21 Day Organizing Challenge

Toni at A Bowl Full of Lemons is hosting a "21 days to getting organized" challenge.  What a great way to get back into the swing of things after the holidays ransack your home! I don't know about you, but my home always feels ransacked after I've had company.

....sort of.

Well I'm jumping in 10 days late - but in my defense we've been reno'ing the basement so I haven't had much time to do anything else!  Lucky for me, I tackled a few of the projects in Nov/Dec so I'm going to be sneaky and put up my old posts....instead of redo'ing it! A girl can only organize and reorganize so much! I was all ready to jump in on day 6....but it was the dresser drawers and my hubby was sleeping all day (shift worker extraordinair).  So these are the ones I have done....I'm hoping to do the other ones too.

Day 1: The Junk Drawer - check out my new and improved junk drawer.  As you can see I started a Get'er Done series in hopes that I would be inspired to tackle some of the bigger projects around the house.....as you can also see...the junk drawer is the first and last project in that series....eek.

Day 5: Under the Kitchen Sink - I had a few moments the other day and I thought I'd tackle this one - how happy was I to open my cupboard and realize that I really didn't need to do any organizing at all under there! Go me!



Check out that gorgeous wall paper under there!

I keep a spray bottle of GreenWorks concentrate mixed with water on my kitchen counter for all spills that require something other than water and elbow grease. The few bottles in the blue bin include some old dusting spray...which I guess I could toss 'cause I use a damp cloth now, some brick cleaner and some dollar store window cleaner that I got as a shower present 4 years ago!  Goes to show how often I clean my windows!  It will be replaced by vinegar and water when the bottle is empty.  The back of the bin is full of old rags and there's an old toothbrush in there too. I don't seem to need anything more than that to tackle even the worst messes!


Day 7: The Pantry  - dun dun dun.  This one needed it REALLY badly so I'm soooo glad I found a few extra minutes between coats of paint to pull everything out and organize.  Here's a before:

 My pantry is a tiny 2 ft closet - I realize I'm lucky to even HAVE a pantry, but oh how I covet those wonderful walk-in pantries with the lights and the frosted glass doors.  One day, one day, you'll see.

My biggest problem was the never-ending collection of bags.  They all had tiny little amounts of...whoknowswhat and because I couldn't always see what all was in there, I kept buying more and more.  Ugh. 

As much as I love beautiful containers, I opted to make use of what I had - canning jars, pickle jars and various plastic containers.  All my bulk items went into their own jars.  I already had a cute set of glass containers from the dollar store that I used for smaller amounts. 

I did splurge and bought two pretty bins for my flour.  I've started buying it in 20kg bags from Costco (cheap like borscht!) so I needed bigger bins so I wasn't trekking downstairs once a week to filler up.

I also bought the burgandy stackables on the right of the top shelf.  In there, I keep my tea towls, dish cloths and onions/garlic.  No more onion and garlic paper all over!



I can't get over how much space I have now! I keep trying to think of what else I can put in there to make more room elsewhere! Love it!

Haha ok, so maybe I've only done three of the days....I thought maybe I had more but oh well.  I'm in the process of tackling the storage area in the laundry room..... here's a before just so you know what I'm dealing with!

That second closet looks about the same as the first.  It needs some serious help - I don't even know what's in there anymore! The worst part about doing storage areas is that if you tackle one...you almost always have to tackle the other one(s).  We have two and I just know I'm going to have to do both at the same time otherwise I'm just gonna throw all this just into the space under the stairs!  I think I can get this done in two days - I'll call it my day 9 and 10 since I don't have toys to organize and sadly I don't have a laundry room either! Wish me luck!