21 Days - An Update

Sorry for the silence, but last week ended up getting BUSY. I had a very long Tuesday with a meeting I forgot about after work until 8:30 and missed my free Thursday morning when my colleague was sick and I was asked to come in early to see some of his patients. This week has continued to be busy as the baby bear didn't start daycare because her pediatrician rescheduled her appointment I wanted to give her time to build immunity after her shots.

 

Even with all that I've made it up to Day 12 and have only missed one day and rescheduled one day! I planned my kitchen pantry for last Thursday morning (no husband, no bug, perfect time to get some real cleaning done), but went to work instead. My pantry is a HUGE project (see below) so I doubled up on Sunday and cleaned the kitchen storage shelves to free up this Thursday.

Here's my progress...

Day 3 - Entry/Coats

BEFORE: Too many coats, a guitar, too many shoes, and general clutter!

AFTER: Coats not in use moved to basement, shoes moved to bedroom, craft supplies moved to where they belong, peds textbooks brought to my office, and I finally parted with my emergency code cards and ID holder from residency:-(

Day 4 - Bookcase

Before: Too many books and general disarray

AFTER: I cleaned up by separating books into catergories: 1. Books we read all the time, 2. Books we never read, 3. Books we read sometimes, and 4. Books we have doubles of. Catergory 1 stayed on the shelf and got organized. Caterory 2 got donated to my office waiting room. Catergory 3 got moved to the small toy organizer in the playroom. Catergory 4 got moved to a storage bookshelf downstairs in the basement

Day 5 - Pantry

Do you SEE this monstrosity?!...POSTPONED until 1/17

Day 6 - Toy Box

BEFORE: You can't even tell how much junk is in this toy box because it is just full to the top!

AFTER: Oh so organized! Junk paper discarded, playdoh returned to the playroom, markers/crayons/stickers all organized into plastic bags/bins to make for easy crafting, and books organized so we can see all the titles easily

Day 7 - Kitchen Cabinets
I have a lot of cabinets, so I tried to just snap photos of the biggest changes...

BEFORE: Literally eight dozen cookie cutters, hundreds of cupcake liners, over a dozen bottles of sprinkles, entertaining dishes, and other assorted baking and candy making supplies

AFTER: Cookie cutters moved to a bin in the basement. Cupcake liners and candy bags on the left, sprinkles (yes, those are ALL sprinkles) on the right

AFTER: Sprinkles moved and everything else straightened up

BEFORE:  Too many dishes and gadgets we don't use.

AFTER: Items not in use put in storage, everything else re-organized

Day 8 - Dressers and Kitchen Storage

No photos of the dressers, but I went through the girls' drawers to weed out too small clothes. Here's the kitchen organizer...

BEFORE: TONS of craft supplies and papers littered all over the top of the shelves and in some of the lower cubbies

 

AFTER: Craft supplies condensed with ultimate goal to move them into the craft bins in the basement on "craft supply" organization day. Other shelves cleaned up with organized

 

Day 9 & 10  - Make-up Bag and Jewelry Box

Small, quick clean-up projects not worth photographing:-)

 

Day 11 - Bedroom Closets

This is the day I missed and will add it to my Sunday organization as my fridge and freezer are pretty easy as I obsessively organize them once a week already.

 

Day 12 - Kitchen Pantry

This is one area that I tend to "let go" on a week to week basis and end up needing to really clean up every few months. In addition to all the cluttered shelves you can see, on both sides of the closet are deep narrow wooden shelves that accumulate SO MUCH junk!

BEFORE: Too many boxes with just a little bit of food left in them, bags and a spilled bag of stellatine pasta all over the floor, and a disgusting amount of candy given to the bug hidden in one of the deep shelves on the upper right

 



AFTER: I went through all the boxes of crackers/cookies/etc and anything with less than 5 portions got divded into snack size ziploc baggies and the boxes recycled. I threw away an insane amount of candy we have built up since October (the last time I purged the sugar supply) - if we let bug eat all the candy she was given she would be a poster child for childhood obesity. I moved everything out and reorganized a bunch of the baking/candy supplies that were scattered about and swept up the spilled pasta and M&Ms.

 

And that's it! Tonight will be the linen closet which is teeny and not very exciting, so don't expect photos. I'll check back in with more photos, tips, and progress in a few days.

 



21 Days of Organization

During a previous post I mentioned having found a "21 Day" plan to help organize and clear out clutter from our home. As I am a working mom with a funky schedule (Mondays off with both kids, two full days of work, one half day with both kids, and one half day with one kid), I needed to modify the plans I found on other sites to fit what is possible for me and what our house really needs. Above you'll find the schedule I devised with the days of the week included. Feel free to copy and modify to suit your needs!

Day 1 - 21 Day Challenge - Medicine Cabinet

We don't have a medicine cabinet as much as a shallow floor to ceiling set of shelving built into the wall of our teeny, tiny bathroom. The top half of the shelves are open to view and the bottom half is concealed behind doors. This was a huge task to clean up and made me feel very motivated to keep up the challenge once I was done.

Upper shelving BEFORE photo
(Note bottles and bottles of baby lotion  which were given to me when my first daughter was born nearly 4 years ago that I never used because I don't believe in dyed/perfumed lotions for baby. Also, bin to the upper right full of gross bath toys that were finally ripe to be purged)

Upper Shelving AFTER
(Biggest improvement here was separating my husband's daily stuff from mine to avoid them all mashing together and us both fumbling through each other's stuff. Also, I moved all the medicines and our contact lenses up out of reach of our ever growing big girl to avoid ingestion or pouring of the contacts down the drain...again)

Lower Shelving BEFORE
(More than half of the medication on the top shelf turned out to be expired when I went through it)

Lower Shelving AFTER
(I threw away many unused bottles of lotion and rearranged to put kid friendly items low and dangerous ones high)

Day 2 - 21 Day Challenge - Purse

Take my word for it, I cleaned my purse. Photo proof doesn't seem necessary in this case:-)

A Whole New Year

Happy New Year!

I will be adding a post to complete our Elf on the Shelf 12 days to Christmas countdown, but I wanted to give a few thoughts on entering the new year first. Overall, I have to say that 2012 really turned out to be a good year. The biggest downs we experienced were some scary brushes with cancer for family members. Although my mother-in-law's scary diagnosis came in the late winter, that was quickly turned around when she was able to have a curative surgery, avoid any further therapies, and has been followed up with a clean bill of health at each doctor visit. Less fortunate was my half brother's wife who was diagnosed with cancer over the summer and is still undergoing her treatments - I am hopeful that 2013 will bring her recovery. Despite those downs, 2012 brought a year of remission for my husband's cousin in her battle with cancer and marriage to her long term boyfriend, new family ties with my half brother and his family that we have been estranged from for years, success in our careers for both my husband and I, new babies to ourselves and many other family and friends, and a beautiful wedding (and pre-wedding celebrations) for my little sister.

I'm hoping to get 2013 going on the right foot by declaring January a month of organization and routine for our family! Using my obsession with Pinterest, I've dug up or created the following plans for us:

• I'm determined that "30 is my year" and am going to get myself healthy and in the best shape possible before my 31st birthday! I joined Weight Watchers after having my baby bear (and am already below pre-pregnancy weight!) and have a Pinterest board dedicated to saving my WW friendly recipes
• I'm keeping meals organized by using a Pinterest board titled "This Week" to reference all the recipes I plan to make and to make shopping lists and shopping trips much easier to organize 
• In addition to trying to make it to the gym 3 times a week, I am starting the 30 day Ab Challenge
• Finally, I am going to try and get our house ready to be put on the market by following the 21 Day Organization Challenge

I'll try to stay up to date with how things are going in case anyone else wants to play along:-)