I’m Back and with some GREAT News!!!

January 24, 2013 by Jen 2 Comments

I’m so sorry for being MIA for so long, but I had a lot of things going on before the holidays and I needed to take a break from blogging. BUT I’m back and I’m back with some great news. We are expecting our first baby!!!

YAY!!!! We had a very long road {2 years} of trying and finally with some help we were able to finally conceive!!! Our little miracle for sure. We feel very blessed and we are super excited. I’m 13 weeks right now and after my 12 week sono was clear and I could stop worrying so much, I thought “finally it’s time to go back to blogging and to share the next part of my journey in life with all of you.”

Of course you know this means that there will be a nursery to decorate and I am extremely excited to finally be able to put a nursery together in our home.

So until we find out if we are having a girl or a boy, I thought I would show you some ideas that I have been pinning into a “secret board” on Pinterest. Sorry, but I couldn’t let certain people know yet. But I’ll show you some of my ideas now.

I really love gray right now, so we will paint the walls a light to medium gray. We already have wainscotting in the room because the previous owners put it there. So we only have to paint the upper half of the walls gray. YAY!!!

So gray is neutral and can go with anything, the room will either be gray, pink, turquoise and white OR gray, turquoise, {maybe green too, like a lime green but not so bright} and white.

Let’s take a look at the eye candy now. I can’t wait to make some decisions about the colors in a few weeks.

I wouldn’t use the turquoise on the wall. The bottom half would be white where the wainscotting is and the upper half would be gray. Then I would bring in the pink & turquoise as pops of color. The furniture would be white and hopefully a gray rocker/glider.

via: www.projectnursery.com

via

I just love how gray, turquoise and white look together. If we had a little boy, I could always go with gray and navy for a big boy room and add in darker grays too and take away the turquoise.

via: www.projectnursery.com

I was thinking about some muscle cars or even airplanes for a little boys room. Both me and my husband love muscle cars and my husband loves all sorts of planes.

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This is the dresser I’m getting either way. It’s from Ikea. The link is below. I have seen this dresser in sooooo many nursery pictures and it really seems like the perfect piece to put in the nursery for a girl or boy.

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Ikea also sells these great boxes. They come in a set of 6 with 3 different sizes to fit into your dresser drawers. I’m definitely getting 1 or 2 sets of these boxes. And at $7.99 a set, who can resist some good organization.

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Same dresser with the same set of boxes I was just referring to from Ikea. I love how organized the dresser/changing table is. I will use mine for a changing table as well. Our nursery is on about a 10×9 foot room, so space is an issue and organization and lots of storage will be key for this room and for my sanity I’m sure. 😉 Check out how big those drawers look. I’m going to check out the dresser in person in a few weeks and make sure I love it in person as well.

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For the closet I want to do something like this with shelves on one side and double hanging clothes rods on the other side. The shelves might have to be a little smaller but this is the look I want. I can always take out the shelves down the road to use for longer pieces of clothing if it’s a girl. I would probably keep the shelves though if it’s a boy.

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Maybe even something like this, but I think I like the one above better.

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And of course every baby closet should have these dividers I think. Well something like these. I like the colors, but I’m not sure about the patterns yet. We will see. Once I know if it’s a girl or boy, then I can really decide on pattern and color. haha!!!

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I need to take some pictures of the room soon so you can see what I’m dealing with. We are trying to reorganize all three bedrooms that we have taken over for the last 5 years we have lived in the house. Yup we spread out and now we need to purge, donate and organize everything better in our bedroom and in our office room. We already started to purge the office and purge and reorganize, so I will be sharing my office with you finally as well. We have a lot to do before July 2013!!! But it’s all good and we feel great to finally get the house organized better. I’m sure there will be lots to throw away and lots to donate to GoodWill. I can’t wait. Our home feels heavy and we need to feel not so weighed down anymore. It feels good with what we did so far. Can’t wait to share pictures with you.

Thanks for stopping by everyone!!! Have a great day!!!

Decluttering The Kitchen Counter

September 10, 2012 by Jen 19 Comments

I had to declutter my kitchen counter. There was just way too much on it and I had to figure something out to get some of it off the counter.

Here is the before. Yup every inch of the counter was taken up by coffee supplies of sorts.
{white canister is from HomeGoods and coffee cups were our thank you gifts at our wedding}

The biggest problem was were will the K-cups go. I loved this little holder, that I believe I picked up at Bed Bath and Beyond for $20 a few years ago. But as cute and functional as it was, I had to find some place else for them.

YAY, I was able to clear the counter. Now it looked sad and boring. So I shopped my house.

And I found this basket. It was a little too tall, but it served it’s purpose until I found something else I liked more. The white canister, from HomeGoods, is used for our used k-cups and we just empty it once a week or as needed. We also put egg shells and scraps in it so we don’t stink up our garage pail. We are only a household of two, so we only throw the garage out once a week. If you put all of those things in the garage pail, then there is this horrible smell by mid week. The canister is probably really for a cookie jar and seals well, so we don’t have any problems with it. It works for us. We throw it out once a week and wash it also. So where did those K-cups go? Do you see them?

There they are. I know you can see them even from across the room, but I can live with it like this since it’s OFF my counter. Introducing the Under Cabinet K-Cup Holder for $29.95. It was so worth the money I spent on this product. We love it. It has strips of double sided tape and screws to install this. We used both just in case. The screws are very short, so they will not go through the bottom of the cabinet.

It just pulls down when you want some coffee or tea and goes nicely back into hiding when you are done. Love that!!!

This should fit under most cabinets. The measurements are on Amazon.

This under cabinet holder holds 24 k-cups. The counter one held 20. Actually there is a larger one sold on Amazon, that holds 36 k-cups, but your cabinets have to be 13 inches or deeper. The larger holder could be installed under a corner cabinet.

As you can see from the first picture I did find a better tray. Of course I found it at HomeGoods for $19.95. I love it. It’s just the right size for the canister and 4 cups. The rest of the cups went into our coffee mug cabinet.

Let’s check out all of the trays prettiness. I love the darker knots in the wood and it’s rustic feel. They made it look like a freight box that was cut down to size.

Really love the great darker colors to the wood.

And you can’t have a rustic wood tray without some wrought iron handles. Gorgeous!!!

So that is how I “decluttered” my kitchen counter. Have you decluttered your counters? What did you do? Did you use a tray? Do you have any other ideas for decluttering your counters? We would all love to hear your ideas. Leave them in the comment section. We all love some comment love!!!

Thanks for stopping by everyone!!! Have a great day!!!

Happy Hour

House on the Way

Our Shed…..Our Mess

April 13, 2012 by Jen 2 Comments

Be warned, it is not pretty and it is not organized…..YET!!!

This is one area of our house that I have never showed my wonderful followers. It has been a thorn in my side for the last 4.5 years and we have to do something about it already.

Step on in to our messy shed!!!
{embarrassed}

Sorry if the pictures aren’t that great. We don’t have a window, we only have the door as light, so I did my best with the flash on the camera.

This is the first side you see when you open the door. It’s the right side of the shed. Let’s start at the floor. We had a bunch of extra pavers left over and we already paid for them, so they were ours to use as we needed them. So we lifted stuff off the floor using the pavers. We have a water problem with the shed…more on that in a little bit. Anyway…this side of the shed has our tools in the corner, a plastic cabinet and some plastic shelving and other misc things. Like I said, this is NOT organized at all.

Here is the corner that holds all of our gardening tools like rakes, shovels, etc. It’s sort of organized because we do have that tool holder, but it’s not big enough for all of the different tools we have. We need hooks on the walls instead so it’s easier to find and put things back too. The way this corner is now, we have had things fall on us….not a good thing. We have no actual light in this shed either, but we do have electric in there now. We need to get an industrial light hooked up somehow in the rafters, because right now we only have those utility lights that are hanging from a nail on the wall.

Here is the mess behind the doors in this cabinet. I love my hubby, but he likes to move things all over when he is looking for something and things never go back where they should once he has gone into it. I have to get some clear bins for this cabinet and clean it out again. I will win this battle at some point!!! 😉

These shelves are pretty organized compared to the rest of the shed. But that isn’t saying that much really. haha!!!

There is a small loft area also in this shed, thank god, because it actually holds a lot. A lot of what is up there needs to be garage saled or thrown out. Right underneath {attached to the loft} is a hanging area that holds all of our extra wood flat. Which is great so the wood doesn’t get wet and will not warp to much. But we need to go through all that wood and see if it is all good still. You can also see the back wall in this picture. There is a small wood shelf attached to the back wall. It’s not that convinent and really doesn’t hold that much. We need to really rethink this area.

Here is a closer picture of the shelf under the loft.

Here is the other side of the loft. Beach chairs and a party bucket for water, soda and beers. In this picture you can also see that we have a work bench. It’s rather large actually. About two planks too large really. We are thinking about cutting it down a little, so we have more walking room in here, but we aren’t sure yet. As you can see, the door just misses the work bench. It’s probably about 4.5 to 5 feet deep I would think, so it’s a little much. But we will see. We do want to sand it down and put some poly on it to seal it better so we can clean it off easier. That will be the easy part of this shed makeover. We also keep a lot of our larger tools for the yard under the work bench. A wheel barrel, the lawn mower, a trimmer for the grass, and our shop-vac.

This is a shelf that are above the work bench. Oh my gosh, what a mess this side of the shed is. The hubby seems to know where most of the stuff is, but there are times when we can’t find things. Plus there is so much that needs to be gotten rid of at this point.

We even have a small shelf on top of the work bench. Plus a small toolbox. and lots of other crap I will call it right now.

Here you can pretty much see the whole work bench. It’s really large and it’s really a mess.

We have a grinder on our work bench too. It was left by the previous owners and we only had to buy new parts to grind stuff. This comes in handy and we will not be getting rid of it anytime soon.

Finally here is the last corner of the shed. Our ladders and anything misc are in this corner. It’s probably the cleanest corner in the shed. We really want to paint the whole entire inside of the shed glossy white. Glossy white will be really easy to clean off and it will brighten up the whole shed. We hope one day to have a window in this shed. Maybe next year we can swing that. First we need to organize the shed and leave room for a window somewhere. Always good to plan ahead for something this way you don’t have to move things down the road. 😉

I also wanted to show you some of our backyard as well. We have a very thin garden bed at the back of our property. There is a small creek that goes along behind the fence, so sometimes this area gets wet. We might loss some plantings over time, but we will have to deal with that when the time comes. Unless you have a really bad storm, this area is pretty normal most of the year. We needed to move a plant in the front of our house and we were going to keep it somewhere upfront, but we decided that the front areas had enough plants for now. We moved our “Globe Blue Spruce” to the center of this very long bed. It’s about 25 feet long I believe. On each side are some “Daylilies”. The border around this bed is actually more of our pavers. Money well spent in the end since we used them for our driveway, walkways, shed floor and now also this garden bed. It’s just the right border for the bed. Please excuse my ugly chainlink fence, but we don’t have the funds yet for fencing for our whole entire backyard yet. One day there will be nice white PVC fencing in the whole backyard.

{we already have the PVC fencing in front of the house}

Here is my Hosta garden bed. They are just starting to come up. In about a month, you can’t even see the mulch in this bed. It’s easy to care for and we love it.

Here is another view of that back garden bed and fence. There is a small stream behind the trees and then there is a house behind that. So a 6ft white PVC fence is needed. In the summer this area is pretty filled in, so we really don’t see our neighbors that much. But more privacy would be nice. 😉

All four of these “Arborvitae” bushes need to be moved. We planted them as baby bushes and they were the perfect size for this very small bed. But now they have grown and they are in the way of the “Daylilies” that are trying to come up. the Daylilies come up fine with the bushes there, but we just don’t like the look of everything all smush in together. So I will take new pictures of the beds after we move everything and keep you guys updated on their well being.

Here is what this garden bed looked like 2 years ago. So the bushes have done some growing since then. 😉

I spoke earlier about a water problem we have in our shed. Well when we bought the house 4.5 years ago, the shed was a lot higher above the grade of the ground. That was because we had a lot of work done over the 4.5 years and we had to add dirt and new sod, so we were left with this….the gras/dirt right up to the shed level so the water literally comes in one side and goes out the other side. {banging head against the wall} So we need to do something about it. It’s been like this for 2 years now and we are just being stupid at this point. We tried to see if there was something we could do to fix this problem. We do have a gutter on this shed which has helped some, but no completely. We know we have some mold in the shed as well, so this little guy needs to be fixed up some before we have to replace it. We don’t want to spend that kind of money, so we need to figure something out. Any ideas? anyone? We have a couple of thoughts in mind, but we aren’t 100% sure yet what we will do.

I think we might be able to use a Drain Channel like this one from Lowe’s, that can go on 2 sides of the shed and then out to the stream area behind the fence. Sounds like a great plan…hopefully it will work out for us. It will be worth the money for sure to save our little shed. But we still have to figure out what to do on the front side of the shed were the pavers are. Sometimes in heavy rain the water comes in through the door. See picture above. I think I will try some outdoor silicone product maybe first and see if that helps, if not I might have to bring back the masonery contractor and have them move the pathway over a little bit.

Here are some pictures of the backyard so you know where the shed is.

You can check out my inspirational post about organizing a shed here.

So does anyone have any shed organization tips for me? Have you organized your shed or garage? I would love to hear all about it. Leave a comment if you want to share with everyone.

Thanks for stopping by everyone!!! Have a great day and a great weekend!!!

Organizing Sheds

April 6, 2012 by Jen 2 Comments

Since Spring is here, I’m looking for ideas on how to organize our shed. We do not have a garage, we only have a 12×12 foot shed on our property. The previous owners converted our garage into what is now our Family Room. It’s great to have the extra space on the inside, but it’s not great to not have a garage. So we need to organize the heck out of our shed at this point. We need to clear out the whole shed and start over. I really would love to paint it white on the inside like this picture below. It’s very dark when we walk into our shed. There is no window, but we are thinking about installing one.

These products from Garage Rack Storage are pretty cool products.

Garage Rack Storage.com

Let’s take a look around this shed from BHG.com. Some really great ideas for our shed. We already have shelves, but we need to move some stuff around to make it more functional. I need to take pictures of the inside of our shed, so you can see the mess we are dealing with. Sorry I forgot to do that for this post. I’ll see if it’s sunny enough over this weekend so I can take some pictures. It’s actually a dark dirty place I never want to go in, so we really need to get our act together with fixing it up this year. We have only waited 4.5 years to finally do something about it. Anyway, back to what I was talking about, I love all the shelf space and I love all the wall space to hang the large tools for the yard.

Here is the other side of this shed. Gosh I would love a window like this in our shed. We actually have a really large work bench, bigger then this one, but it’s always a mess because we have too much stuff and we don’t have the shed organized the right way. I’m lovin those plastic containers in the left corner. Great for potting soil, grass seed, small tools, etc. I think I might have to get some of these for our shed.

Let’s take a closer look at some of the smaller features in this shed.

BHG: Little things like twine or thin wire can be some of the most useful objects in your shed. They can also be some of the hardest to find. Make it easy by turning a toilet paper holder on its side. It makes it a cinch to reach and cut.

I love this idea. I’m always looking for my twine and wire. I’m going to the dollar store and picking up two toilet paper holders and installing them in our shed.

Why not have a “Garden Calendar”.

BHG: Keep a calendar of landscaping activities and you won’t have to guess when you last fertilized the lawn or planted seeds. This one is metal, creating a convenient place to secure plant tags, seed packets, and small parts with magnetic holders.

This is sooooo smart to have right in your shed or garage. Great way to keep track. Anyone in the house can look at it, so that no one over fertilizes or anything else for that matter. Also a great place to keep your plant tags. This way you don’t forget all the details of each plant. If you ever have to move it, you know the name of the plant, the type of light it likes, etc. A corkboard and a whiteboard might just be moving into our shed. We will see though. Super great idea for sure.

Pictures via:

www.bhg.com

Let’s take a look back to what our shed looked like when we bought the house. I hope you are ready, because it’s really bad. It’s really ugly. Hope your sitting down.

Yup this is how our shed and our yard for that matter looked on the day of our closing. Yes, the previous owners were not all cleaned up before we closed on the house. But they got it done the following day. We had a lot of cleaning up to do even after they took all of their belongings with them.

Here is what the inside of the shed looked like that day. If you look close there is a wood work bench on the left side. Do you see it? It’s right behind the pool pump that is standing on the floor in the middle of the doorway. Yeah you can hardly see it.

This is what it looked like for the first few months we live in the house. Yup those are holes in the door to the shed.

When we got the new roof on our house, they also put a new roof on our shed, then me and the hubby put new PVC trim around the roof line, a new door, new PVC trim around the door and painted the whole shed on the outside. Soooooo much better. Our neighbors thank us for this one over and over again. {haha} So worth all the work we had to do. This is still how the shed looks today on the outside. Doesn’t that right side of the shed just scream “put a window here”? We are hoping to put a small double hung window this year or maybe next year. We aren’t sure. We also need to get two vents put on the shed. One above the door and then another one at the back of the shed, to keep some better ventilation in there. It gets wet sometimes {something else we need to work on}, so the vents would really help out. No worries, I will take lots of pictures and if we do the work ourselves, I will have lots of details to give you.

You can check out the rest of our Outdoor Series post below. There are a few, but we really turned this house around for the good and I love sharing our journey.

Outdoor Series 1
Outdoor Series 2

Outdoor Series 3

Outdoor Series 4
Outdoor Series 5
Outdoor Series 6
Outdoor Series 7
Outdoor Series 8
Outdoor Series 9

So has anyone else organized their shed or garage recently? Any tips for me? Any products you really love? Should I paint it white on the inside? Maybe another color? Let’s hear it all. Everyone enjoying their Spring so far? Did you start planting yet?

Thanks for stopping by everyone!!! Have a great Holiday weekend!!! Happy Easter and Happy Passover to everyone!!!

DIY – Free Storage Project

March 1, 2012 by Jen 43 Comments

You gotta love “free” storage. And even better if it’s pretty too. A couple of weeks ago I finally bought some new storage for my shoes, instead of the boxes that they were in. You can check out that post here from last week. So I was left with a bunch of empty shoe boxes and then I had a great idea to organize one of my cabinets in our Laundry Room. And you can check out what the Laundry Room looks like right now here.

I already had some pretty wrapping paper. I went with some double sided paper I already had, that I bought at Ikea about 2 years ago for a $1 a roll. I wanted to use black & white, because the Laundry Room color is already a blue/green color and I love how black & white looks with it.

I didn’t use this one yet, but I will once I finish up the other cabinets in the room.

Then I wrapped this box and oops I didn’t mean to wrap it this way on the short end. But since it was all taped already and I didn’t want to waste the paper, so I decided I needed to add something to the box to hide my oops.

So I used some frames I just recently bought on Etsy to make some free labels for the boxes.

I just printed them on regular paper and cut them down to size.

I love how they came out. It basically covered up my oops and I know what’s in the box also.

This is the cabinet that I needed to organize. Yikes!!! Yup we just throw things in this cabinet.

I took everything out of the cabinet and put certain things away where they should be and everything else that was small went into these two boxes. Much better. I still have work to do to all of the cabinets in the Laundry Room, but this was a good start.

Let’s get a little closer.

Yes for right now the other label does say “Misc”. It might change over time, but all I will have to do is print out a new one for “free”. 😉

I actually bought these from Michael’s the other day. They were on sale for $3.59 each. they might just end up in the Laundry Room too. We will see. I could use them in so many different places in the house. We will see where they end up.

Have you made some free storage for your home? What did you use that was free? Did you make it prettier with wrapping paper or craft paper? What did you use? I would love to see your projects, so leave a link in the comments section.

Thanks for stopping by everyone!!! Have a great day!!!

Linking up to:

beezrentaldesigns.blogspot.com/

Centsational Girl

The Scott’s Crib

Shoe Storage Solved + A Little Purging

February 24, 2012 by Jen 4 Comments

Ok, I could not take the way this closet looked anymore. This closet is in our 2nd bedroom. We use it for my extra shoes, our jackets, some misc clothes and some more misc stuff. We don’t have a really large closet in our Master Bedroom {I still have to show you that closet} and this closet and the closet in our 3rd bedroom all have “stuff” in it. Yup it’s just me & the hubby and we take up two regular sized closets and one double closet. Yeah, we don’t even have room for kids. haha!!! Well we are hoping for at least one child, so I really have to start to clean out and organize what we have. Ya never know when you might need more space.

I had to purge some of these shoes.

I had to do something with my shoes that were in boxes. Yes some of them had pictures of what shoes were inside, but sometimes I still had to open the box to see which shoes were in there.

Not sure yet which shoes these are.

Oh lookie, there are the shoes!!! Ok, way to much to do to get to one pair of shoes. If these were in something clear I would have known which shoes I wanted from the start.

So off to Target I went to find something clear to store them in. In walks these clear storage containers from Sterilite. haha!!! Sorry I couldn’t help myself with that pun. 😉

They fit my 6.5/7.0 size shoes perfectly. But there is extra room for bigger sizes, but not a man’s 11 size shoe because I tried. 😉

So after I went through all my shoes, I had to go through the other stuff.

Now this is what the closet looks like. I can actually fit more jackets or other stuff in there now because I purged a good amount of stuff. There are curtains in this closet also, plus my tree skirt from Christmas.

Now I can see all of my shoes. I even have one storage container left over right now.

Here is a “before” and “after”. It isn’t that huge of a difference, but it is in person to me.

Have you organized your shoes recently? What organizing tool did you use? I would love to see how you organized your shoes. Do share please.

You can also check out this post when I organized my flats in my bedroom.

Thanks for stopping by everyone!!! Have a great day!!!

Sorry, but I should have added how much I paid for them. Oops!!! $2.99 each at Target. They are 6 qt. Here is the link on Target. They are out of stock online, but I did buy them in the store in New York. Hope that helps.

Free Printable Labels from BHG.com

February 16, 2012 by Jen 2 Comments

I’ve really been on an organizing kick lately and I really want to take it one step further with some labels. I’ve been trying to find some free ideas that were cute and colorful. Thank you Better Homes & Gardens. Look at how these are. They are free and you can type on them. All you have to do is print and cut them out and attach. You could even print them on an Avery full sheet label and cut out the labels to make stickers instead. Each label comes in Green, Blue & Orange. When you go into each label to download, there are three full sheets of each color. Use the colors you want or use them all.

Link to labels

OH-MY-GOSH…..the inspiration you are about to see. I was so inspired, I wanted to share with all of you. Now you can take those pretty labels above and use them somewhere in your home. Right? Enjoy!!!

Address Labels

Book Belongs To Label

Calendar/Planner Labels

Jarring Labels

Supply Drawer Organizer Labels.

File Folder Labels

Kids Room

Girls Room Organization Labels

Key Tag Labels

Basket Labels

Labels inside luggage tags

Menu Organization Labels

“To-Go” Bag Labels

Pantry Labels

Jar Labels

Bucket Tags

Shelf Labels

Canister Tags

Toy Basket Labels

Kids Closet Organization Labels

Desk/Office Organization Labels

Link to label ideas

{all pictures via BHG.com}

Label Size ideas and other links next to each picture.

Some of the labels in the above pictures can be found right on BHG site. Each picture has a little description of the picture next to it and some links to more labels, like the file folder labels.

So which labels do you love? What are you going to use them for? Which ideas do you like best?

Thanks for stopping by everyone!!! Have a great day!!!

Organizing the Pantry….Again

February 6, 2012 by Jen 4 Comments

Yup you read that right…..again.

We are both to blame, but my hubby doesn’t like to put things back neatly. He will look for what he wants and then just pushes things back so he can close the door. He does this with drawers and kitchen cabinets too. What is a girl to do. I hate to keep organizing things, but it drives me nuts otherwise.

Check out my original post about when I first organized this pantry.

The bottom three shelves is what always becomes a mess.

I came across these cuties at Target. I first saw them over at IHeartOrganizing and thought they were really cute and might be able to work in our pantry. They are plastic, so they are easy to keep clean. They are $5.99 each.

Here are those cuties in action in the pantry. I love them. The three of them fit perfectly on one shelf and held all the littler things in the closet that just kept getting moved around.

Let’s take a closer look at each shelf.

Look at how great everything looks on this shelf now. I love it.

The bottom shelf is really the floor, but I have tried to use all the space in this tiny pantry to the fullest.

Here are the two other shelves above the other three. These always stay organized, because they already had something in place to keep them organized. This shelf has a three tiered product on it already for cans, so it was super easy to keep this organized.

This shelf stores all of our Keurig k-cups for our coffee maker. So the boxes keep everything organized on this shelf. Easy peasy!!!

Here is the full pantry. So much better now.

I’m completely not done with this closet. I really want to either paint it a pretty color or add some wallpaper to the back wall. I’m not sure yet. Or I might just paint the inside walls and install nicer shelving paper. I know the shelving paper is falling down in some areas. For right now, I think I’m just going to tape it up and call it a day. I haven’t done it yet, but I will. This is the same shelving paper that we used in the Linen Closet. Check out what I did with the linen closet to organize it better.

Have you organized or re-organized your pantry? Do you love it now? Is it the way you need it organized now? I would love to hear all about your pantries. Leave a comment to share with all of us.

Thanks for stopping by everyone!!! Have a great day!!!

A Little Organization

November 21, 2011 by Jen 2 Comments

Sometimes it’s just easier to start with the little messes before some of the bigger ones. Our home office tends to become a dumping ground for soooo many things in our house. The number one thing that gets dumped here so quickly is paperwork. It just adds up very quickly and can get out of control very easily.

Here is a small drawer station that is located on top of our file cabinet. It was supposed to be used for important paperwork we wanted at hand, bills and some supplies. Well it was out of hand and I had to clean it out. Basically, I went through everything on the top first and then each drawer. It took be about 1/2 hour total to go through everything and figure out if it was garbage, recycle or needed to be filed.

I ended up with this. All cleaned up and organized.

See how you can’t see the paperwork inside the drawers anymore. Yup that is how full these drawers were.

For me, if the little things are organized, then I can move onto the bigger things. It just works for me that way.

So let’s look at what I didn’t organize yet. Yikes this is a really big job and I’m just not ready to tackle it yet. I’m trying to organize my home office, one project at a time….one area at a time. This armoire is right next to the file cabinet. It was my Grandmother’s and now it’s mine. I want to paint it one day, but that is a large project for me and I will have to find the right time for that. But I will be sure to share with you when and if I do. So now you know my house isn’t always cleaned up and organized. I try to organize my life one little area at a time. Let’s take a look inside.

It already has some built in storage, but I don’t untilize them well. I need to re-think these drawers and what I use them for. So I will need to take everything out of the amoire and start over again. I would like to turn this into my “extra decor” cabinet. I’m really dying for a cabinet to holds all my extra decor pieces that I have around the house, stored in different places.

I added some storage. But it is just not enough. Ok, maybe I have too much stuff and I need to get rid of even more stuff. But I do need to rethink this side of the cabinet and get better store or utilize the storage I have already in a better way.

This storage holds candles & candle holders only. Think I have a candle problem? I need to garage sale some of this stuff.

And let’s not talk about my desk…it’s partically organized, but when trying to clean up the floor in the office, this is what happened to the desk area. Yup it went from the floor to piles on the desk…then I ran out of steam for that day. I will sort through things and it will be cleared soon. I also have to hang that cork board. I want to use it as a “mood board” for projects in the house. To use it in a way so I don’t forget my vision for a room or a project. I can’t wait to hang it up.

Anyone organize anything this weekend? Do you have a paperwork problem? Do you have a candle problem? Let’s hear it all ladies!!! I love to hear from you, so please leave a comment and let’s hear about your weekend. What did you do this weekend?

Thanks for stopping by everyone!!! Have a great day!!!

Purging The Bathroom, Plus a Little Bling

May 9, 2011 by Jen 4 Comments

Well as small as our bathroom is, it still needed to be purged and organized!!! Here are my before & after’s.

Under the sink – Before

One little basket under the sink was not doing it for this bathroom. Yikes!!!

Add a few other baskets and it’s all organized now. Some stuff was thrown out also. The wire mess basket drawer is from Bed Bath & Beyond. I believe it was $19.99 and the wicker baskets are from Home Goods. I bought them as a set and they were $19.99. $40 total to organize and have some sanity under there.

Onto the drawers now. This is where I keep all my hair products {headbands, scrunchies, brushes}. There was stuff I just didn’t use anymore or the elastic was worn out – gone now!!! I needed something to organize these two drawers better.

“Before”

I found these great pieces at Bed Bath & Beyond also. They were in the kitchen drawer organizer area, but they worked perfectly for my drawer. Four bins each for the two drawers worked out great to organize everything into smaller bins. They were $5.49 & $4.99 each, I bought 4 of the larger ones and 4 of the smaller ones. So for a total of $41.92, I was able to organize two of the four drawers. The other two drawers have vitamins and other larger products in them, so they didn’t need this type of product. I just reorganized those other two drawers and was done with them.

Here they are in the empty drawer. There is about an inch in the back and an inch on the side, otherwise they fit perfectly for what I needed them for.

“After”

Next drawer “Before”.

“After”

Onto the BLING now!!!

We have been living with the pulls & knobs that the vanity came with, that the previous owners installed. BUT the finish on them was not the same finish as the rest of the pieces in the bathroom. Everything else in the bathroom is Brushed Nickel. So after 3.5 years I had to change them.

I found a cheap version of crystal knobs at Target. Yup Target came through in a big way when it came to these knobs. Four knobs for $14.99. I saw similar knobs at Lowe’s and they were $6.99 each {$27.96 total}. I needed four of them. So I saved $12.97.

Here is the vanity before with the old knobs & pulls.

Here is the after with the new pulls and knobs. We bought the pulls from Lowe’s. They were $2.99 each I believe.

Here is a close up. I really like them. We are actually thinking about replacing all the knobs on our bedroom furniture. It will cost us about $100 to do that, but I think it would really add something to our bedroom furniture. We will see if we do that or not.

So for a total of $103 for all the storage & knobs/pulls, I feel like I have a new vanity. This bathroom was completely new when we bought the house, so all we did was paint this room when we moved it and added decor. So spending this money was ok with us.

You can check out the whole bathroom here.

Thanks for stopping by. I would love to hear from you so please leave a comment. Have a great day everyone!!!

The Everything Scene

A Little Bit of Everything

I’m Back and with some GREAT News!!!

Decluttering The Kitchen Counter

Our Shed…..Our Mess

Organizing Sheds

DIY – Free Storage Project

Shoe Storage Solved + A Little Purging

Free Printable Labels from BHG.com

Organizing the Pantry….Again

A Little Organization

Purging The Bathroom, Plus a Little Bling

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