Over at the blog “A Bowl Full of Lemons” they’re having a 21 days to organized house challenge and since I’m doing some of that already, I thought I’d join in with my before and afters for a bit of fun. I started late – on Monday night – so this is just a couple days of catch-up to get in sync with the rest of the group.
Day One was to clean your Junk Drawer. Well, my computer area junk drawer was already tidied earlier this year (hehe), so I went for the kitchen junk drawer. I looked to see what I’d need, ran over to Dollar Tree to get some supplies, then came back and started to work. Well, there was so much stuff in there that I had to send the overflow to the silverware drawer.
Day Two was to clean the top area of your computer desk. Mine was in desperate need of that, so I was quick to finish that one. I got inspiration from the original post to use a little mini tower I had leftover from the craft room move on the desk. The kids already love having it there full of pens and tape and notepaper that they can use! (They’ve been banned from my scrapbooking desk)
Day Three was to clean out your “Tupperware” cabinet. I did my storage container drawer. I bought two tall boxes while at the Dollar Tree earlier to hold a) the small containers the kids use for lunches and b) the lids to the rest of the smaller containers.
Day Four was to clean out your linen closet and ohwow did mine need it! I found 3 full size sheets (for a bed we got rid of 5 years ago), 10 twin sheet sets (only keeping 2 sheet sets per kid, 2 sets for us adults), 9 toddler sized sheets, a whole lot of curtains that didn’t fit our house’s needs when we moved in (7 years ago), and a huge number of empty bandage wrappers. The sheets & curtains all went to Goodwill and the trash went out the door, too. (Those boxes across the top hold china and off-season kitchen goods)
Day Five was to clean out your under-the-kitchen-sink area. Mine wasn’t too bad off, but I did repackage all those little refill bottles that we got on sale last year into something more managable.
Day Six was to clean out your dresser drawers. Umm. The one that needed the most work I had done a few weeks ago, but the rest got purged a little and now I can find all my socks again. Yay for socks! Also I had too many pairs of pajamas, most more than five years old. I’m sending one pair to my mom’s house and one to my mother-in-law’s house and now I can go visit without having to worry about “Did I pack my pj’s?” (No photos here as I am disinclined to show you all my underwear.)
Day Seven was to clean out your pantry. My pantry needed some TLC and I managed to get all my baking supplies into a basket for easy baking fun! 🙂 I also used baskets to tame the Back 40 where the rarely used supplies (Seaweed? Check. Shortening? Check. Oil for the FryDaddy? Check.) go. The flour, sugar, & shortening moved upwards to live with the rest of the baking supplies and the giant bowls moved out to the garage (we bought them for a church event; I will check and see if the church needs them before donating them).
Day Eight was also a scary day, as my front hallway closet could kill you, or at least the bottom half could. EVIL. As I cleared it out I realized two things: 1) I have too many bags and 2) my husband has too many gimme caps. So I stacked the hats all up for my husband to peruse when he comes home (he has 4 slots in the organizer free to store hats, so he can keep 8, I figure) and I put my donation pile into some of the bags I don’t want to keep (win/win, right?). I moved games and puzzles out of the closet to go live with the other games (except Risk, which has 8 trillion pieces so I think it still needs to live up high).
Day Nine was the Toy Organization challenge. I have to admit that that is one we’ve been working on for a while in this household. The kids get so many toys each year, even with our in-laws giving “experience” gifts and us only buying one present per kid per holiday, it gets pretty ridiculous around here. We do make them clear out a few things before each birthday or holiday, but that’s just not doing it for us anymore, not with three kids to one bedroom, so we’re allowing a bit of a spread of the stuff to make it easier on all of us. The Lego bricks and more solitary toys live in the Room of Requirement, the games all live out in the living room (which is where we play them anyway), sports stuff lives in the garage or outside, and the rest is in the kids room. (I took more photos, but this post is getting long enough!)
Day Ten (that’s today!) was to clean out your laundry room. Fortunately for me, that was on my own list for today! 🙂 Mostly I just tidied up, labeled the shelves, wiped them down, wiped down the washer & dryer & walls, hung things back up, and put things back in place.
Lisa Holcomb 
