She Organises and Declutters

Currently, I only have two things on my mind. Organising and decluttering! Well there would be just two, if i didn't have B4 invading my headpsace every few seconds, but that's a given!

Every morning I have been waking up with thousands of projects on my mind, hardly able to follow my schedule (more on that later!) before ripping into a new area of the house that needs a purge!

I blame worship Jen over at IHeartOrgansing for this sudden obsession. Since discovering her blog a couple of weeks ago, I have been devouring every single post she made since starting the blog! I'm only just now hitting her May 2010 entries, heading backwards through the blog. And considering the number of projects she has conquered in 12 months, you can imagine that seeing all of this in the space of 2 weeks means my head is reeling with the possibilities of applying these projects in my own home! 

So I thought I would give you a look at a few quick and easy decluttering and re-organising projects I've been inspired to do since discovering the blog!

Above the Fridge

Above our fridge is a little cupboard I like to put our placemats, party needs, cake decorating supplies, special occasion platters and lots and lots of napkins?!?? But it was what my family like to call 'booby trapped'. When extracting an item, you would need the hands of a Bomb Disabling Expert (perhaps their unofficial title) if you didn't want to have the entire contents of the cupboard landing on your head!

So after about ten minutes of purging and re-organising, it looked like this! The old dish rack we never used went to charity, along with some old placemats while some of the hundreds of paper napkins went to our camping supplies bin.  All of our disposable party crockery got stacked neatly in one tub, on top of my rarely used, but highly cherished trays passed on by my mum. A home for B4's new super cool, train dinner set, a thrifty gift reduced to $15.95 (down from over $30) at one of my favourite thrifty shops, Trade Secret. And some of my cake decorating supplies went into B4's old snack containers. A huge improvement, no money spent and a little giving to charity makes Cassie a happy girl!

The Pen Drawer

Ah, the pen drawer. I don't think I ever actually needed to purchase a pen over my life time, because the number of free pens in this draw far outnumbered those that I had bought! It had hit the point where I couldn't close the drawer, I kept finding pens that didn't work, and the jumble of mismatched plastic was just doing my head in! So I emptied them all out onto my kitchen bench and started sorting and purging...

Keeping only pens that I had multiples of, and that worked (see my scribble pad) I began putting them back in the drawer...

And ended up with this! The colour biros were added after this pic, but everything else on the bench was REJECTED! Some of the rejected pens went to hub's cabinet, because I hate to waste, but at some point quite a few of them just had to get chucked. (look at that beautiful reflection on the bench, a lovely day for decluttering!)

I printed off some free labels and Blutak'd them on the front of some little drawers which have now been serving me since I was about 10! That's a 15 yr life, with plenty of useful years left in them!  Sometimes being thrifty just means making something work over the years. These had different colour plastic handles originally, which showed their age, but they popped out quite easily and now look perfect with the little labels in place!

The Kitchen Drawer

The bottom drawer in my kitchen had been bugging me for months. Over the year we have lived in this house, it has accumulated lightbulbs, tea towels, batteries, cooking utensils, straws, aprons, insect zappers, first aid kits and so many little 'nothings', that I avoided opening it except to quickly grab a fresh tea towel in the midst of cooking up a storm. It was just one of those things you didn't think about until you needed to get into it.

I had already made some improvements on other drawers above it, like corraling my utensils into containers in this drawer. I decided against a spice rack as I don't use spices that often, but put in this container, with names written on the lids, I easily find what I need in a hurry. To the left of them, under the white lid, is my 'sushi station'; chopsticks, soy fishies, sushi mats and faux grass. The remainder of utensils fit into an assortment of containers of just the right size, or along the left size if they are big. I did get rid of things I never use, and this is simply the smallest I could get the collection!

Can you believe that all of those utensils used to live in this shallow drawer?!?! It was a nightmare, and then it just seemed so obvious when I swapped the contents and put all of our 'kitchen wraps' and bags in the shallow drawer! I just love it when the perfect solution is right there in front of you

This drawer could use a little work on the right hand side, as it holds alot of my 'daily items'. I think I'll make that a project today and see what I can purge or 're-house' elsewhere...

Why is she taking a photo of this rubbish you ask??? Well because one of my favourite thrifty tricks is using containers that you've already unknowingly purchased. Sure I could go buy a cute container this size that already looks good....or I could put some pretty paper and a label on it, and find myself with free storage! I didn't actually need to use it on my drawer project this time around, but thought I'd throw in a piccy for inspiration to look around your own home and think twice before throwing something out!

Organising ALWAYS gets worse before it gets better!

After about 30mins of rethinking the set up and re housing the items, i came up with a neat system for our teatowels, oven mits, aprons, straws, first aid kit, batteries, blutak, and B4's new lunch box containers...

...A banana saver from Trade Secret ($4.95), a fantastic new lunchbox found at Kmart ($9.00), and some super cool sandwich cutters I got over at Lime Tree Kids, that I couldn't resist for my train loving little man! I was so happy to have a designated 'lunch spot', and now I smile while I'm grabbing my fresh tea towel!

Under the Laundry Sink

This picture doesn't make a whole lotta sense unfortunately. But I have a habit of tearing into a project so quickly that I forget to snap a before picture. So this is an example of what came out from under our laundry sink cupboard that really shouldn't have been in there. Oh and thanks hubs for the mud all over the sink that you 'forgot to wash off' :o) Anyway, the only thing we really needed to keep under there were B4's bath toys, but somehow all of this muck made it under there too!

I really needed something to put all of B4's wet toys in, as they were just getting chucked in there willy nilly every night and it was a horrible dank mess :o( But after a little shopping spree at some favourite homestores (more of those goodies next post) I found these pretty pearl baskets at Target and thought they would be perfect for this, and other storage needs in the future!

Is it weird that I think plastic baskets are pretty?

So after a little investment ($9) I have designated homes for our tap attachments, big bath toys and little bath toys. Yay! Now every night, B4 picks out a couple of toys for his bath, and we put them back, wet or not! One day it might be nice to put a false back on the cupboard to tidy up appearances....One day!

Under the Kitchen Sink

And last but not least, this is what I end up doing when friends are running late for a visit! I pace around the house, impatiently and excitedly, trying to find something to keep me busy so I don't look like a total dork when they show up and I am doing absolutely nothing. This time, it was the cupboard under my sink, a hot spot for mess and clutter and a large number of appliances.

We were lucky enough to receive some lovely appliances from our friends and family on our wedding day, and had accumulated a few others over the last 5 years making house. But I had never really made any effort to give them proper homes, so this was my chance!

And boy I'm glad I did it because some of them had developed a bit of mould after some humid months here in Brisbane. Ewwwwww! After a wipe over, and a wipe out.....

...everything went back in! My friend had arrived during the wipe out stage and got to witness my feat while totally suprising me with pregnancy news! What a fab afternoon!

Voila! Down in the back corner, some $2.50 baskets from Stacks (peg baskets actually, think outside the square!) became homes for some of the appliance attachments and silicone bakeware. Frequently used appliances made their way to the front of the top shelf and I had a little breathing space left over for the inevitable rummaging that occurs in such cupboards!

Phew!! My posts always tend to be longer than I plan, but each of these projects took less than an hour, and made life so much easier!

So perhaps if you've 'Got 15' minutes to spare (thanks again Jen!), you could tackle a little 'Hot Mess Spot' today! Let me know how you go, I'd love to hear about it!

Next post, I'll tell you all about a Thrifty Shopping Spree I went on recently, don't we all just love a Spreeeeee!

xo Cassie