Moving In & Getting Organized

So we've been unpacking, and unwrapping all the things that we all too recently wrapped and packed up to move. I've decided to not buy anything new for our apartment here in Bloomington, with the small but awesome exception of the Charley Harper prints I now having hanging in our living room/dining room. Charley Harper is my favorite artist, many of this pieces have to do with animals and wildlife, and these in particular where commissioned by the National Park Service, another favorite of mine. I love them, love them love them--and got them for a great deal at the U.S. Government Bookstore. (I found them from a tip on Retro Renovation and hopped on the internet to order straight away.) This is how they look, let me know what you think...

Yes, that is Matlock on TV 

And as always, I like to show a few pictures of the process. Lots of figuring out placement, measuring, and sinking anchors and screws. 

We also hung my hubby's Great Aunt's painting above the fireplace. I think it looks great!

Lots of Christmas decor on the shelves and mantles, maybe I'll even go back and take a few pics after Christmas has cleared out and everything is set up "permanently". And speaking of Christmas, one, the JOY decoration on the fireplace was made by my bestie, Kelly, owner of Petals by the Shore, I just love it! And two, here's an obligatory picture of our Christmas tree.

I really hope everyone had a wonderful holiday!

What I've Been Watching on Netflix Instant Lately

1) The League...oh my goodness so hilarious! Only the first season is up right now, but it has me hooked. I nearly peed my pants watching this show before.

2) American Pickers...the guys are a little annoying but I love the junk they find.

3) Cash in the Attic...similar to Pickers, but British and kinda slow moving. I still like it though.

4) Clean House...watching a show about cleaning and organizing is so much more fun than doing it ;)

A few more posts on Etsy

So my intention is not to turn my blog into an advertisement for my Etsy shop., but as I'm adding stuff I will continue to post here. If you see anything you like, shop around.

Yellow Metal Flower Candle Holder

Country Chain Link Metal Woven Basket

1960's TV Trays

Sunflower Pattern Milk Glass

And this one too...

Our Bedroom, Kitten Approved

So if you remember (or even if you don't) we began a little "facelift" to our bedroom back in March, and it's been nearly finished for a long time, but we finally completed it! I think it looks great!

We painted all the trim white, removed the rug (it was gross), made it so we could each have an alarm clock on our side of the bed, put in reading lights on both sides of the bed, put in a new ceiling fan, and painted and trimmed out the ceiling. Take a look! "Befores" on the left, "Afters" on the right...

        

One more "After"...

Don't be fooled by the crop of the above pictures, the room looks bigger than ever, and is cleaner that it's been in a long time. I know the projects were a complete success because the room has been kitten approved!

#28 Put Away Camping Gear, #100 Add Handles to Camping Gear Storage and #3 Make Summer Camping Reservations

Only a few more weeks of the Lenten season, and we're still marking projects off the list!

#28 was to Put Away Camping Gear. We actually organized this area of our basement really well in the fall too. When we renovated our kitchen in the Spring of 2009, we moved some of the old cabinets into the basement. These cabinets now hold laundry supplies, tools and camping gear. In addition we are using some of the furniture I've had since I was 4 years old to hold camping gear. Both the re-purposed cabinets and kid shelves and drawers are perfect for this kind of storage. And even though we haven't used any of the camping gear since last fall, we were generously given a lot of great camping gear for Christmas. While the new gear had previously been corralled to the basement, it now has a permanent home with the other camping gear.

At the same time we completed #100 Add Handles to Camping Gear Storage. When we got my old childhood furniture from my mom, the first thing my Hubby did was paint it. And while it looks much better, some of the drawers now stick from being painted and living in the humid basement. Easy fix, we added inexpensive 4" drawer handles today, and now the drawers work just fine!!

After the organizing of the camping gear, it seemed fitting to do #3 Make Summer Camping Reservations. We are now planning a trip to the Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore (which we learned actually does not take reservations) and to Mirror Lake Wisconsin State Park. We decided that while we hopefully will do more camping than this it is difficult to make reservations too far into the future, since stuff always seems to pop up. But I am not uber excited for these two trips!!!

#99 Move the hope chest upstairs and organize sheets, pillow cases and duvet covers

Completed tonight, this makes 14 projects so far!

Organizing our bedding for our room and the guest room, has always been a challenge for us. To help, we moved the hope chest that my hubby made in high school upstairs from the basement, and put all of the bedding for room in it. We separated out the guest room bedding and put it in the storage cubby in the guest room. Simple, easy, didn't take too long, and now its done.

#97 Clean and Organize under the sink in the kitchen

It didn't take long, which begs the question why I just didn't do it before. I took out everything under the sink, there were a few surprises but mostly it was cleaning products and our recycle bins. We use two recycle bins, one for aluminum, glass, plastic, etc and the other for cardboard and paper products. Under this area was quite dirty with soda splatter and the like. I organized the cleaning products too, and realized a couple of things: 1)Our disorganization leads to waste. When we can't find something, we just re-buy it, as we had duplicates of a few different products and I didn't realized we had some of the stuff that was in there. Organization is good for the soul and the wallet, I guess. 2) I would like to stop buying so many cleaning products and start making more of my own. I very recently started using white vinegar and water as an all-purpose cleaner. These home-made cleaners are more often eco-friendly, pet-friendly, and very inexpensive. I'm going to finish using what I have first, of course, but then would like to start. 


Any suggestions on home-made/eco-friendly cleaners you use at home?

#96 Organize/Put away winter wear

Last night we picked up a long storage box, that fits perfectly in the top of our long coat closet. Today I organized all our winter scarves, hats, mittens, gloves, earmuffs and ski goggles. For just two of us we have tons of this type of stuff, so I was happy everything fit into the box! I even had room for the hubby's snow pants. We did keep a pair of gloves and a hat out each...just in case...but at this point in the year I'm pretty much gonna refuse to wear such things!

Done and done.

#32 Organize cubby hole in stair way, and clean up back door area

Our stairwell has a nice little cubby hole in it that is a great place for extra storage. Today I cleaned it out organized it into two crates and two bins. The bins now hold shoes since the back door area is ideal for shoes, since this is where they like to congregate anyways. One of the crates holds extra or specialized cleaning products, and the other holds paper plates, cups and napkins. And the best part, there is still room!!!

At the same time, I cleaned up and re-organized our back door area.

We have four hooks (great for jackets, purses and hats), three Ikea shoe organizers (stacked one on top of the other and mounted to the wall), white board for messages, and cutie bull heads for key holders.

The bull heads were actually part of our Lenten projects last year, and they've worked great every since! On top of the shoe organizers we are able to keep sunglasses, a catch all, and at least for a few more weeks a box with gloves and hats.

Controlling my mess of a closet! I need help!

So I just went through my two closets and two dressers this morning. I separated the clothes that I no longer want to either donate or sell at a garage sale; I organized drawers and closet sections into categories; hung up what need hanging and folded what needed folded. And, you know, the fact of the matter is that my closets and drawers are still overflowing.

Now I can make excuses, like "I have work AND casual clothes" and "I have summer AND winter clothes". But the fact of the matter is that, I have too much! I want to simplify my life and certainly my clothing. Any suggestions...

#20: Organize the kitchen pantry & #60: Organize drawers in the kitchen.

About this time last year we ended our kitchen remodel. We got new floor, new cabinets, new counter tops, new backsplash--the works. I absolutely love the way it turned out, but when we put everything back in the kitchen we didn't have a true picture of how the new kitchen would function. After a year, we have a pretty good idea. So I spent a chunk of the morning, cleaning out and rearranging our pantry cabinets. While the cabinets are better organized, they also only contain food that can be eaten. There was a surprising amount of expired food that we ended up composting.

While I was doing that, Hubby organized and cleaned out our over-flowing kitchen junk drawer, and organized our utensil drawers.

Done and done.

#13: Put away the rest of Christmas.

16 dishes, 2 candy dishes, 1 serving platter, 7 mugs, 1 teapot, 1 cookie jar, all of various Christmas and winter themes are now put away in their proper spots. No longer will they lurk in cupboards, counters or the hutch; they are all now in their "homes" waiting next years holiday season.

Clean up

First off, I've decided to write more often on this blog. There are certainly things that make me happy everyday, so why not share them.

One thing that made me really happy today, was cleaning and organizing our bathroom. I went through all my make-up, toiletries, and jewelry. The stuff I kept was better organized in the medicine cabinet, under the sink, and in our linen closet in the bathroom. The stuff that I no longer needed or wanted was separated into two piles: half-empty, expired, yucky stuff and unopened stuff that I did not want. The half-empty, expired, yucky stuff was either dumped out and the bottle recycled or thrown away. The unopened stuff was mainly comprised of gift sets, since lotion and perfume seem to always be stand by gifts to women. I put the unopened stuff in a box and am going to donate it to A Safe Place for women; on their wish list for the battered and abuse women is jewelry, perfume, bath products and toiletries.

With the extra space made from cleaning out so much stuff was able to make space for all of our over-the-counter drugs and first aide products. This is awesome because it has made room in our over crowded pantry. Maybe the crowded pantry should be the next project?