More Kitchen Organizing

Ten minute project here.  More cabinet organization in the kitchen. This time I worked on the cabinet above my sink, which currently holds my tupperware, my big pasta bowls, my wooden and plastic serving bowls, matches & lighters and my beloved Le Creuset Dutch Oven that I use all of the time in the Fall and Winter.  It also held a mismash of things, including water bottles, pitchers and odds and ends.  The cabinet doesn't even look that bad.  But to me, it is chaos. 

So, as usual, I pulled everything out and thought about what I needed and what was working and what wasn't.  What worked:

• The pasta bowls within easy reach.  We are big pasta fans up in this joint.
• The lighter/matches on the top shelf.  I regularly light candles and fires in the fireplace and want those things out of reach.
• The tupperware in close proximity to the sink

What didn't work:

• My Dutch Oven could not be any more difficult to reach. I would have to take out all the tupperware to get to it. Not working!
• The mishmash of "stuff" in the cabinet.  It made me crazy.

What I did:

I bought some white bins in the Dollar Spot at Target. They were $3 and I knew they'd come in handy.  The top shelf worked.  I put the salad bowl and the matches/lighter back up there.  I also put the knife sharpener (which was stuck in the way back of the second shelf) up there too.  Now it's easy to find.

For the middle shelf, I put my tupperware container in one white bin and the lids in the other.  I threw out any gross or match-less pieces.  

For the bottom shelf, I put my pasta bowls, the Dutch Oven and my glass storage containers.  Now when I need to grab my Dutch Oven, I only have to move a couple of things.  Much better.  

As for the other items, I moved the water bottles into another white bin and put them in a different cabinet.  I still have to organize that one, so you'll see them in awhile. 

But hurrah.  This cabinet is done.

  

Organizing under the Kitchen Sink

I mentioned in my 2015 home resolutions post that I wanted to organize some of my kitchen cabinets.  One of those cabinets was the one under the kitchen sink.  It wasn't bad at all.  I had a nice sized basket under there to hold cleaners and supplies.  But I knew I could do better. 

So the first step, as is always the first step with any organizing project, was to take everything out of the cabinet and line it up.  I was surprised at the amount of stuff under there!  

I like the bag holder for the inside of the door.  That works, so that stays.  I also liked the green basket for holding cleaners and supplies.  That worked as well.  But certain things, like sponges or Mr. Clean Erasers, were tough to find in that basket.  So I bought this small drawer set to hold them. And I labeled the drawers because I like labels.  Now it is very easy to find sponges, Magic Erasers and Brillo pads!  I also bought an inexpensive plastic basket for the top of that little drawer set to hold my drying mat and my gloves.

I needed a little spot to hold my dish soap and brushes and stoppers.  Lucky for me, I had picked up a set of plastic drawer organizers at TJ Maxx and wasn't otherwise using this large one.  It works perfectly to corral the "washing dishes" stuff.

I bought a clear container to hold my dishwasher tabs.  Now I can see when I need more!  This holds about a box and a half of the tabs.  By the way, I use the Finish tabs with hydrogen peroxide.  They are amazing.  

The final touch, which I admit is a little over the top, was to bring in this pretty patterned shelf paper for the bottom of the cabinet.  I didn't like the way the bottom looked, so I invested all of $5 (Walmart) for this non-adhesive shelf paper.  Now when I open up the cabinet, I instantly smile at the pretty and the organization!  

Yes!  These are the kinds of projects that take just a little time but make a world of difference, both in their functionality and in their inspiration for me to keep moving.  Next cabinet? The one above the sink ... and it's a doozie.  One word: Tupperware.

See you swoon,

Organizing the Workshop & Storage Space

Wednesday!

I am just rolling through my 2015 Home Resolution list like a runaway freight train!  Up today is a little project I tackled over the long weekend: putting the finishing touches on my workshop/storage room in the house.  

Back in the early Fall, I finally organized my three storage spaces in my house - the outdoor closets and my huge downstairs storage room (which was the room that needed it most of all).  I did the lions share of the work back then, but knew I had some final details to attend to - namely, to label all of the drawers and bins so that I could easily find what I was searching for when it was project or decorating time.

Here's how the room looked before I started:

As you can see, I have managed to keep it neat and organized since September.  I bought a Christmas tree bag for my tree, which is a lot larger than the original box it came in and in which I stored the tree before. The box was shot, so I had to toss it.  I've also brought in the outdoor furniture, so that's taking up some floor space.  It will all go back outside in the Spring.

I am in love with how organized and tidy this room is.  But it needed a little more.  I wanted to label all of the bins and drawers so that I could quickly and easily find exactly what I was looking for.  And because it's me and my room and I am a little OCD about these things, I wanted those labels to be kind of pretty.  My storage containers are mostly red, so in order to stick with that, I bought some red labels from Paper Source.   

I first made a list of the contents of every drawer and bin so I could make the appropriate label.  Once I had my list, I took the labels to my printer and printed them out.  I used Helvetica font for the labels.  I wanted something easy to read, but also easy on the eyes.  You know I am a font snob.

Unfortunately, I didn't count the number of bins when I bought my labels, and I fell way short.  As in I could only do half the room.  Meh!  Lucky for me, I live super close to a Paper Source (danger) so I will just run out soon and buy a few more packs to finish off the space.  Anyhow, labels on and ... here are the (even more) organized bins and drawers now!

For the plastic bins and drawers, it was easy enough to stick the label right on the front.  But for the mesh drawers, I used On Command to fasten the label to the drawers.  I stuck the label on a piece of card stock and then affixed it that way.

This space is almost done!  I would love to paint the floor and the walls/pegboard, but I doubt I will get around to that.  I've got a lot of other projects in the house to attend to first.  

Have a great day and a great week! 

See you swoon,

Finally! Revamped and Organized Jewelry Box

Ahhhh.  I can't wait to share this project with you! It's been something I've wanted to do for years and I finally did it.  I revamped and organized my beautiful jewelry box.  What took so long was my indecision about what to do with the wood finish.  Here it is before:

Now, if you've read this blog for more than a hot minute, you know that I like white furniture.  Nothing is safe: if I have a piece of brown wood, I am painting it white ... or maybe a soft seaglass green.  So, my instinct has always been to paint the jewelry box white, too.  The only issue is it was a gift from my grandparents for my college graduation and is a really good, well-crafted, high quality piece from a family-owned furniture company in farm country Pennsylvania.  And while I know that the finish of the wood doesn't really matter, something in me just didn't like the idea of slapping white paint over that gorgeous wood. 

I bought some liming wax, which I've seen on a bunch of blogs I like.  The process seemed simple enough: use a wire brush on the finish and then add the wax, which would supposedly give a soft whitewash to the wood.  I gave it a try and ... fail.  The dark stain was still showing through and it just looked like it had some cloudy film on it.  I considered getting out wood stripper and taking off the finish, but given how intricate and small this piece is, it seemed like a ton of work, for an effect I wasn't even sure I wanted.  So I went back to my comfort zone.  White paint! Who is surprised?!?

I used a coat of oil based primer and three coats of Valspar's Cream Delight (which I used on the trim on my living room bookshelves).

Just like with any other piece of furniture that I refinish, after the final coat was dry, I added Polycrilic to protect the finish.  I let that sit for 24 hours before returning it to my room. I added new hardware that I found on Etsy at DaRosa Creations.   I love the way they look.

And just like that, the outside was done!  It went from this ...

to this!

Much better.  

And that's not all!  The inside of the jewelry box was a mess.  I generally knew where all my jewelry was, but it was all sort of haphazardly thrown into the different drawers.  I took some time to neaten up the mess.

The first thing I did was go through the drawers and make sure I really wanted everything in there.  Look at all of this:

I decided to add some drawer liners as well.  I had a massive amount of blue velvet in my fabric stash, and this seemed like a great way to put it to use.  I wrapped the velvet around pieces of foam board that I picked up from Target, which I cut to fit the size of the drawers.  The drawers went from jumbled messes to this!

Yay!  I'm thrilled with this project and so so happy that it's finally done.  Now I'm inspired and ready to do paint more furniture - the playroom pieces (which have been on the to do list since January) and the dining room table top.  The legs will go white, but the top is going to get stripped of its cherry wood finish and then limed.  There's always a project waiting in the wings.  

See you swoon,

Tackling the Storage Spaces {post 2 of 2}: the front outdoor closet & downstairs patio closet

I am a woman on fire with organizing!  It all started the day I got home from Lake Placid ... I took one look at my fridge and decided then and there that it needed a deep clean.  Out everything came and I cleaned all of the shelves and bins.  That small project made me feel like I was regaining control of my life and settling back to normal ... or as normal as I can be anyway.   So I've been peppering in some organizing and smaller projects (that have huge impacts) with the larger work I'm doing at my house.

Up today, on the heels of the organization of my huge basement storage room, are the two other storage closets that I have: (1) the front outdoor closet and (2) the downstairs patio closet.  These took no time at all.

Front Storage Closet

The front storage closet was probably the easiest space of all three.  Here's the before:

Not terrible. Just not terribly functional.  I took everything out and analyzed the space.  I knew I needed to keep my trash can and recycle bins in there, my snow shovel and ice melter, bike helmets, and kids' scooters.  I also wanted to add a broom so I could sweep my front porch.  All I did was clean out the space (it needed a good sweeping) and put back the trash and recycle stuff.  I used another Ikea cheap trashcan to hold the ice melter bag.  I brought in a plastic bin for the helmets and stacked the kids' scooters on the top shelf.  And I bought some hooks for the snow shovel and broom.  Boom. Done.

Downstairs Patio Closet

This closet was just a mess.  Unlike the other two storage spaces, I didn't use it that often, but I knew it was there and I knew it was in disarray and it made me crazy.  

Just as with the other storage spaces, I pulled everything out and swept the floor clean.

Then I looked at what I needed to put back in.  I put the bucket of deck cleaner on the bricks that were stacked in the back.  I brought in the little curb alert table that had previously lived on my upstairs deck and used that to store my gardening tools and gloves. I want to get one of those cute gardening caddies to hold them at some point.  Under the table, I have a galvanized bin that has the pruning shears and my big dustpan.  I brought in the kids' outdoor toys and sleds and hung Little's hula hoop on the existing nails on the one wall.  And I used those extra inexpensive hooks from the Target Dollar Spot from a few years ago (that I blogged about in my storage room project) to hang my shovel and broom.

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH.  I cannot tell you how much better I feel with these three spaces organized and neat and tidy!  It took a weekend to do, but it was well worth it.  Now I can turn to my other home projects!  Up next:  finishing up my stairwell and a bunch of little projects that I've been meaning to get to.

See you swoon,

Tackling the Storage Spaces {post 1 of 2}: basement storage room

So, I have a confession to make: my storage closets are disasters.  Bad.  Really bad.  Like an episode of Hoaders-bad.  Ok, maybe not quite that bad, but they are not good at all.  Before I get into the nitty gritty and photos, let me explain.   When I moved in, I needed a place to store all the "stuff" without a home.  In the very beginning, that place was the downstairs playroom and big storage closet.  As I've lived here and gradually settled in, I have reduced the "stuff" storage place to the big storage closet.  It has a door and there's no need to go in there at all unless I need something.  

I have two other storage areas: an outdoor closet by the front door (where I store the trashcan and recycle containers) and one off of the brick patio (where I store a mishmash of stuff).  Rather than try to describe, I'll let the pictures do the talking.

Here is my front outdoor closet:

Here is my patio outdoor closet:

And - gulp - here is my basement storage closet.  The big mahoff (note: I had no idea the term "big mahoff" was a Philadelphia thing ... but it is and it means the big boss) ... brace yourself: 

No judgment!  No judgment!  Don't do it!  But you can a little.  Because it's bad.  I know it's bad.  And the thing is, even though I gave myself a free pass on these spaces because they're hidden and no one sees them but me and I wanted to focus on the actual rooms in the house, knowing that these spaces were in such disarray made me crazy.  I could handle the crazy until a few weeks ago when I  hit my tipping point:  I needed to spackle some nail holes in the wall and could not find a plastic putty knife (and I have a million of them - literally one million) in the mess among my tools.  So it was time.  And the time is now!

I started big: with the big storage room in the basement.  I'll share the transformation of the other two spaces in another post.  But this one is the biggie.  

The first thing I did was to sit down, calm down, and figure out what was going in each of the spaces.  I decided as follows:

• Front outdoor closet: scooters, helmets, broom, snow shovel (meh!), ice-melter (meh!), and the trash cans.  
• Patio outdoor closet:  gardening stuff and kids' outdoor toys. 
• Big basement storage room:  everything else!  That includes my tools, paint, project stuff, beach stuff, home decor, holiday decor, moving boxes, books and photo albums, coolers, and bikes.

Plan in hand, I set to work.  The first thing I did was completely empty out the space and put things into piles based on where they would go back in the room. I would organize the space into different zones.  I stored the piles in the kids' playroom.   

The OCD in me really really wanted to paint the floor a bright cheery color, like I did in my first house and paint the pegboard and walls.  But, I figured that was a down the line project when I run out of other projects to do.  I wanted to just get this sucker done so I could move on and get back to the many other projects I have and want to do.  I took stock of my organizing pieces and ended up buying four more plastic shelves (one from Lowe's at $14.99 and three from Home Depot -- two smaller ones were $16 and the larger one was $10 because it was the last one, it was out of its packaging and had no SKU ... so the manager said he would just let me have it for $10.  Um ... yes!).  I then figured out the appropriate zones for all of the stuff and started bringing stuff back in.

Paint Zone

I put the paint all together with the paint tools and spray paint.  I used peg board hooks to hang my good paint brushes on the pegboard.  Over in the corner is my stash of scrap wood.  Never throw away scrap wood!  Ever!  I was able to stack the big pieces but for the smaller pieces, I used an old cheapie Ikea trashcan that I had.  When I moved in, I bought a bunch of those trashcans (I think they're like $1 each) and have slowly replaced them with nicer trashcans because those are the things that make me crazy.  So I'll put them to work in my storage places.  

I had both of these storage pieces on hand.  The little shelf was something my friend Heather gave me when I moved in.  She didn't need it any more and asked if I could use it.  I snatched it up.  It's lived in my room, Little's room and now the storage room.  It works great to hold paint.  For the spray paint on top, I cut some extra wood that I had in my stash and put two pieces for the back row and one for the middle.  I like the stacked effect.  See? Never throw away wood!  Never!

This little mesh set of drawers was free!  Someone in my neighborhood put it out for the trash, and I grabbed it.  It works perfectly to hold foam rollers, drop cloths and paint tools and my throw-away brushes. Don't judge.  It is in great shape and I cleaned it thoroughly.  And I saved something perfectly useful from the landfill.  I propped my extra plywood behind the shelf.

Tool Zone

Next up was my tool area.  I used two tall white plastic shelves and a smaller plastic cart.  I also took advantage of the peg board and hung up my most used tools: hammer, tack hammer, level, crow bar. I had this old shower organizer that I was about to toss but thought better of it. I think it might come in handy at some point.  I also hung my saws on the wall.  I found this iron hanger thing among the "stuff" and decided to hang it, too! I use this iron for my no-sew sewing projects because it's scorched from all the hem tape and it leaves marks on anything I need to iron for real.  

First, the little cart.  This was also a curb alert courtesy of a neighbor! Thank you neighbor who threw out a perfectly good and useful cart!  I knew it would work great for either crafts or tools and am super happy I grabbed it.  I love the top because it has little divided spaces, which is perfect for these tools.  Come on ... those little divided sections make my OCD, organizing loving heart sing.  The drawers hold my millions of putty knives, nails and screws, picture hanging tools, and caulk, glues and adhesives.  

Shelf #1 (on the left) is all tools and materials.  The bottom shelf has my vice and jigsaw; the next shelf has my circular saw, sander and cordless drill; the next shelf has a bin of hardware and hooks; and the top has my miter box in a pretty red toile box.  Shelf #2 (on the right) is a mix of tools and other stuff.  The bottom shelf has my paint trays; the next shelf is my drill, screws and anchors and drill bits; the next shelf has household necessities such as ant spray and traps, WD40, etc. in the red bin and spackle.; and the top has my polycrilic and a red bin filled with the Closetmaid accessories (my house has Closetmaid closet systems all over).

Moving Box Zone

Sadly, I'm going to have to move again at some point relatively soon.  It is bittersweet.  On the one hand, I am looking forward to being closer to where the kids go to school and to the kids themselves when I don't have them, as well as a bunch of good friends I made in that area. On the other hand, I love my home, I love the friends I have out here, I love this area ... and the idea of moving makes me want to cry.  Anyway ... I saved the boxes when I moved in here, and I don't want to ditch them.  So they're stacked neatly on top of the old coffee table that I painted.  I like that they're off the floor.  And under the coffee table are two boxes that hold project supplies: batting, canvases and foam.  I stacked my Christmas tree next to the boxes too.  And lookie there - I used an extra table (clearance buy from Target from years ago that was around $20 but that does not have a home here) to hold my beer.  

Toy & Beach & Sport Zone

Right next to the boxes and behind the door is where I stored the toys & beach & sports stuff.  I brought in another white shelf for the toy/beach/sport area.  I needed a central spot for all of the summer and sport gear.  I have my coolers here, my emergency lantern and my bike stuff (in the red and white tin and my tri bag on top).  I also put the beach toys here.  The bottom shelf has a bin with my picnic backpack and a regular backpack and other supplies like water and windshield wiper fluid. I stacked my beach cart next to the shelf and hung the umbrella and beach chair from the pegboard.

I also added a hook to the back of the door and hung my beach bag from it.  Funny: I've had that hook (and two of its friends) for years from the Target Dollar Spot. There's nothing wrong with it, but it's always felt a little cheap to me.  So I used it here (and in my outdoor patio closet) because I know I won't end up staying here permanently.  Ha.

Christmas Zone & Big Bin Zone

Next up: the corner where I keep my Christmas bins and other bins.  The other bins are yearbooks, books, photo albums, humidifiers, and air mattresses (yes, plural. This is yet another reason why I needed to organize this space: I had one, I knew I had one and yet I could not find one. So I bought a new one.  And now I have two).  I stacked all of my Christmas stuff together and on the shelf.  Look how nice and Christmassy.

Decor & Home Supplies Zone

I had this white plastic shelf already and it works perfectly for extra home decor and home supplies.  I keep extra frames, vases and decor on it so I can shop my stash when it's time to change things up.  I also have a box filled with lightbulbs and a box filled with extension cords.  Now they are all together so when I need them I can just grab and go.  The bottom shelves are canvas bins where I keep the kids' yearly folders of art work.

Storage Zone

Finally, this large open area by the window is perfect for storing my big things: my saw horses, my ladders and eventually, when the weather turns cooler, my patio furniture.  I don't have room for a workbench, but my parents gave me this old console table, and I use that for projects.  I realized it would be a lot more functional with wheels, so I am going to pick up some locking casters at the Home Depot and will them on the legs.  I can't wait!

Whew!  This took two days to do: day 1 took about 4 1/2 hours and day 2 took 4 hours.  This is a terrific start.  In the cooler months, I am going to go hog wild and make really nice, really swoon-worthy labels for all of the stuff.  And eventually, depending on how other projects go and how much longer I live here, I really want to paint the floors and walls.  But for now, I am just happy that everything is neat, tidy and organized.  And that I can find anything I need very quickly.

Some before and afters real quick before I'm out:

Before

After

Before

After

Before

After

Before OMG

After

See you swoon,