Project:Simplify - Master Closet Results

Ahh... but you will say "Girl, you do not have many clothes!"

And I will say: "That is because some are on the bed..."

"And on the floor in the other room..."

"And on these here shelves"

"And mostly because this is only my clothes, and Awesome has his own closet in the Man Cave."

"Right" You will say. "That is a mess. You had better get to work."

And I will agree and get cracking on the challenge set up here:

  

And it will be a couple of hours, because I become distracted with finding my colours and generally interrupting myself with other jobs like making my own washing powder... 

BUT THEN, I will finish. One double wardrobe and 5 drawers later.... here are some of the highlights:

The neatness of shoes and threw out 3.5 pairs of shoes (yes, 3.5)

Turns out I only have one belt out of 10 that will ever come close to going around me again... 

Every earring has a pair, every necklace is knot-less and clean, every section of the jewellery hangers are colour and style coded... the clothes are organised by type and length... oh yes, a day at home can be well spent! 

Challenges Update!

After a very busy week visiting family and celebrating the life of my dear Grandfather who went to glory last week, I am back into the swing of things. 

I am working on Courtney's challenge to create a harmonious home.  This week, the focus is on music. I thought I'd break our usual habit of sitting on the lounge and eating over the coffee table (yes, I know), and set the 'big' table, complete with my week 1 challenge candle. I popped on my ipod for some quiet background music.


We said grace.

We started to eat.


There was a sense of peace in the house


and then...


"Hun, do you mind if I put the news on?"


I stopped myself from laughing out loud!  Oh well, I tried!  Maybe tomorrow!


Do you ever plan something to benefit your spouse or family and then realise it might not be something that they value? 

I had a little more luck with my declutter challenges this week.  I started with my bookshelf. Here is the 'before':

Yes, there are books stacked on the floor. And everywhere else!  I pulled out everything and wiped it down, one shelf at a time. I have a large number of children's books that I use for work that have been in the wrong spot for years. I wanted them lower so the books I use all the time (my Christian books, exercise books and reference books) were at a more logical height. Doing one shelf at a time (that is, taking out what didn't belong and stacking in what I wanted there before moving on) made it a much easier process than pulling everything off and getting overwhelmed!


I was surprised how many bible study books and devotionals I had multiple copies of. Here are a few other surprises I found: 

• A folder (that I thought was long gone) containing every bank statement I had ever received for an account from kindergarten to the end of university!!
• Three years worth of sermon notes from university bible lectures. I thought I would look at them again some day, but I realised that without the sermon context most of my notes don't make any sense! They also had pictures of birds and elephants and stars drawn all over them... to help me concentrate I guess... The whole folder went in the bin!
• 4 years worth of subscriptions to a Christian apologetics and theology magazine. While this might 'one day' be useful to me, it will 'right now' be more useful to people who borrow them from our church library. 
• 20 or so Bible study leader books (copies!) which would be far more useful to our churches current youth and children's ministry than to my book shelf... 
• 4 bibles that don't belong to us!  Going back to their rightful owners!

I also found 6 items that would be useful for other people I know so they have been bagged up to be passed on as gifts too. 

So.... 50 mins later (yes, I was astonished how quick it really was!)

Oh how I love challenges that make me focus on getting things done! 
The second week of the challenge (I'm a bit behind) is to look at the master bedroom. I have only recently reorganised the bedroom, however this week is our churches annual spring clothing collection for Anglicare. So I took the opportunity to go through my cupboards, and despite having only recently sorted my clothes I still found some items I no longer need. Mr. Awesome has agreed to go through his clothes later this week. I will report on his progress! 


It is wonderful not to be so tied to our things that we hoard them. Giving things away to be used by someone else (rather than just sitting around!) is a great feeling! 


What 'one day' things could be more useful to someone you know right now?

Declutter, Beautify and Create Challenge!

Yep, I'm all up for challenges at the moment!


So here is yet another that I have joined!  


I am committing to the 10 week challenge to declutter, beautify and create in various spaces around our home. As the end of the year is approaching, and it is spring here in Australia, its time to clean the cupboards out!


I will be sure to take some before and after pictures for you. Want to join me on this challenge? Please do! You can link up on the Sunflower Schoolhouse page!


Here is this week's challenge:

Week 1
Front Hall Closet and Extra Closets

• go through your front hall closet and any hall closets.
• get rid of as much clutter as possible
• organize what’s left
• make your closets look more beautiful
• is there anything stashed in there that could be used to make a Christmas gift for someone? (pull it out and put it aside)
• share your ideas for frugal decorating and organizing
• tell us what you are getting rid of
• write a blog post and come back and link it up next week
• include before and after pictures of your hall closets if you can

My Personal Goals For Week 1

• Our hallway cupboard doubles as our pantry. So this week I will post pictures of how I have created 'sugarless' spaces for the food I can eat, and 'sugary' spaces for Mr. Awesome!
• As my pantry is 'up to date', I am also going to focus on my bookshelf (one of 4 bookshelves in our house!), and apply the same principles here!. 

20 Minute Laundry Makeover

You might remember that I have mentioned before that Mr. Awesome does the majority of the washing and ironing around here.  That's what works for us right now, so that's how we roll...!

Lately though the laundry has been a bit neglected in my housecleaning schedule.

Pretty much it constantly looks like this:

And we pretty much can't take it anymore! So this afternoon when out shopping I purchased a $5.99 plastic bucket so I could make a cleaning bucket like this.

And then it was on! I reorganised shelves to put the things we use everyday on the most logical shelves and put the less used items on a different shelf.  Then I cleaned everything off, went through all the old clothes I was saving for rags, and cut them into usable pieces. Then - get this - I threw the rest out!! They were the wrong kind of fabric for rags or had massive holes etc that made them difficult to use. I moved all the beach towels to another part of the house where they could be with the swimmers (and be friends yeah?!).

Tidying up made things easier to store - and to get to.  So here is the final result!

For the first time in weeks we actually caught up on the washing too!  Twenty minutes and using only one new bucket and we have a room that almost feels new!

Getting Organised

Being right-brained, I dread the thought of traditional to-do lists. Staring at a page of things I know I should be doing seems overwhelming. I struggle to think of where to start, do all the unimportant tasks first and then break big tasks into a million little uncompletable pieces. Its maddening to have almost the same amount of work to do each day without really achieving anything.

I was thinking of doing some research into online to-do lists and free services for organising your life and I tripped across this. No need to reinvent the wheel!

I started out by regisitering to use Remember the Milk. Apart from spending the first couple of minutes using code and reading the help menu, it is off to a successful start and I have already begun on my first task of the day - getting through the enormous pile of washing I have to do!

Last night, while I flaked out on the lounge (still haven't really caught up on sleep yet), my husband went on a little cleaning journey and packed away my craft things, flung all over his computer room as I searched for something in the bottom of the cupboard. I really need to improve the organisation in that area of the house! His effort made me realise just how little I have done this week at home. Work has definitely demanded the best of me, and I'm not happy with that.

So, on to my list goes organisation! You can set priority for tasks, and expected duration (I have 4 hours of tasks listed already - although this includes meeting a friend for coffee). We shall see how just how much time I spend writing tasks into the list compared to actually completing the tasks!

Over the next few days I'll be exploring some other anti to-do list options for improving my motivation and staying on task.

How do you manage your daily tasks? Are you a traditional list person or a little more creative?

My Closet Success!

Well I finally took on my closet and hopefully I won!

This job has been bugging me for weeks now, as I feel like I can barely move in our "junk room" as it is. Opening the cupboard to see chaos was just making things worse.

The major problem was too many clothes that I just don't wear any more and no real system for keeping things organised.

Here is my five step plan for organising my cupboard.

1. Take out each pile of clothes, sort them but style (I chose to go with style rather than colour - I'm not quite that organised!) at the same time culling items that are damaged, stained, just don't fit (there were a lot of those), and really aren't my colour.
2. When all shelves are empty, survey the piles that are left and pick shelves based on regular use. As an ex-pilates instructor and dance teacher I had piles of exercise wear that I no longer use or use regularly which were stored at a height where I could easily reach them, and pants that I wear everyday to work were up high and out of reach.
3. Refold everything as you go - you'll be glad you did as it looks soooo much better when you are finished.
4. Sort hanging items - I chose style again over length or colour - whatever works for you.
5. I turned an old show rack into a bag and hat storage area, and recently created a ribbon hold-all on the back of a door to store all my hair ribbons. (yes I wear hair ribbons - my husband remembers important dates we had by what colour hair ribbon I had in...).

Ready for a look-see?

My closet part 1 beforeMy closet part 1 after
My closet part 2 before


My closet part 2 after

My hat and bag rack

My ribbon hold-all