Shame, shame

Shame on me!  I have been neglecting my blog this week.  I am so sorry about that.  There has been a lot going on over here in the McKinley household.  The most exciting thing is that my Thirty-One kit came!!!  Yay!  Jump for joy.  (Can you tell I am a little excited?)   The products are even better than I had hoped and I CAN NOT WAIT to have my first party!!

I have a confession to make...I have been completely neglecting my organizing. =(  Kevin even brought it up last night....in the most respectful and sweet way.  He just mentioned how proud I had been of all my organizing accomplishments and wondered why I had kind of fell off the bandwagon.  In all honesty, I don't know.  We have had some stressful stuff going on and I think I kind of lost my focus.  But he is right....I was very proud of how our house was coming along and how organized it all was.

So...I vow to you all now....I am back on track!  The organizing blogger is going to get back at it!  I am not sure exactly what I am going to tackle or what my plan is....but I will be sure to let you know!

Have any of you gotten off to a good start only to lose momentum?  What did you do to get back on track?

Day #17 ~ Getting Organized Challenge (The mail station)

Today's challenge is the mail station.  Right after Christmas, we purchased a wall organizer for this purpose.  I will admit right now that I haven't really been using it properly.  So today I spent some time thinking about how best to use the slots.  Then I whipped up some labels in Excel, matted them on scrapbook paper, and laminated them.

Here is the before....pretty bland and boring:

 And here it is after slapping on the labels.  Looks so much better doesn't it?!

 I made Katelin a box and not the other kids because she is the only that goes to school (preschool that is).  We will have to figure it out later when the other 2 are in school too.

 I really like the ideas that Toni over at a Bowl Full of Lemons uses with the portable file...but we just don't have much counter space.  As my kids get older and I need to a box for each of them, we may have to switch to that.  But for now...I think this will work.

What do you guys all do for your mail?  Have you found a way to fight the paper piles?  I will update you all in a few weeks to let you know if this is working for us or not.

Day #16 ~ Getting Organized Challenge (Cleaning out & Organizing the Fridge)

I actually did this last week on the clean the freezer out day.  I figured as long as my hands were all ready freezing, and I was already elbow deep in Yuck, I might as well just do the fridge too.  And let me tell you....it was NASTY!!!  I had been meaning to do it for a while now, but was avoiding it.

Here are the befores (please don't judge, I know it is gross):

 Now...how nasty is this?!  We must have had a leaky milk carton at some point.  bleh (and a foam heart...how in the world did that get there?)

 All cleaned out....so sparkly clean.  It looks brand new!

 Then I tackled the door shelves....and they came out great as well!

 Threw out A LOT of stuff!  It looked so empty afterward....time to go grocery shopping!

I feel so much better having this done.  And it makes me smile every time I open the fridge and see how clean it is.  I feel lighter just knowing that this is done and I don't have to be embarrassed every time someone opens my fridge!

No bathroom cabinets here, so lets organize my life!

Well....unfortunately we don't have a bathroom cabinet in the house.  We only have 1 bathroom (yes, for all 5 of us...but adding another is on my wish list) and the sink in there is a pedestal sink.  I have rearranged and reorganized the bathroom in the past few weeks (and I LOVE it).  But I still can't participate in today's challenge at A Bowl full of Lemons. 

Instead....I thought I might share some of my other newly founded and created organizing tools.  The first thing I have come up with is a meal plan.

I never would have guessed that I would use one....but let me tell you.  I have been using it for 2 weeks now and it is AWESOME!!!  It is so nice to be able to know what I am making for breakfast, lunch, and dinner everyday!  It takes maybe 5 mins to put together and then I know exactly what I need to buy at the grocery store (which saves money too!) and I know if I need to pull meat out of the freezer the night before.  And it takes so much stress out of my day.  Just having a plan is such a relief when it's been one of those crazy days (which it is A LOT!). 
    So, to make this handy dandy little meal chart...I just designed a spreadsheet in Microsoft Excel (with inspiration from IHeart Organizing).  Then I matted it on some scrapbook paper and of course laminated it to make it durable and dry erasable (if thats a word).   Easy Peasy and cute too!

My next new organizing tool is a new calandar on the fridge.  I am going to make my best effort to write everything we have going on here.  So that we can all reference it at anytime.  So far, so good....but I only just bought it on Saturday.  =)

My last tool was that early last week I created a family schedule.  I used Microsoft Excel again, and mapped out our entire day.  I color coded each member of the family and scheduled out what each of us was doing at each hour of the day.  I know this sounds crazy and OCD (and I would have thought the same a month ago) but it really did help to see what we were spending our time on.  It was also useful to schedule out some specific family time.

I have to say that I am completely in love with my newly organized life.  I am also loving my freshly organized house.  I truly feel so much happier and calm! 

Day #11 ~ Getting Organized Challenge (The FREEZER)

When I first read what today challenge was, my first reaction was ugh!  But it really wasn't too bad.  We didn't have too much in there to begin with.  I did end up throwing some stuff out, but it wasn't as bad as I had expected.  (I love when that happens!)

So here is the before picture:

 Here it is all emptied out and cleaned.

 And then the after.  Not too drastic but it is better.

Now....since I was in there (and the baby was sleeping) I decided to go ahead and do the refrigerator too.  Now that was G-R-O-S-S!!!  But I am going to save the pics in case that is coming up in the challenge.  (If it doesn't, I promise I will share them anyway...even though it's pretty embarrassing!  So...stay tuned!

My Other projects

Since I hadn't started my blog yet when  A Bowl Full of Lemons started her 21 day challenge, I thought I would kind of catch up today plus the extra projects I did.  I don't have before pics for most of these but I do have the afters.  So lets get started...

This is my normally horribly cluttered and chaotic counter top.  We don't have a lot of counter space so this was a problem.  Since this pic I switched out that pencil cup for 3 mason jars that separate out pens, pencils, markers, and scissors and put them on a cute white rectangle ceramic plate.   Much better!

 This is the pantry all nicely organized.  Before I did this...I could never find anything and it never seemed like I had enough room.  I have extra space now!

 Under the kitchen sink.  I am loving this containerize concept!  It truly makes such a difference!

 My desk.....it is VERY small.  I hope to someday have a "real" desk but this works for now.  Not really a lot of room for clutter.

 The bathroom linen pantry.   We are fortunate to have a big closet in here but I have had a hard time getting it organized and utilizing it in the best way.  I am def getting there.  I still have to work on the very back part (which also has a small door that leads to our attic).  But the shelves are looking MUCH better!

 And, finally, this is the kitchen sink area.  My husband has always complained about this part of the kitchen.  I had med bottles, vitamins for the kids, and soap all up on the windowsill.  Plus hand soap and misc other stuff all behind the faucet.  So today I cleaned it all off and put things where they should go.  I added that little plate to the left to hold the hand soap, dish soap, and sink stoppers.  Then the rectangle plate on the left for our sugar and spoon for coffee.  It looks so much nicer and organized!

What do you all think?  Looks pretty good right?  I also did my junk drawer but I am still very unhappy with how it looks.  I will have to work on it again at some point.  As I do more areas I will keep you all updated!  Thanks for looking.  And if any of you have any good ideas or tips on how I can make something better...please let me know.  Thanks.

Day #10 ~ Getting Organized Challenge (Laundry Room/closet)

So today is the laundry room challenge.  Our laundry room is also the entry way from the garage so I hate that it gets so messy as it is the first thing people see.  Also...since it has to serve 2 functions, I can't exactly just clear it all out.  

Here are my befores:

And here are my afters...much better!   I containerized the cupboard

 Cleared off the shelf....I will be painting all this wood paneling white this summer (I hope)

 All cleared off and wiped down.

It feels really good to have this all cleaned up.  I am so loving all these challenges from A Bowl full of Lemons!!  Thanks Toni!

Day #9 Challenge (Toy Organization)

Okay....Day #9 - Toy organization.  Thank goodness I pretty much all ready did this!  Unfortunately I don't really have any before pictures....but if you just use your imagination to visualize a HUGE disaster of toys on the floor....that would be pretty close to how it looked.

We started working on this about 2 month ago....since Christmas was right around the corner and we have 3 kids which = alot of STUFF coming in.  So we decided to drastically tone down how many toys we have.  We are fortunate to have a room that is specifically designated as the "toy room".  But it was still just so overwhelming.  And I was witnessing my kids feeling overwhelmed.  My 2 year old would go down....dump everything, and then walk away and not play with a thing!

The hardest part of the process was ME letting go of the toys!  I guess I feel attached to some of them, and then I feel guilty getting rid of things the kids got as gifts.  I know its silly (as hubby told me SEVERAL times) but I had a hard time.

 Yes...the dog (Bella) thinks that any pillow or blanket on the floor must have been left there specifically for her since she is a princess of course!

The second part of the process was I had the Hubsters build us some up high, out of reach shelves to store craft suppies, puzzles, games, and anything that I wanted to make sure was supervised.  They made a huge difference.

I also felt like the room needed some fun decor to liven it up a bit.  But we didn't really have the money to spend on expensive artwork. Then I had light bulb go off....I have my own little artists right here at home that give me their masterpieces for FREE!  Perfect.  I am sure we could have hung them in a more decorative way...but this works and it was uber cheap!

Now....I still have more plans for this space.  I really want to paint that awful wood paneling white, but that is going to be a summer project since I will definitely need ventilation.  And I would still like some of those cubby shelves for down there.  But for now...it is working out nicely.

I have found that the kids play down there so much more with less stuff.  And they are finding it easier to pick up now that different types of toys have their own containers (with awesome labels, of course).

Day #8 ~ Getting Organized Challenge (The Coat Closet)

So....I have been trying to keep up with the Getting Organized Challenge over at A Bowl Full of Lemons  (I will post the past day's challenges soon).  Today is the Coat Closet.  This is something I have been meaning to do anyway...so what a perfect time to get to it!

Here are my before pictures:

 Here it is pretty much all cleaned out:

 And all done and decluttered!   Can you believe the space?!

 I have a 6 month old...so I have to have her seat handy...but look at the floor space!

 

What a great way to get all these little jobs done!  So motivating!  And I am feeling so much better about my house!  Thanks to A Bowl full of Lemons!