Some news and stuff

I'm sorry I've been neglecting you all (and my poor lonely blog) for a while. 


There has been lots going on behind the scenes. I have been very busy on various projects. Some of which I can tell you about now, some of which I may tell you about once I know if its going to pan out or not. 


Organising the Chaos is in Business


Firstly, I am starting up in business. I am here. To organise. YOU!!!


I'm SOOOOO excited that I now have Organising the Chaos business cards!! 

I love how pretty they are. 


I have plans to help various friends get organised (whoever will have me basically) free of charge and hopefully they will let me post it on my blog so I can build up a kind of portfolio. I figure that organising my own stuff is one thing but I need to prove (to myself and generally) that I can organise other people's homes - to fit in with THEIR lives and homes. 


Website


I am also working on a new website to match with the fancy new cards. With the help of a very kind friend. OK, he's actually working on it FOR me. Cos I don't really know my stuff when it comes to websites! Watch this space. 


Organising stuff I've been getting up to lately


I've been making some more of my blackboard clips (have a possible order in the pipeline). 

I organised a place for nappies, wipes and spare pants. There already was a place but it had got cluttered with other spare clothes and was just a mess. So I changed the box and found a few tins that had come with a set of mugs I got for Christmas one year that I could use for dividers. 

It looks neater now. 

I also swapped around our winter hall boxes (see below)

And created some summer hall boxes. One for shoes, one for bags and one for summer hats. I used my chalkboard labels to add a pretty little touch. 

I think I already mentioned how I did this in a previous blog but here you go again!


A place for everything and everything in its place!

Hopefully I'll have some more organisey stuff for you soon. 


(PS sorry if my writing is not top notch tonight. finding True Blood and this bottle of wine rather distracting!)

House mess shame / Making boxes for sunglasses/suncream/phone/camera/etc

Talking to my mum today she made a little joke when I mentioned that I find it hard to keep everything in order in the house after 2 days of working in a row (I was saying how I was quite happy my working days were changing to Monday, Wednesday & Friday). She joked that surely I wouldn't find it a problem with all my organising systems in place. I love her but it made me feel uncomfortable. She didn't met the point and I want to make sure that anyone else doesn't misunderstand me! I am not all of a sudden an expert. My house is not suddenly tidy!!! Some of the systems I try don't work for me. But I try them (I need to revisit them I think for the blog so I can say what went wrong) & when it doesn't work I try something else. Yes, sometimes I'll decorate a box to make it pretty when I should be getting on with the laundry. But I do it because it makes me happy. And some of my "systems" do help me and make things run more smoothly. But I am still the person who hasn't hoovered when you come round (cos I don't DO hoovering). I'll only tidy up the kids toys until they've gone to bed cos otherwise they'll just make it messy again. And most of the time I don't mind.


Apart from when someone says they don't feel comfortable being in your home because it's messy. That hurts a bit. Especially when it's from someone you love. maybe that's why I keep trying. Because deep down I feel like a failure for not keeping on top of it.


Or maybe it's because when I have one little thing organised and pretty, even if it's just my make-up drawer, it makes me feel good. It makes me feel in control. And it makes me feel like I've accomplished something.


Here is what I did today while I SHOULD REALLY have been putting loads of laundry on:

Its a box to put sunglasses (in one side of the divider) and suncream (in the other) in. So they have a place to live (as they are always just HANGING AROUND in my house in the summer. 

Notice how nice my little chalkboard labels look.....

I was so pleased with the above that I did another smaller one for my phone & camera....

In fact, I was so pleased I made yet ANOTHER one. So now I have a whole set. A place for everything....

Organising the Larder

I had SOOOOO much fun this weekend reorganising our pullout larder cupboard. Apparently, according to a dear friend of mine (grumble grumble) it isn't REALLY a larder, but its where I put all our flour and sauces and tins, so I'm going to call it my larder. So take that Mrs Lisa Smarty Pants. Hehe. Hate you really! xxx


Anyway, so I hadn't actually planned on organising the larder (although it desperately needed doing) because we were planning on replacing the pull out cupboard mechanism with an actual cupboard, because, clever as the pull out thingy is, its not all that practical because you can't pull it out as far as I for one would like and so you can never quite see everything that's in there. 


So I was just generally tidying up and trying to make the kitchen a bit cleaner, tidier and prettier and so I took everything off our little glass corner shelves, cleaned them and put things back but I found some nice jars so I put things back in jars. I only took a before picture of one of the shelves but you can imagine it. It was all dusty, it had on it a load of stuff, including a salt grinder that didn't even work (I figured we'd never get round to fixing it and have since taken to crumbling sea salt into food when cooking anyway and if we need another one we can buy one) so I threw that away. I cleaned the shelves down and put back the things in their nice new shiny (not new, but looked new as I washed and polished them). This is the before:

Ok, it doesn't look terrible, but I think this looks much better:

I had bought this jar to put sweets and things in and it was living on the window sill but I think it looks much nicer here. The kitchen roll holder that has no kitchen roll on it (we've run out) has been moved back to the window sill (that needs tidying up too but I think that's a job for another day). 


Here is the other shelf, which I think looks great. The jar at the back has black peppercorns in it. The white stuff is salt. The bigger jar in the middle has turkish red chilli in it (we love that stuff) and the smaller jar has 100% chocolate in it. My husband uses it for cooking and wanted me to leave it out (it was in a yucky plastic container before). 

I actually found a few smaller kilner type jars (like the one at the back above) hiding among the herbs so I crushed enough black pepper to fill that one (our pepper grinder died too) but I forgot to take a picture of that. 


While I was busy tidying the kitchen and doing this my husband was out with both kids (bliss for me - to be able to potter about in the house on my own). Then he came back, gave me some large kilner jars (a pack of three for about £7 from TK Maxx) and then said he was going to go to Guildford as he'd been unable to find some crocs for my daughter cos her feet are too fat, bless her (she's only 18 months but has monster boats like her mum). I doubly loved my husband at that moment. MORE time to myself AND lovely new organisey-type jars? Heaven! Yes I know, I'm selfish. But you have to make the most of time to yourself as a mum when the opportunity arises plus, as he's away Monday to Friday next week I feel a lot less guilty for enjoying it than I might otherwise have done. 


Here are a couple of BEFORE photos. Apologies for the quality of the photos. It was very sunny and the light was in COMPLETELY the wrong part of the room for the photos. HOW inconsiderate!

Anyway, so I started pulling things out of the larder to see what was there. I got everything out and loaded the nice clean/clear work surfaces with STUFF! 


Then, I had to go out to drive to Binsted to see if I could find out who owned a particular plot of land (long story) and on the way back ACCIDENTALLY went to TKMaxx and splurged on some more kilner jars (two big big ones for cereal, a set of large ones and a set of smaller ones). I also got a lovely small clipboard and notepad:

And some very pretty boxes:

But anyway, I digress..... Here is how my "larder" looked AFTER I put as many things as I could into jars:

I love how the big cereal jars look. One for bran flakes and one for weetobix. But that will probably change depending on what we use most. I may even get some more. Would be handy to have some of those big ones for pasta shapes and maybe oats as well - for porridge. 


I also love how the pulses and nuts and things look in jars.


And its amazing how much more space we got. Another benefit is that its a lot cleaner because the flour bags are gone. Because of the design of the metal cupboards the paper bags would catch on the metal bits as you got them out which would mean the bags would end up with holes in which would mean spilled flour/sugar etc. No such problem with jars. 


I did have to leave a few things in their packaging unfortunately, but I may well be unpackaging them in the future!


Oops. Baby waking up so have to leave it at that for one night. 

Medicine box for the kids

I remembered to take a BEFORE photo for this one. Yay!


As you can see, all a bit shoved together. Its good that I can see what's in there but I don't like that I had to take everything out in order to get to anything that was at the bottom:

First, I emptied everything out of the bag, threw away anything that we didn't use anymore, relocated anything that wasn't really for the children or didn't belong here. Then I worked out, by looking at what I had, what kind and size of container(s) I needed. I found this box, and the small ones inside. I did this about a month ago and its STILL tidy. So it just goes to show that it works (even though it does take up a little more space than before):

Maybe my next thing should be to decorate the box - maybe with some red and white paper.....

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