organize : ordinary mom

category: organize

Oct 21

2011

the path of least resistance

I will let you in on a little secret. I am NOT disciplined. I like being organized but hate any effort required on my part to put stuff away. Hence, I try to always find the path of least resistance to where I store things (all coffee items with mugs together in kitchen, etc).

For instance, here is a corner of our master bedroom:

corner of the master bedroom

This is the area that I sit ever other night and blow dry our daughter’s hair after her bath or shower. This was the routine we started a while back and works for us (she can watch tv from this location and therefore sits still the whole time). For a couple of months I either had to drag the hair dryer back and forth to the kids washroom OR it sat on the side table.

Until, I did this:

basket for hair dryer and brush

I put a basket on the shelf whose SOLE purpose it to hold her hair dryer and her brush. That way it gets put away the second after it gets used and I never have to look at it.

Figure out where you USE things and then the path of least resistance for putting it away. Who cares if you think it SHOULD be in “this room” or in “that location”. The only thing it should be is easy.

I’m linking up to:

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Posted by Janet under decorate, organize, our house
Tags: life, master bedroom, organizing

Oct 15

2011

under cover

I am enjoying this new “game” of trying to finish stuff up in the house without spending money. I have learned my ability to think outside the box, to be inventive and resourceful and to not assume the best answer is the one I have to go out and buy.

For example, since I moved my office to the basement, I also took my under desk cable organizer from Ikea with me. This one:

ikea signum cable organizer

And while it is a great solution and I love it for the basement, I didn’t like the loss of being able to hide my cables in the kitchen. I still use my desk area for my laptop and a lamp and now Little Man’s DS charger so I still needed a solution.

So I went shopping in my house. And I found these:

my supplies

This is a dollar store basket, a couple of extra spacers from our television wall mount (for the smaller sizes) and some screws.

And this is what I came up with.

my homemade cable organizer

I attached a power bar to the underside of my desk and right next to it I attached the basket using the spacers to keep it slightly lowered from the desktop for easy access. I cut some of the holes in the sides of the basket to make bigger spaces to wind the cords through.

So for $0, I was able to come up with a solution I like and NEVER have to look at. Here is what my desk looks like now:

organized desk

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Posted by Janet under create, organize, our house
Tags: create, DIY, dollar store, kitchen

Aug 11

2011

our house: dining room

My dining room has secrets.

from front door

china cabinet

The first one has to do with the drapes. These are super long drapes from Ikea but even so, they were not long enough for the room (tall windows & ceilings). So I left them unhemmed for months thinking I would have to figure out a way to add fabric to the bottom. The other day I decided to do something about it and looked at the two that happened to sit only an inch off the floor and the two that sit an inch too long. And decided that no one should be looking SO close at my hems that I couldn’t just serge the end of all the drapes to match the shortest one and then be done with it. And I did! (I even hemmed them while they were still hanging on the wall). Done!

serged hem

The second secret has to do with how I am using my china cabinet. I don’t have a whole lot of serving dishes and one of the things I like to do in my dining room is sew. So… I decided to take over 2 of the drawers and 2 of the bottom cabinets to house all my sewing stuff. Simple. Love it!

my sewing supplies

And there are also a couple secrets IN my display cabinet. I have a tea cup collection that I show off there (with space to grow!) and originally the back of the hutch had mirror panels. It felt very busy when you looked in there, so I simply cut black bristol board and used double sided tape to cover it up. The other secret is that in my house of rambunctious kids who love to run, I have used double sided foam tape to attach the tea cups to each other and rubber feet on the bottom so that I don’t hear that “clink clink” noise when they come barrelling through the dining room on their way to the kitchen.

my tea cups

And lastly, the last secret is the little area tucked to the side of my china cabinet. Here is where I hide my apron and my hand vaccuum. I don’t have space to store these things easily in the kitchen (open concept – lack of walls) but find here I can grab them just as easily without them being out in the open (it helps that my apron is pretty, thanks Mom!).

pretty apron

There you have it. My dining room has secrets.

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Posted by Janet under decorate, organize, our house
Tags: decor, diningroom, new house, organizing

Aug 07

2011

our house: boy’s bedroom

So in the midst of everything that is taking my focus these days, I have been able to finish some small projects I had on hold around the house. Especially in little man’s room.

boy's room

He recently picked out a more mature, big kid comforter and since I have been planning to lengthen his drapes, I added a stripe of fabric that matched this new look.

We also added more art to his gallery wall (he still needs art above his bureau).

his gallery wall

Sources:
1. collaborative art piece
2. junk a doodle art from Holli Conger
3. painting by his cousin
4. robot painting by me
5. comic strip art
6. painting by his other cousin
7. photograph taken by one aunt of a favourite baby toy given to him by another aunt

And we changed up the bins in his bookshelf to bring in more colour and create a library in his room. Both kids are loving having their books by their bed and I am enjoying the idea of moving a bulk of the toys/books out of the living room.

books and toys

I labelled the bins just 1 & 2 for interest. I always think about labelling them more specifically but honestly it is easier for the kids to clean up when things can just be put in bins. If I expect MORE than that, then the sorting would end up on MY to do list. And I have enough to do. :)

I have some ideas for art on his other wall and he has requested a chair for reading in the corner, so pictures of that to follow as well.

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Posted by Janet under create, decorate, organize, our house

Apr 10

2011

the art wall

I finished the creative wall space in the kitchen today with two magnet boards, one for each kid to showcase their art. I found two discount frames from Michaels and bought a piece of sheet metal from Home Depot which I was able to use an Xacto knife to cut down into two pieces the correct size. The great thing about the metal is that it was thin enough for me to keep the piece of glass behind it in case I ever want to use them as picture frames again. I also painted my wood “create” the same blue as I have been putting throughout the kitchen and house.

I am looking forward to the constant stream of artwork now.

the creative wall space

Now I just have to paint that vent to blend into the wall. Someday.

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Posted by Janet under decorate, organize
Tags: art, create, decor, DIY, kids, kitchen

Nov 20

2010

within arm’s reach

We have a GREAT pantry in our new kitchen. It is VERY deep and therefore in some aspects, hard to use. We did not pay the extra for the roll out shelves, because we knew there were other places we would rather have spent our money. Plus, we do not usually purchase more groceries than we will need for the next month or so, so we knew that the pantry would not be fully used. (But a GREAT selling feature someday, so worth adding!)

I love my pantry baskets. No more messy pantry shelves!

The first thing I did to make it more accessible and organized, is to use dollar store plastic baskets to contain the items that easily fall over (like noodle envelopes) or used at one time (like lunch supplies). I labelled the baskets to be easily read from standing in front of the pantry. I just love how neat and tidy this looks. And I can quickly see when I am out of one of our staples, as each item or category has it’s own place.

where we hold our cereal boxes

On the very top cabinet of our pantry, we house our snacks and cereal. The cereal made the most sense on the top shelf as is it the tallest item and still would be within reach above everything else. The issue I was having, was that the boxes would get shoved back by each other and eventually I would have to get a chair and climb up to retrieve the boxes within reach. This was frustrating to say the least.

this piece of wood stops the boxes from travelling back.

While working on a separate project around the house, I happened to have a piece of MDF trim that was unused and almost exactly the same width as the cabinet. Using double sided stick foam tape, I attached the trim across the shelf at the depth of the largest cereal box we have. Now, my boxes no longer travel veyond reach and the back of the cabinet is still accessible if I ever wanted to use it for long term storage. And no more chair climbing!

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Posted by Janet under organize
Tags: kitchen, new house

category: organize

the path of least resistance

under cover

our house: dining room

our house: boy’s bedroom

the art wall

within arm’s reach

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