organizing

Happy New Year

December 31, 2011

Today is the last day of 2011 and I can say this has been a great year for our family! If you would have told me last year on December 31st that we would be completing 3 room makeovers by the end of May, deciding it’s time to move in April and then selling our house without putting a sign in the yard, I would have been shocked. Yet that is exactly how the first 6 months of this year played out. The Lord has certainly blessed us this past year, more than I can put into words.

On the blogging front, I’ve learned so much this past year blogging and I’ve had so much fun meeting new friends who share the same passions I do. I am really looking forward to attending Haven this summer and meeting some of my new friends in person, along with all the great speakers and workshops. If you are going to Haven, I’d love know. In the new year, my blog is getting a makeover and I’m also looking at starting up a Link Party as well. For the home I’ll be sharing our goals in another post but we have projects on the brain(s)!

Finally, I am so very thankful for all of you who take time to read my blog and comment. Ok, well even if you don’t comment I still am thankful for you stopping by and I really would love to hear from you!

My mother-in-law and her husband are here visiting us this weekend so we will be ringing in the New Year at home this year. If you are heading out, have fun and be safe on the roads! I’ll be back in a few days to post our house goals and the link party is open until Tuesday, to link up your Year in Review posts. Until then,

Wishing you a Happy New Year and many blessings in 2012!

Source: google.com via Ange@thebloominghydrangea on Pinterest

By ange 9 Comments Filed Under: organizing

Guest Blogger: Becky from Organizing Made Fun

June 17, 2011

Hello lovely friends and readers! We are kicking off a two week long series of guest bloggers here at the Blooming Hydrangea and here to start us off is Becky from Organizing Made Fun. I enjoy following Becky on her blog, fb and also her pinterest page! She has great organizing ideas for around the house and so much more. Today Becky is going to share with us how she gets her children involved in the organizingand purging of toys in their bedrooms. Who wouldn’t love to hear how to get kids to help with this! Enjoy!!!

Hello! I’m Becky from Organizing Made Fun.

I have a very fun, unique blog that will not only motivate you learn to organize your home but I focus on getting your life organized, scheduled, and in shape – including my own organized weight loss, organizing finances, and I share about being hospitable to others. I’m also a mom to a 12 year old autistic son, who is amazing!

When either our son or daughter has a birthday coming, that means it’s time to clean out and clear out! Our son, Adam, recently had a birthday, so we spent the day clearing stuff out….and as I always tell the kids, if you don’t clean out the old stuff, you won’t have room for new stuff! That’s usually a good motivator!

So, this week’s project for my son is to clear out his stuff. We try to go through his bookshelf every couple of months – those trinkets add up! I mean, how many toy cars and rubber balls does a boy need?

He started on the bottom drawers under his closet – you’ve got to love the old houses with these great closet with storage under and on top!

He worked hard – for several hours going through papers, boxes and old toys. He turned twelve and he’s starting to realize that many of his toys aren’t so sacred anymore. He even recently sold a bunch at a garage sale to earn money for camp this summer.

Before

After

You can see he had a lot of stuff to go through. He did it without complaint and handled it well! He couldn’t wait to get to the label maker and make new labels for his newly organized closet. He did great and kept up – motivated by a birthday and presents to come! (Above) you can see a before and after of his book shelves – notice I took out one shelf. That was the shelf he tends to just throw junk up on – so I want him to learn not to rely on that shelf and deal with it right then (throw it away, put it away, file). He has file boxes labeled with:

special papers
magazines
activity books
train books and papers

When the box gets full, he has to get rid of stuff. We go through those about every three or four months and regularly purge those – schools send home WAY too much paper!

Here is a look at how many bags of toys he gave away:

This is about six large bags and then he also had three trash bags full of trash we took out as well.

This is the top of his closet, now mostly empty. And to his credit the large, clear box on the left is his dad’s memory box and the large, box on the far right is my wedding dress! Just because you have room doesn’t mean you have to fill it!

Here Rachel is also working on going through her stuff and cleaning out a little bit – although she has a lot less stuff than Adam.

Let me give you some things to motivate you and your kids with de-cluttering:

Go through your kids stuff on a regular basis – at least pick through it every few months.
With kids, give them limits (i.e., my kids have trinket boxes and can keep no more than 20 – same for stuffed animals, but they only get to keep five because they are the most useless things ever)
Start them YOUNG – I have been doing this with them since they were about 2 years old making THEM go through it
Don’t let them get distracted, stay close by and get them on to the next thing because it’s easy for them to start playing with the stuff they forgot they had
If they choose to get rid something, don’t discourage them even if you think it’s valuable or something that surprises you. It’s THEIR stuff and if they want to give it away (perhaps you can make a family heirloom exception) – for goodness sake, let them!
Same thing for them: One in, one out! If they have a big birthday part with 20 gifts, then make them give away 20 toys of similar size! Or, have smaller parties
I have one kid who gets VERY sentimental and attached to so much. But we’re working on realizing that when you have 30 VERY important things, you only get to keep FIVE that are the most important and the rest get tossed or donated.
Schedule for a charity truck to pick up the kids stuff a few days after you plan on going through it. Vietnam Veterans of America is my favorite one since they pick up AND you can schedule it online. Also, more valuable things put on your local freecycler. CBC Recycle Group is my church’s group and if you don’t have one, look for one in your city/area. We gave away six or seven of the nicer things to the group – and they went FAST!
Label, label, label – if they can’t read, make labels with pictures of what is inside. This will teach them to read the word AND know what it’s inside – no excuses! I take pictures of the contents, then print on paper and cover with clear tape. Then, (see above picture with Rachel close up) I attached the picture with the label of what it is to the basket using Cable ties. Get a big bunch of those and you’ll use them for everything!

Here is a picture of the closet organizer (before we put closet doors back on) in my daughter’s room a few years ago. I LOVE these and have been doing one closet each year when they go on sale. They aren’t cheap, but I save up all year. The Container Store Elfa Girls closet is the best for us since you can move it around as they grow (which this closet is already changed because her dresses got so long) and we have eliminated dressers altogether. Enjoy! Get motivated to get all that junk out of your kids’ rooms…and play areas!

Thank you Becky! I hope you will go visit Becky and give her some bloggy love! Next week we will have three guest posts that you will want to come back and check out!

By ange 1 Comment Filed Under: guest post, organizing

Organizing the Hall Closets

February 22, 2011

I’ve been on an organizing kick since the beginning of January and I’m still on a role! After working on the Pantry , Playroom Closets, Cloffice and Mudroom, it was time to tackle the hall closets!
This is a confusing hallway because it has pretty much all the closets on the main floor in one area. The front hall closet isn’t in this picture but it’s right by the laundry chute, you just can’t see it. Here is a picture of the closet hallway before we ripped out the carpeting but you get the idea, I hope!

We have one closet that is located right by the Cloffice and it looked like this earlier today, it is pretty much the vacuum, pet stuff, receipt, swimming, dining room table parts, paper products and guitar holding area. (I think my dear husband left his guitar in the truck from Sunday so it’s MIA in this photo but just picture a big black plastic type guitar case shoved in here.)

Careful kid, you might not come back out of there alive!!! Yowza, that’s a lot of stuff all jumbled up in there!

So I hauled everything out of the closet, including two garbage bags full of receipts that we were supposed to burn this past summer. Oops. Well I guess we’ll just have even more to burn this summer!

I then asked Mr.A if he would put the shelves we ripped out of the closet we turned into the cloffice in this closet for my cleaning supplies. Of course he couldn’t say no to little ol’ me.

Across the hall from this closet there is a little shallow closet that looked like this inside:

It doesn’t shut all the way and it’s very shallow so I decided to move all the cleaning stuff out of this one and onto the new shelving, along with the paper products, batteries, light bulbs and pet supplies. That darn Bounty papertowel would not cooperate for the pictures. I will have to beat it into submission later.

I then needed to find the vacuums a new home so I moved on to the front hall closet. Sorry this picture is a bit blurry, I was so into organizing I’m surprised I remembered to take the picture!

How many bags and backpacks do we really need? I weeded some out and moved the shoes out of the bottom of the closet. We hardly ever use this closet, it mostly stores our extra coats and shoes that we never really wear. I hid the vacuums in the back of the closest and Mr.A’s guitar will go in here as well. It looks so much better!

Next up is our Master Bedroom closets, we have three in our room and they need some help!

By ange 5 Comments Filed Under: colonial, organizing

The cost of being disorganized

February 10, 2011

Today I went to the library with all four children. We returned all our books and found new books to check out. I get up to the counter and give the man my library card. I tell him, I know I have a fine, we just returned an overdue book. He then tells me that my total is $55.00! WHAT! When we take out books from the library we generally average about 45 items. Yes, 45 books. That’s for three children. My kids are readers, they eat books, literally. We will probably be through the books we got today in about 3 days. So you can see how easily it can add up when you are averaging 45 books a visit. This is what my pile looks like when I put it all up on the desk for them to check us out:

While we were redoing the cloffice, our bulletin board was down, papers were everywhere, the place was a mess. I expected that because to get organized you first have to make a giant mess. Like this:

Today I signed up for e-mail alerts when items are close to being overdue. That’s a lifesaver, why wasn’t I signed up for that earlier? I also wrote on the calendar the date the books are due back. Now I just need to remember to check my calendar! So there is a price for being disorganized, I just paid mine. What’s yours?

By ange 3 Comments Filed Under: organizing

Kitchen storage tips

January 22, 2011

When planning out our kitchen three years ago, Mr.A was certain that we wouldn’t have enough cupboard space with the amount of cabinets we were ordering. I reassured him that with our big pantry we would have plenty of space for storing things. I am glad to report that we do!
Here are some tips and tricks I use for storage in my kitchen. I’d love to hear what you use for your storage and organization in your kitchen. If you have babies or toddlers, you know that the sippy cups and bottles can be a pain to store somewhere. The valves go missing, wrong tops for the cups and a big mess is usually what happens. I have found a great solution for those pesky sippy cup valves and tops, a little white stackable storage basket from Target.

I also bought myself some more of these baskets and put granola bars, cereal bars, applesauce cups and the occasional package of fruit snacks in one in my pantry. It’s so nice to just look in the basket and see how many we have left of something because people at my house like to leave empty boxes of granola bars and the like in the pantry. When someone decides they want a granola bar and goes to grab one, they come out empty handed.

I love using the see through storage containers for this reason as well, one quick glance and I can tell we need to add crackers to the grocery list.

In another large basket I keep our bread and peanut butter, which makes it really handy to just pull out of the pantry to make lunches.

The bonus is that these baskets stack on top of each other so they fit nicely in my pantry.

I also use one of these baskets to keep all my plastic container lids, seems they were always getting lost before but not anymore, all neat and tidy in their new home.

I also use this type of basket for my measuring cups as I had a hard time finding the right one when I needed it. It’s been working out great, no more cups stuck under the utensil drawer causing a traffic jam.

Speaking of utensils, I keep my most used utensils in this cute little pitcher next to my cook top. It freed up some room in the utensil drawer and I love having them right next to me when I’m cooking.

I like having glass cupboards where I can show off my dishes. I first lined the back of each cupboard with scrapbook paper to give it some pizazz. I have white dishes so they can go with pretty much any color theme I go with in my kitchen. I also bought some cute flower glasses from Target to give a little pop of color in the cupboard as well.

We store all our “ugly” drinking cups and glasses above the sink.

I keep the kids’ bowls, cups and plates on the lowest shelf in the pantry so that they can just grab their own breakfast in the morning. I have done this since our oldest was probably 6 years old.

Two of my children like to get up before Mr.A and I do and we love that they can just go get their own cereal and don’t come asking us for help. My children have always been really good about not just eating out of the pantry whenever they want. They have to come and ask if it’s sometime other than breakfast that they would like to eat.
One thing I was having trouble finding a home for was my bags of potatoes and onions. I found this stackable storage basket at Wal-mart and it’s perfect!

So that’s it for my storage tips but I’d love to hear from you and what great solutions you’ve found to some of those pesky kitchen storage problems.

I’m linking up here:

Kitchen Clena Up Linky Party

By ange 3 Comments Filed Under: kitchen, organizing

Playroom Closet Makeover

January 14, 2011

Wednesday night the hubs and I ran to Menards to buy some shelving for the playroom closets. It came to $106 with the brackets, 6 shelves and some scotch tape. (My kids are constantly stealing my tape and using it all up, drives me insane when it’s time to wrap a gift and there’s no tape!) Anyways…this morning I reorganized all the toys, reorganized my closets upstairs, painted both closets with a nice limey green color I picked out of the neighbor’s paint store basement and quick painted the trim white. It’s 12:13 am on Friday morning and I am beat!!!! But I couldn’t wait to post the dramatic difference in the closets, so without further ado, here they are!!!

BEFORE

This was one of the playroom closets, I could only take one picture because I think the other one was blocked by a bunch of toys. It pretty much looked like this on the inside as well.

This is the hallway closet where we stored crafts, games and puzzles. Usually it doesn’t look like this but after Christmas presents, three birthdays, winter break with 4 kids home all day, one of them being a toddler, well you can imagine why it looks like this.

This is the shelving we were using to store the toys on.

Here it is today after a LOOONNNNGGGGGGG day of painting, purging and reorganzing!

I am hoping to get 2 or 3 more clear bins because I like when the kids can see what’s inside. I am also planning to put labels on the bins but I’m just to tired for that tonight!

The empty toy shelves…such a beautiful site. The books on top will be going on a bookshelf which all the kids will be able to reach. It could be a bad thing with a 20 month old running around, I’ll let you know how that works for me. I am also considering some cute ideas for books on the wall so we’ll see.

This is the hall closet where we are going to be making our “cloffice” or closet office. Mr.A’s guitar usually goes in another closet but that closet is next on the purging/reorganizing list so I thought I’d just leave it here, along with the few lonely items on top. I also reorganized 3 closets in our bedroom today as well but I’m saving that for another post.

I’m so happy with the way the closets turned out and it only cost us $100. The paint was free, we already had all the bins and toys! Maybe you’ll be inspired to do your own little closet makeover!
Stay tuned as we give the playroom a face lift and also get to work on the office closet or “cloffice.”

***EDITED**** You can view updates by clicking here for the Playroom Reveal and Cloffice Reveal.

I linked up at the following places….

http://www.beneathmyheart.net/2011/01/closet-makeover-linky-party/

By ange 7 Comments Filed Under: colonial, organizing, playroom, projects

Pantry Makeover!

December 11, 2010

It’s been three years since we remodeled the kitchen and there are still a few things we didn’t finish, like baseboard trim in the pantry. Mr.A put up the shelving for me, put the door on and then I said, “Ok, that looks good for now, I have a new project for you.”
A few weeks ago I came across this blog post here and had immediate pantry envy! So at 9:30 one weeknight evening I decided it’s time to pretty up my pantry. Mr.A doesn’t really like when this happens, especially so late in the evening but I talked him into it, saying it would be fun and adventurous. And guess what, he agreed! So here are the before pictures of the pantry, not bad but definitely not cute.

So it was white, white and more white without baseboard trim and pretty much a catchall for appliances, food and plastic bags. First order of business was to paint that bad boy, so I had my loving husband unscrew all the brackets and remove all the shelves. Acutally, he volunteered to do this because he knows my tendancy to hurry up and paint, why take it down when you can paint around it?
Seeing as it was 9:30 at night and there weren’t a lot of places open to go get some paint mixed, I just walked down into my little paint store in the basement and picked a color. I decided to use the rest of the dining room paint to make it kind of a fun pop of color.
I also decided that I needed some cute canister type storage stuff that was see through and I could put cute vinyl labels on. After looking at a few stores, I decided to wait until we were in Minneapolis and I could go to IKEA. Well the snow and some hives pitted against our trip but that’s ok, I found some cute canisters at the grocery store for super cheap!
Here is the after so far, I want to add a few more things, like new cereal containers which was Mr.A’s idea and a couple baskets of some variety but they will have to wait a bit. Oh yes, and I want some vinyl lettering for my canisters. Just so I don’t end up confusing the flour with corn starch or something crazy like that!

Hope you enjoyed the pantry remodel, I know I am loving loving loving it! In fact, I don’t want to use anything out of the containers because they look so nice and full and pretty. And yes, the big bag full of plastic bags is still on the pantry floor. They need to be moved to some other location or they need some sort of cute home/type thing. If you have a great idea for plastic bags other than to put dog poop in, I’d love to hear it!

I have since added labels to my containers. On a recent trip to Wally world I found clear shipping labels and seeing as I don’t yet own a Silhouette, (hint, hint) I thought this was a cheap $7 solution for labeling my containers. It was super easy and if I ever need to change them out, the package came with 10 sheets and 100 labels, just make sure to buy Shipping labels and not Address labels.