I have an Amazon cart full of baskets, bins, containers, and all the other million things you can buy to organize your home. But, not surprisingly, the price of all that quickly adds up to out of my budget. So I'm trying to work with what I have and find ways to keep the clutter from over-taking the place. I started with the kitchen a few posts back, but I haven't made it all the way to the office yet despite my blogging about starting it. It's in the midst of de-junking, so it looks even worse than when it started!
But the kitchen's looking good. I de-cluttered the pantry in that first post, and it's stayed relatively organized.The kitchen cabinets were pretty organized to begin with, I just moved some things around for more convenient reach. The only true clutter in the kitchen was the quintessential "junk drawer". It was full of scissors, batteries, pens, and all the other things we wanted handy but didn't have a place for. And plenty of things we did have a place for; they just never made it there.
After a lot of moving things back to where they should be, I stuck a small basket in the drawer to contain pens and lighters and all those loose objects. I put all our batteries in bags since we had literally 9 different containers of AA and AAA batteries. And kept some things handy, like the lighter and flashlight in case of another quake and power outage!
My loving husband bought me a spice rack this weekend, so that's also helping with the clutter-control. My box of random spices was overtaking a whole cabinet. While I'll still use them, now the most commonly used are within reach. And I got some spices I haven't been able to find at the commissary, like rosemary and red pepper flakes.
I'm not a huge coffee drinker when I'm not trying to squeeze 25 hours into 24, but I do like a nice, hot cup now and then. This morning I went to brew some, albeit not that fresh, coffee and got a weird bitter taste that shouldn't have been there. My brother told me to keep my coffee grounds in the freezer, and it does keep them fresh longer, but I needed something else. I cleaned my coffee maker with vinegar. And I purchased some new coffee and took the grounds out of the bag and into Ziploc containers.
Since they seal, I'm hoping they'll keep things nice and fresh so I can enjoy the coffee even if I don't inhale it right away. I'll let you know how it goes. For now they're hanging out in my freezer, with labels so my husband doesn't have to wonder what the heck I'm hiding in there. (I made a homemade sugar scrub and left the Ziploc container in the shower, and he was questioning why I needed to eat while I was showering. Uhhhhh...I got hungry?)
My last clutter controller of the day is a little crafty project I decided to do on a whim. I had a couple yards of burlap leftover after I used a piece or two in my living room wall collage, and I was itching to do something with it. I also had a pile of shoe boxes leftover from both my husband and I purchasing new gym shoes recently.
So I took this (imagine the box is for a Men's 12, not a Women's 7)...
And turned it into this! I covered the box in white paper first so the Asics design wouldn't peak through the burlap. Then I haphazardly taped and glued the burlap into place. I used tape where it wouldn't obviously show, then Mod Podged the edges and seams to try to keep it all in place. It looked like quite the disaster when I was working on it, but it turned out okay. The lid is a little tight to close and open because of the thickness, but it doesn't bother me all that much.
The best part is how much space I now have for some clutter! Turns out a box big enough to hold size 12 shoes is pretty spacey, so I have room and then some for all my computer cords and accessories. I had them all in a large makeup bag, but with my external harddrive and camera, it was overflowing and hard to dig out the cords I needed. This works much better, and the lid closes all the crazy cordage out of my sight.
It sits on our little make-shift laptop charging station. Jeff sits on the couch when he uses his laptop, but it charges and stays here when not in use. I let mine charge here too.
But when I want to use it, I generally pull it over to the kitchen table. Looking at a wall at a shaky folding table is just drab. But this way, I can watch TV or look outside when the blinds are open. Our windows face west, so that whole wall of windows gives us a great blinding view of the sun in the evening. But it's still a better view than the wall!
So that's my organization right now. Little changes that are my attempts to keep the clutter at bay. I have plans for what I'd love to do, but for now things are somewhat more contained and that's enough. The office will need some more clutter control work, but I'll get there. Hopefully this week. And some things we might have to fork out the cash for regardless. I already ordered more bookends for our growing collection, we're on the hunt for a larger fireproof safe (we bought one, but it's not big enough to fit my husband's service record. So it's holding other important documents, but we need something big enough to contain all those military documents!), and we may be moving some big pieces of furniture around sometime in the near future, which would give us a lot more storage space in that cluttered room (more on that later).
I think I'm going to go browsing around blogland for organization and de-cluttering ideas and see if I can get inspired to get back on the horse tomorrow and finish that office.
Love the box idea. That's something I never would have thought of, but it's so smart. Hmmm.I wonder if I have any shoe boxes around here anymore.
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