Cleaning out the fridge

Finally got around to cleaning out my fridge this weekend. 


OK, I probably shouldn't do this but I'm not proud so here goes. This is what it looked like before:

You can't really see the full extent of it but its pretty chaotic and messy! 

Oh and dirty.... yuck:

I emptied everything out and layed it all out on the worksurfaces. 

JJ attacking the Babybels

Cleaned the fridge to make it shiny!

Then put things back and labelled them as I went:

This is actually what I did with the cheese LAST time I did the fridge - this time we didn't have enough cheese to bother doing it again. It is in bags though in the box. 

Then I put everything back on the shelves, nice and neatly:

 Feel really good for having done it. Just hope we can keep it clean! 

Dressing table - update

Following on from my post Making My Bedroom a Haven....


You can't always do everything you want to at the time you want to do it. For instance, when I tidied up my dressing table, it felt like quite a big job just to clear the surface and put all the stuff away - let alone reorganise all the drawers, but you shouldn't let the fact that you don't completely finish a job either a) put you off starting it altogether or b) continuing with it in small steps. 


I had a nice lie in this morning (until 10.30am) and after having a shower I had a bit of time before leaving to meet my friend and I opened one of my drawers and had an urge that I couldn't ignore, to tidy it up. 


This is what it looked like before (I remembered to take the "before" photo - YAY!):

All a bit of a jumble as you can see. 


I took everything out of the drawer onto the surface and divided it into piles...

Nice empty drawer

Manicure type stuff

Nail varnishs (all in a bag)

Took nailvarnishes out of bag

Party type stuff - glitter, fake eyelashes etc

Nail care stuff

Some smaller manicure type stuff

I found a nice metal tin for the party stuff which, although I rarely use it, I hate to throw it away as  it could come in handy one day

And this is what it looked like when I'd finished. 

This only took me about 10-15 minutes - and this proves my urge to keep all boxes!! It just goes to show that even if you don't have tonnes of time or energy, you can acheive something in a short amount of time. Tonight or tomorrow I might do one of the other drawers!

Toy storage

I'm not being paid to say this, honest, but Ikea is the BEST for storage solutions. 


The kids toys were previously being stored in a large chest box that my parents gave us. Its beautiful. They painted it and decorated it with a lovely picture. See below:

Obviously, there was no chance of us getting rid of this as its such a beautiful box and keepsake so its gone in Joshua's bedroom. 


At the time, this is what I had wanted for the sitting room. I thought it would work well as its a box (we could just chuck everything in at the end of the day) and we could use it as a coffee table too when we had guests. Unfortunately as JJ got older, it became harder and harder to keep it organised. The type of toys a one year old has are quite different to what a 3 year old has - lots of smaller things, small cars which always fell to the bottom of the box and we had to dig through to find his favourite little Lightening McQueen car. And then when his little sister came along it became even harder to manage. 


This is what it would look like after organising it:

But it would never stay that way for long. 


One day we decided to bite the bullet and go to Ikea to get something that would be easier to keep organised!


This is what we got:

This is how we organised all the drawers:

And we got this for top (it doesn't look like this now as it seems to have become a bit of a dumping ground for stuff. Will have to sort that out at some point!!!

I think I might make labels for the drawers although we haven't really needed them to keep it organised. Its pretty much still as organised as the day we put it all together - although we did move some of them around - so that the drawer with the fruit is at the bottom so Lala can get to them. It works so much better. 

We also got a bigger TV around the same time that goes up on the wall and gives us a lot more space so overall the effect is much better. The only thing the toy storage DOESN'T do is pick up all the toys at the end of the day. I still have to do that myself sadly!

Making my bedroom a haven

My bedroom is usually the last place to get my attention because its the place I crawl to when I'm tired and its the place I crawl out of first thing in the morning when the kids insist on getting up. However, lately I've read quite a few blogs that said that prettifying your bedroom can make a big deal a) to how you relax in the evening and b) to how easily/quickly you can get ready in the morning. I always HATE how messy my bedroom is. So, I've been doing a bit of rejigging. I'm kicking myself I didn't take any BEFORE photos but TRUST ME. It was bad!!! 

I started by buying these lovely boxes from Ikea. I made the labels myself as I thought black labels with gold writing would stand out more than the standard cream labels:

I've ordered them so that the things I use less frequently (yes, sadly stockings and suspenders etc are used less often than tights) are on the bottom row and more frequently used items on the top. I love how these boxes fit so perfectly in the space. I only bought three originally and I'm so glad that my friend Emma managed to get me another 3 and posted them to me! Thanks Emma!

I haven't figured out what to do with the bottom shelf yet. It still looks a bit of a mess. I might ask my dad to put in an extra shelf so that I have two less deep shelves rather than one massively deep one:

I've had my eye on some pink velvet hangers for months now - since I saw some in TK Maxx but we'd already spent a small fortune that day anyway on post-Christmas stuff so I didn't get them. However, I decided to treat myself and this is what they look like. Again, I'm kicking myself for not taking a BEFORE photo. I should also mention that I've kicked my husband's suits out of the bedroom wardrobe (to the spare bedroom one) as he works from home and rarely wears them. Sensible? I thought so. We'll see what he thinks when he gets home!!! Annoyingly I can't seem to rotate the pictures! Grrrr

I also found this in the cupboard for shoes so I could have some of them out rather than being tucked in the drawer under the bed or scattered on the floor of the wardrobe:

I also attacked my dressing table which looked like a bomb had hit it. This is what it looks like now:

My friend Lisa gave me the blackboard label clip things and I haven't found a use for them until now (she bought them for me to label my products when I was making and selling bath bombs and things but I stopped doing it shortly after she bought them for me). I put all my daily creams and potions in this Ikea box:

This box has been hiding in a corner of the bedroom and I wasn't sure what to do with it but I thought it looked really pretty on my dressing table so I put some small tester creams and cotton wool pads in it:

Mirror drawer: I put some makeup essentials, and other bits and pieces, making sure to keep things in little boxes so they don't get all messy again:

That's all for now on the wardrobe. 


xxxx

Wrapping Memories Up

I have never found it easy to throw away letters and cards and simply refused to throw away ANY of the cards I received when my kids were born and I've been meaning to do something with them since Joshua was born in October 2008. Sadly, until now they sat around in piles, some in the intray that is never looked at, some in cupboards, some in a cardboard box in the loft with other random items.... I even found several cards just scattered on the floor of the loft. 


Finally I got round to dealing with them and it felt really good. I gathered all the cards together and then when I had half an hour to spend on my own in my new office, I divided the cards up into piles - by child and then by occassion: birth, naming day, 1st birthday, 2nd birthday, 3rd birthday. Then I decided that as they probably wouldn't be looked at for years and years it would be nice to wrap them up like presents. So I found some nice wrapping paper, tissue paper and the like and some ribbon and then I tied the ribbon around the packages and made pretty labels for each package. 


This is what they looked like before:

And these are my packages after:

About me

I am a part-time working mum of two. I'm not your typical organiser (not yet anyway) in that my house is normally a tip. Maybe that's not so abnormal. Or maybe as I progress in this "journey" (sorry... very cliche) I will become one of those people who always has a lovely tidy house. 

I'm married to my husband Ben (married for 13 years this year and together for another 3 or 4 before that). Our kids (Lala - actual name Alara, and JJ - Joshua) are just over 3 and 18 months (at time of writing, in Feb 2012). We have two dogs - Toby and Tia, a snake and 3 chickens. We have a habit of collecting creatures that are injured, old or just in need of a home. You can include in this ex-Lodger and best friend Lisa, the chicken that spent 2 weeks living in my husband's office after being attacked by a fox... and no sooner had this position been vacated (she got better and joined her chicken friends in the chicken coop) than we found an injured pigeon pottering around in the front garden - took a bit of chasing to catch that fellow I can assure you. So taking all this into consideration it is no wonder that my house is a tip. 

We also have a tendency to hoard. I love to hoard boxes (plastic ones, wicker baskets, you name it, if you can put something in it, I will want to keep it.... just in case... it might be useful one day), while my husband can't bear to just throw a lot of things out without making a money back on them so we have piles of things that need to be ebay'd "next free listing day" GRRRRR. 

So lately, maybe as a way of fighting back at the ensuing chaos, I have really got into organising. When I say really I mean REALLY REALLY. I've not just been tidying a few cupboards. I've been RESEARCHING HOW to tidy cupboards (and reading lots of blogs and websites by other obsessive organisers). I find it really interesting to see how other people manage THEIR chaos and getting ideas of how I can make things work in MY house. Its given me a new-found love of my home, a feeling of control over my surroundings - never mind that the sitting room is strewn with the kids toys and dog bones (my latest bugbear). At least I have a nice "control central" folder and basket on top of the bread bin and my wardrobe now has beautiful pink velvet hangers in it and my dressing table has been tidied and my jewellery box moved into prime position instead of skulking at the back behind a small TV that we were given that I'm not even sure we're going to use now! Oh I also created a shoe/hat/glove station by the front door - big basket for shoes, smaller basket for hats, even smaller one for gloves. There are also low hooks for the kids coats and scarves. Its so much easier than trying to dig through a cloth bag hanging on a hook where everything was previously dumped. 

I've decided to start this blog because I need an outlet to vent all this stuff and I feel like I want to share my "adventures" (honestly, sad as it is, that's how it feels I get such a buzz out of it) outside of just my facebook friends. And I'm considering the idea of becoming (sometime in the future) a professional organiser... Several friends have seen my posts and pictures and said something along those lines. So why not. I'll start here. Thank you for reading. :) Happy organising.