Come to Order Monday: Quick Project and Goals Check-In

These are our 2015 goals (most of them have been articulated on this blog and are the reason for a particular series like "Come to Order Monday" or "What's Next Wednesday"). After two months, I am re-evaluating. I am patting myself on the back a wee bit (hooray for dramatic decrease in sugar, white flour, and soda consumption). I also recognize areas where I have veered off course both in real life and with my blog topics (did I ever do a post on savings? no, well that is because I didn't save anything yet).

Rather than getting super disappointed with my lack of progress (and subsequently just throwing in the towel), I am going to break my work into really small tasks. When enough of these are accomplished, I will be much closer to the overall goals. A perfect example of this is today's "Come to Order Monday," which focuses on just one problem drawer in my kitchen.

I would like to re-organize every nook and cranny in my kitchen and label everything using my silhouette machine. This would take loads of new storage bins, fridge coasters, and several days. Because I haven't had time to delve into that yet, I have avoided it altogether (except for one little paper goods drawer that was addressed as a tangent when I cleaned my laundry room here) . Truth be told, most of my kitchen is actually fairly well organized. I have loads of storage space, and it is pretty easy to keep everything grouped with like-items and neatly stowed away. The exception to this is the drawers that the kids can access--like the paper goods drawer above, which I am proud to say is still neat as a pin. Accordingly, I decided to just do one drawer today rather than tidying up areas that don't really need it.

This drawer holds seldom-used equipment (aprons, piping bags, push-pops, creme brule' cups, etc). We also have a lot of kids baking "stuff" that we have been gifted over the years in that drawer. My general thought is that the kids can use my equipment and learn to cook using the real things, but they prize these items. You can see that they do use them--so much so that the drawer has started to look like this:


I emptied it out and put 20 minutes on the oven clock. I have learned that allotting myself only small amounts of time on small projects helps to keep me on task.

At the conclusion of the 20 minutes, I had this:


There are no lovely bins, and I didn't whip out the vinyl. The drawer,however, functions again and I am inching towards my goal!

Come to Order Monday: The Mudroom Cubbies

I have been working my way from the back of my house towards the front; I've already organized our laundry and mudroom bath. Today, I attacked the mudroom itself. Strangely, guests often tell me they are envious of my mudroom and the cubbies therein. It is ironic, because I used to think that simply having cubbies would make us organized. Truth be told, however, they are actually a big source of clutter. This is an area that requires a lot of weekly cleaning in addition to a big switch-over each season for changing clothing and activity needs.

Here is how they looked Monday Morning:

There are four of us; the last cubby is meant to be kept completely empty for guests. At this moment it was housing a bunch of random crap. Though I have been using cloth bags since the late 90's, I often forget then and come home with bags that later need to be recycled. My collection of plastic bags often fills the guest cubby along with items that need to go to Goodwill and goodness knows what else! Here, the other cubbies were overflowing with various coats and accoutrements. We keep vacillating between jacket and parka weather every other day, so we have left everything out. The kids also use their cubbies as "storage" for trinkets they bring home from birthday parties and school (though I have repeatedly asked them not to). You'll notice I also had some kid art on the exterior of the cubbies. My girls' sweet "days of creation" charts were there, but I moved them to another area of our home that is designated as a gallery for their work. Next I took everything out of the cubbies, organized the items on the top shelf into baskets, removed superfluous items, and wound up with this:

That will work for a few weeks, when I will have to do it again!

Come to Order Monday: Postponed!

The weather here has been gorgeous; we are experiencing a heat wave for mid-January with temps in the 50's. It could not have come at a better time for my kids' four-day weekend. We have had far too much fun and squeezed an impossible amount of activities into the last four days--we enjoyed seeing Paddington, an adult tennis double-date, a triple play-date day (three separate ones--morning noon and night), two dinners out as a family, a children's theater production, indoor swimming, and a science fair meeting. Today was devoted to a morning of service in honor of Dr. King. All of this did not serve my Monday goal of organizing something each Monday. In fact, it was quite the opposite and the house sort of looks like a pit. I will spend all week cleaning it up, and be back next week with a house that has hopefully come to order!

Come to Order Monday: The Mudroom Bathroom

The original plans for our house didn't include a kids' half bath on the main floor. Acting on some some good advice from friends, we asked the architect if he could add a half-bath for our kids to use in lieu of going into our very lovely guest powder room. Since our mudroom and laundry room form a "L," the solution was to place a small (emphasis on small) bathroom in the crook of the L. It is so small, in fact, that I had to search for a special sink for the space, and it required a pocket door. I immediately loved the idea. Our mudroom and laundry have a durable slate floor that is easy to clean. The floor change is supposed to symbolically mark a transition to a private, family area from the more public spaces. Private + easy to clean = the right spot for a wee bathroom just for our family to use. Though she be but little, she is fierce.

That little bathroom is by far the most used in our house. Since I spend so much time in the laundry room and nearby kitchen, it is my spot. This will probably change over time, but for now it is also where my kids do their hair and brush their teeth just before school, Ironically, it is also where a lot of guests go (making me regret the expensive Florida tile in the seldom-used-and-beautifully-decorated-powder-room). There is just one problem with the little room; the special small sink is too little for a cabinet (it barely holds a bar of soap). A few years back we addressed the issue by adding a basket to corral a few items, but our basket overfloweth :


Wishing to better use the space, I decided to go vertical! Since I think my girls will eventually use their own bathroom to get ready, I did not want to invest in shelving. Thus, the idea to use a peg board was born (I had a piece lying around from a previous project). Even though the room is totally utilitarian, I wanted a somewhat finished look so I bought a close-out piece of art from homegoods. At $8, it was less than the cost of a picture frame:
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I ripped out the back.


I removed the glass and traced in on my pegboard to get the perfect measurements for the frame. Then I cut the pegboard with a plain old saw, all the while wishing I had a jigsaw. I popped the board in the frame and secured it with small nails. Then I hung it in the bathroom and let the girls go to town organizing their items. Here is the finished product. Its not pretty, but it is perfect temporary fix for the small but mighty bathroom.



Here is one more shot looking out of the room where you can see the reflection of this project and my newly reorganized laundry room:


The rest of my Monday will be spent working on summer schedules. Yikes! Here is wishing you accomplish all your goals this Monday morning!

Come to Order Monday: The Laundry Room

When we built our house I did not think too much about the laundry room. We came from an 80 year old house where the laundry was in the basement with no proper shelving at all. The architect's plan for a main floor laundry with two closets and a sink with an under-cabinet seemed like a huge luxury. The laundry room is just off our garage and mudroom. It was a big improvement from the old house, but after a few years I realized that I should have given a bit more thought to the room. I do practically live in there after all! I added wallpaper, upper cabinets,and even some decor. I love the look of the laundry room. It truly is set-up beautifully for the room's purposes, which are: 1) to clean and fold laundry, 2) store cleaning supplies, 3) house out of season or bulky items that would otherwise go into our mudroom (no need for snow suits to be in the cubbies year-round), and finally 4) store a few extra items if we buy something on sale.

Even though the systems in place do work, a year later, the room needed a wee tune-up. Here is how it looked Sunday morning:

The pictures actually look worse than the reality as the closets and cabinets are (of course) closed at all times. Anyhow this gives you a glimpse into how even a well-plan and organized space can slip into a bit of chaos after a year of hard-use. Since one of my resolutions goals is to organize the house, I figured this was a good space to start. I tried to consider the purposes of the space listed above, remove anything that was not serving those purposes, weed out unnecessary items (like boots that no longer fit my kids), and group like-items in meaningful ways.

It took a bit longer than I thought it would because I became sidetracked. I noticed that I had a stack of paper plates that made no sense being in the laundry room. This led me to the kitchen to put them away. This made me realize that my appointed paper goods drawer was a mess, which made me empty the whole thing out. While doing so, I saw these little plastic cups. That made me think I should dole out some almonds in little cups for snacks this week. When I finished that, I turned my attention back to the paper-goods drawer. Now it was lunchtime. So, I made lunch. Then I finished the drawer.....

Finally it was back to the laundry room, where I focused on weeding out superfluous items and logically grouping everything. I ended up with this:

If you are wondering what is in the baskets--they hold seasonal items that we may need (one is sunscreen and bugspray, another has extra hats and gloves, another has flip-flops and sunglasses). I rotate the baskets, bringing the current season's needs down for easy reach. They have worked perfectly and have not needed reorganization. Our cleaning products are about 80% organic and chemical free. I have been buying method, honest company, and some other green products for several years. I even tried making my own, which is why the Dr. Bronner's is there. We still have one bus tub of old stuff that we are using until its gone and for really dirty days :).

Next week I am going to tackle our cubbies and mudroom as I work towards touching up the whole house!