today's organizing attempts

i feel like i have worked most of the day and don't have much to show for it. blah!

it doesn't help that i have this bloody magazine to look at with all of their perfectly expensive containers that match perfectly. blah!

i got PART of the fridge organized and PART of the pantry organized. not one entire cabinet or area, of course, just bits and pieces in different places so it looks like i did nothing.

nonetheless...here you go...

{before}

{after}

{top 2 shelves}

{serving size fruit bin--grapes and kiwi}

{pre-scooped Nectar Cappuccino protein on the left,

homemade protein bar dry ingredients on right,

serving size homemade trail mix in the back}

{also in the pantry~

dried cherries on the left,

chia seeds on the right}

**HATE how the tops don't match**

desperately want to get more jars before break ends so that i can put kosher salt, cocoa powder and lots of other pantry items in jars as well.

you have to start somewhere

of course this would have been far more dramatic had i stopped for 2 seconds before i started to take 'before' pictures, but, of course, i didn't do that.nonetheless, i decided to start in my bathroom for no other reason than it felt like something i could handle while being interrupted 100 times by my cuties : )

of course it's not 100% uniform like they show in the magazine, but i was able to find some mason jars and some tumblers in the dining room that haven't gotten any action in the last couple of years.

oh, what to move on to next : )

oh my...i want to be organized...

so i took this quiz in this organizing magazine i just had to have yesterday at lowe's. as a friend of mine said, that's just one more thing you'll have to organize :-) HA! She has a very valid point :-) there is a quiz in the magazine (i just love these quizzes. it reminded me of my 'seventeen' magazine reading days) and this is me according to the magazine. if you know me, it's pretty darn accurate!

i am so inspired by this magazine and

this is how ridiculously organized i want to be. shaun just laughs and i know he's thinking, "in your dreams, you can't even put your jeans in the dirty laundry basket" :-) maybe one day i will prove him and myself, for that matter, wrong!

all photos are found in this magazine...my inspiration and last minute purchase at good ole lowe's yesterday.

my 40 in 40 list

40 bags in 40 days

I couldn't be more excited about this challenge. If anyone needs to get rid of stuff, it's me!

I saw this challenge over at "Little Lucy Lu"

The challenge in short: Fill up 40 bags of things to dump (trash, donate, etc) within 40 days. You can use multiple bags for larger spaces (2 bags for your dresser drawers, for instance).

This is the perfect challenge for me during the month of January as this month's focus is 'energy' for my Happiness Project and cleanliness and organization produces a better vibe, hence better energy.

I will post my 40 bags in 40 days list soon!

operation: pantry organization

so, we lost everything in the freezer from losing power and most that was in the fridge. we finally felt like it was safe to go to the store yesterday given our power, or lack there of, situation.

here's the before:

(jello with soy sauce, cockeyed cornstarch and a random opened bag of butterscotch chips?)

when we got back from the store i found myself stuffing, and i mean stuffing, food into the pantry. ironic, because the reason we went to the store is because i kept complaining about having no food! i didn't deal with it last night, but i made a mental promise that i needed to take care of it today.

i found food that expired in 2008...that's ridiculous. it made me angry to know that we had wasted food. at least we're starting "new" and will hopefully not "lose" anything in the cabinets again!

and the after:

(dana--see my labels?!)

look at that bottom shelf--you couldn't even see it before!

(above the fridge)

still a mess, but there is progress

they came and shampooed the carpets today, so things are looking half-way normal downstairs...in fact, they look a lot better than they did prior to the flood. for any of you who have been over here in the past 3 years, i'm sure you would be highly impressed...you can actually see the carpet in most rooms :-)

don't get too excited, everything is still all over the place and we have a long way to go...i'm thinking weeks before everything is in "its place," but the fact that i could start moving things back downstairs today made me so happy!

i thought at first that i would start taking things down and fill one room at a time, but it didn't really work out that way. for now, i started filling up 3 storage areas--the creepy, under the stairs space (and yes, i was FREAKING OUT about spiders--see The Stokes Family blog), the coat closet downstairs, and the closet in the "bedroom" down there. i am putting things we won't need for months or years in the creepy storage space...the spiders can have a field day in there for all i care after i fill it up...i'm not going in there. i really can't stop thinking about spiders after talking to dana yesterday, so if items didn't fit in a storage container, like Landon's car seats, crib mattress, and gate, i put them in big black garbage bags and tied the tightest knots i could in them.

after spending hours last weekend organizing all of Landon's old clothes, i found another bin downstairs that i missed. grrrrrr! i wasn't about to drag all of that stuff out again, so i just left it for now. i might regret it, but organizing the basement was going to be my spring break project until this flood forced me to do it now, so maybe i can finish organizing all of his old clothes then.

i think this weekend calls for another trip to wally world for some storage bins, a little work here and there, and something FUN...shaun and i keep finding each other walking around in circles with the most disgusted and disappointed looks on each other's faces. we need to do some things to get our minds off of this house!

i know we'll get out of this and the house will look better than ever, but it seems so overwhelming most days.

bins, lids, and labels

i won't go into my trip to wally world in the pouring down rain with a 45 lb child who refused to walk or get in the cart...

i'll simply say :-):

30 storage containers were bought and used today (thanks for your advice dana, i got something i thought would be good rather than settling on containers)

there is plenty more i need to find a home for, so i'll have to make another trip tomorrow.

everything i've put in bins is labels...i even found a couple of cute labels i had left over from one of landon's birthday parties.

schmoopie and moo moo even got in on the action and "helped"

i couldn't get to sleep until 2am this morning worrying about all of this stuff, so i'm heading back to attempt to get to bed earlier tonight.

tootles.

on a rampage

i don't know what on earth has gotten into me, but for the past 2 days i have been going OFF around the house...moving furniture, cleaning baseboards (Dana--you'll have to check out my effort next time you're over), and actually attempting to organize. all of these things might be normal for most of you reading, but for me, all of the above are things i typically think of often, but don't actually ever DO any of them.

Project 1: Get rid of Christmas decor so that there are not TWO sofas in our reasonably small living room and there will be room for RED DINOSAUR and GREEN DINOSAUR (another story). in the process of taking down the tree and trying to find places for all of the new toys and gadgets, i felt a need for change. so, the train table got moved to L's room, which meant i had to move the glider that we don't use in there anymore elsewhere...fast forward...glider now in living room with only ONE sofa! the best part...the living room is now truly brown and blue because the sofa is brown and the glider is blue. granted, i don't know how normal or cool it is to have a glider in a living room, but whatev.

Project 2: the office

for anyone who has been to our house you know i rarely let you see the office despite its convenient location across from the hall bath. why i ever called it an office, i'm not sure as it had no purpose other than to catch everything that didn't have a "place." so, for 3 years, i keep saying i'm going to do something with this wretched room, but never did. somehow in last week in the blizzard, with no power, i found it appropriate to move two filing cabinets from across the room and put them in the closet of the office because i think they are hideous and i thought i could hide them in the closet. wouldn't you know the dag on things were about a quarter of an inch too deep to fit in the closet and be able to close the doors. i would have known that had i measured, but i didn't bother! there was NO WAY i was going to move them back and i'm glad i didn't (just wait, you'll see why). it took me a minute or two, but i decided i'd just take the doors off and put up a tension rod with some fabric or a curtain. granted, i haven't bothered to do that yet, but it will get done before the end of the week. here is what it looked like now...a little crazy, i agree, but a few days ago, imagine the ENTIRE ROOM looking something like this.



After i got the doors of the closet off today, i was trying to figure out where i was going to store these mugs...then i wondered if i could use them as decoration. i think i've seen in a magazine how they used a shutter for a message center. i don't have room in the kitchen for that, but i thought, why not use them to display pictures??? by no means is this complete, but what do you think?



i used another one of my favorite things (binder clips) to attach the pictures to the slats of the doors. the best part is that there is a menagerie of pictures from childhood up to current (or at least that is my intention!).

i like it so much that i'm considering taking our closet doors off in our bedroom too as they are always open in the first place.

Project 3: Downstairs

let's just say we have an enormous TV that doesn't fit our room, so we're trying to be creative! more on this later...we just got started and had to hit the pause button as this weakling over here couldn't help muscle man move the TV!

It's only Monday of an entire week off, we'll see if we have the stamina to get the entire house looking decent before our return!