September 2012

I want to preface this by saying this is NOT a post about dieting. I hate dieting. It is stinky.

This IS, on the other hand, a post about organizing! (something that I love) I, for some reason, did not catch my usual spring cleaning bug this year. I have also never lived in a place with so much space, and since I am used to living in a shoebox, a little extra clutter here and there in our little two bedroom house hasn’t bothered me.

Until now.

It’s driving me crazy. SO, I came up with what I’m calling “The Great 8-Day Purge”. I didn’t want to spend an entire weekend cleaning out and reorganizing considering how wonderful the weather is right now and how quickly the rain will be setting in. Therefore, I decided that I’d take it on in a room-a-day type fashion. Here’s what I came up with:

Day 1: Hall closet and Bathroom
Day 2: Living Room and Dining Room
Day 3: Our Bedroom
Day 4: Guest Bedroom
Day 5: Upstairs/Office (Our upstairs is one large room that acts as our Office/Catch-all room)
Day 6: Kitchen
Day 7: Outdoor Shed
Day 8: Basement

I started last night and I’m thrilled with my progress so far. I didn’t think about doing a blog post until AFTER I had created the world’s biggest mess in the middle of our hall floor, so I don’t have any ‘Before’ photos, however, I do have ‘After’ photos!

Bathroom ‘After’ pictures. This is the only storage space we have in the bathroom. Amazing, isn’t it? I organized all of our medication and labeled all of the baggies and reorganized our behind-the-mirror cabinet.

I think I saw this on Pinterest (highly likely), but I loved the idea of magnet strips to hold on to pesky bobby pins! I’m always losing those suckers. I am also going to put another strip up and use the round magnets to stick our daily vitamin holders up on the back of the door as well to help us to remember to take them! The mirror now has a note on it that says, “Take Yer Vitaminz”. I figure that should help. 🙂

Make your own magnets for $8.00!

Next up was our hall closet. As you can see, we don’t have a lot of storage in our bathroom (or in our house for that matter) so we utilize this closet VERY heavily. I wish I had taken ‘Before’ photos. It was bad. But, we’ll look to the bright side in that now it is beautifully organized!!

**Note to self and others, Will Bryant is no longer allowed to buy vitamins. We had a ridiculous number of vitamin bottles that he has purchased and after 3 days stopped taking. Sorry, babe, but you’re a vitamin hoarder.

One word. Disaster

After taking everything out of the closet, this is what I had. I learned a few things: what I have already mentioned–William is no longer allowed to buy vitamins, I, in turn, am no longer allowed to buy fingernail polish, I own three sets of hot rollers though only one set works, for people who live in Portland, OR we own a lot of sunscreen, we apparently own a Scrabble game, we could solve America’s debt problems by selling all of the meds we had left over from all of William’s mouth surgeries (don’t worry, I threw them away–no illegal drug selling here), and I have 87 books of matches.

So this is what I’m doing in every room. Taking it all out, sorting through it, purging what needs to be trashed, recycled, or donated, and REORGANIZING! And after 2 hours….WA-LA!

Newly organized Hall Closet! YES!

Repurposed a left over silverware organizer for my nail care. Another note to self, Sally is no longer allowed to purchase nail polish.

I repurposed a lot of random storage containers I already had–like the lever over silverware organizer that is now holding my 3 million bottles of nail polish, and the old over-the-door spice rack holders are now zip-tied to the side of our storage structure for more space! I was really proud of that one…you can see them in the picture above–they’re now holding our bottles of sunscreen that is rarely needed in Oregon. 🙂

All in all, I spent $8.00 on magnet strips! Great start if you ask me! And I have to thank Loretta for her help chasing loose vitamins all over the floor, pill bottles under the couch, and general positive attitude.