CD collection. 4 recycle bags of cases, 1 broken nail, and 4 hours later I am finished. I ordered 4 storage cases and sleeves hoping to get my 300+ CDs in order. Woke up at 10:30 and got right to it. Gathered all CDs and divided them by genre. Then alphabetized. Then wrote order down (eventually I hope to put them in a spreadsheet to make easier to update) and began the painful process of separating the CDs from their precious jewel cases. For any CD that had the songs printed on them, they were easily placed in the sleeve. Those without, I had to pry the back of the case off and slice down the song order section.











I did keep all the booklets in a shoe box for now. Also kept all the cool Tori Amos CD cases. And ta-da it is finished.


And feels so flippin cool! Happy weekend all :)

i purged

not food, but emotions and scrap stuff.

first, I have been a bad blogger and a bad flickr uploader and I do apolpgize. life has been nutty...read Jamie's blog from a couple of days ago, as she put the experience into words better than I could. It was crazy, but I feel like a huge weight has been lifted off my shoulders and I didn't hate going to work last week (could just be I am on va-kay next week, LOL). I just realized that I have wanted change in my life and I have to start making that happen. I am very good at talking the talk but not doing any walking. So this is a baby step, but I feel great, so much more relaxed. So that was the emotional purge.

The scrap purge was insane!!

Here are the before photos: (I can't believe I am posting these...they are scary)










I spent from 11am-2:30pm and then from 4pm-10:30pm completely getting rid of papers, stickers, embellishments, and stamps while blasting Counting Crows (the new album is so good). I have an excess problem (you all know of my pen obsession) and tend to buy 2, 3, 4 of everything. I have never gone through all my scrap stuff since I started four years ago. I just couldn't imagine the task. And it was sucky. It was hours of paper sorting mostly.

Here are my to-give-away piles (leave a note if you want anything, as I have no idea where to give it. Lots of awesome paper).




And these are the after photos:







yay! I have a workspace back. It has been a while since I seriously scrapped just for me and not for the design team at scrapper's playground. I caught the bug again and can't wait to create. I am hoping to get that vision board happening.

Hope u are all having a good weekend...and I promise to be a better blogger.