Organizing the Laundry Room Closet

Our home does not have a lot of storage but we also don't have a lot of stuff so it works out ok.  Downstairs we have 2 closets: our kitchen pantry and our laundry room closet.  They're both about the same size.  In our laundry room closet holds all of our cleaning supplies, spare paper goods, and all those miscellaneous things that you need around a home (batteries, lightbulbs).  Oh yeah... and laundry products.

Here's what our laundry room closet was looking like in fall of last year.

It's not horrible, just kind of jumbly.  We have a Keurig and those boxes were all over the place and half full.  You can see some attempt at organization by the clear boxes that hold batteries, light bulbs, hand sanitizer and pet supplies.

Here are my hints for organizing an all-purpose closet or cabinet:

• Designate shelves for certain purposes.  If a group does not take up an entire shelf put another group that corresponds on that shelf (laundry stuff with candles for me.  all the good smelling stuff in one place!)
• Move stuff you rarely use to the garage or attic.  We have an air mattress that barely gets used but I like to have it just in case.  It was taking up some valuable real estate on the bottom of the closet and got moved.  Now toilet paper reserves live there.  I can almost guarantee we'll use the toilet paper before we haul out the air mattress again!
• Have a wastebasket nearby for throw away items.  Consider the cost of keeping an item versus the cost of rebuying an item.  Below you can see that I tossed some sponge bombs that I had made for L this past summer.  They cost about $2 to make but were taking up some precious space.  Also, they had gotten strangely stiff.  

• Large shallow boxes make for an easy way to group items that are messy.  We grabbed some great white Pluggis recycling containers from Ikea.  They have a low cut in the front so you can easily see what the box contains.
• When placing items back on their shelf put extras in the very back, open products in the middle and your most used items in front.
• Unpackage things that live in too large packaging.  I discovered that this large awkward Bounce box contained one itty bitty bar.  I just popped the bar out and saved a lot of space! 

Here's the after picture!

It's much easier to find things and easier on the eyes!  I tend to buy things in bulk so it's nice to have some open space in this closet where I can just store items as soon as I bring them home instead of having to make room.  

Home Project: Tiling the Pantry

The company that the Guiltless Daddy and I work for shuts down for the period of time between Christmas and New Years.  In 2012 that accounted for a week and a half.  Add in an extra 3 vacation days and we ended up getting 17 days of Christmas vacation!  Right before Christmas vacation we also learned that tGD would be getting a bonus so we decided to spruce up the house a bit.  I want to share what we did with you in a series of posts this month.

The first thing we did was tile our pantry.  I had seen this idea on LifeHacker (from The Kranz Kronicles)and was really intrigued.  Our wire shelves make it difficult to move pantry goods around and also sometimes an item will slip through the rungs, open up and spill everywhere.

We purchased a $20 box of tiles from Home Depot (25 contained) and tackled the pantry while L napped.  It took us about 1.5 hours to finish so it is certainly doable in a naptime window.

The tile we used

First we cleared a shelf of all of it's goods.  Since we were tiling the pantry as a two person team it was decided that I would do the unloading/loading and tGD would do the actual tiling.  Go with your strengths my friends.  :)

The state of our pantry pre-tile

Now is a great time to check your pantry goods for expiration dates and toss expired items.  Move items that will expire soon to the front.  I also recommend having a notebook nearby and jotting down meals that you can make from the items you are finding.  It's just a good time to refamiliarize yourself with the food that you have.

Then we figured the best way to lay down the tiles on our shelves.  The instructions on the tile box say to start from the middle and work outward but that's not necessary on shelves.  We decided to place 2 tiles then cut pieces to fix the back and corners of the shelves.

The tiles have sticky backs and the first two were easy to lay down.  Then we measured out the space needed for the back tiles.  On the tile backing we drew marks on where to cut the tile

We used a level and a leftover tile piece to help draw a straight line

then scored it with a box cutter.

After the tile was scored it was easy to "snap" at the cut.

And before I show you our reveal pictures let me show you the wrong way to cut your tiles...

Kitchen shears end up making a mess with bits of the tile flaking and peeling.  So score and snap!  It'll be easier on your hand claw (you know, the area between you thumb and pointer finger) as well.

And finally, here's a tiled shelf!

Woohoo!

And completed

I like the way it looks but the real bonus is how easy it is to move things around.  With the wire shelves my containers tended to "stick" and I'd have to bump them along if they were on the top shelves until they started to fall for my head.  You can see in the first pantry photo how things were leaning or falling over but now my items stay level and it's easier to stack goods which is important in a small-ish pantry.

Dinosaur Land USA!

Last weekend our seasonal Disney passes turned back on and we went to Disneys Animal Kingdom. I knew that when we were there that my first priority would be to hit up Dinosaur U.S.A!

There's a really amazing playground in Dinosaur U.S.A so after a quick spin in Triceratops Twirl (like Dumbo but with dinosaurs) that is where we headed.

source

Part of the playground that a lot of people don't know about and our favorite part of the Boneyard is the dinosaur dig! It's a pit with a big dinosaur fossil, lots of buckets and shovels and its filled with a very fine rock mix that is not nearly as messy as sand. Although we did have little rocks falling out of clothes that night!

At first E completely ignored the skeleton and took to filling and dumping her bucket. Eventually I got down in the pit with her and we made our way to the fossil.

I didn't take pictures of the other children in the rock area but there was an age range of toddler - elementary school age children all having a great time. If you're visiting Disney's Animal Kingdom I strongly suggest visiting this area for a little break from waiting in line!

New Rugs!

Back when our home soley belonged the Guiltless Daddy he bought some outdoor/indoor rugs for the living room and dining room.  I'm sure you've seen them, they're your basic jute rug edged in black.
Although cheap and minimalistic (2 of tGD's favorite things) those suckers are hard on your feet and hard to clean!  So after 5 years of pets and one child and me our rugs were looking a little rough.

We (I) contemplated painting the rugs.  In a pattern, not with the splattering of finger paint and craft paint stains that already existed.

But then one day (last week) we went to Lowes and lowe there were the rugs that were meant to be mine.  And not badly priced.  So we got them and laid them down.

Area rugs make such a big difference in the feel of a room.  Our living room feels much warmer and cozier with our new allen + roth rug.

Before

After

And our dining room seems to be a more sophisticated to match our super sophisticated dinner parties that I host (ha!).  The smaller rug also makes the room seem bigger?  I'm not really sure how that works but it does.

Before

After

Now I'm off to the Dollar Tree to get some cheap shower curtain liners.  I'm really trying not to get finger paint on the new rugs but if we do at least they'll be easy to clean!

Jan 8: 20 Chore Tuesday

I'm going to start preparing snacks/meals ahead of time so that we don't end up eating so much junk and prepackaged convenience foods.  20 Chore Tuesday is the perfect day for these activities.

Food Preparation

• Hardboil a dozen eggs
• Make mini banana pancake muffins
• Make chicken tortilla soup in the crockpot
• Make parmesan crisps
• Make mint chocolate cool whip
• Make pitcher of cucumber/lemon/mint water

I'm also following Clean Mama's January Cleaning Calendar so I have these chores to do today:

• Dust house
• Check floors
• Wipe counters
• Clutter 
• Laundry
• Clean fridge
• Make bed

I would like to clear some things off of my crafty to do list as well!

• Make a birthday card for my mother
• Wrap my mother's birthday gift
• Create dry erase coloring sheets
• Make an easy valentine garland
• Print out free valentine printable

And have some fun with Elle.

• Letter scavenger hunt
• Make dinosaur fossils with dinosaurs

Love Letters

A lot of times I feel as if my paper crafts are held together by a lot of tape and prayers.  That is definitely the case with these letters.  The "O" in particular is a hot mess, you'll notice it does not look as 3D as the other letters.  Let's just say I got very frustrated and this is as good as it's going to get!

I used Loni Harris's 3D letters from the Silhouette Online store.  Not for the first time, I wish that some of the files I get from the Silhouette store would come with instructions like some of the files from Lettering Delights or SVG cuts.  Maybe I'm not looking hard enough?

But in the words of Dory I feel like I need to "just keep swimming" with my papercrafts.  If knitting has taught me anything it has taught me persistence.  When I was learning to knit I crafted some pretty hideous things but now I make beautiful wearable knits.  I think I just need to keep at it and maybe look up some YouTube videos.

All in all my love letters are not so bad from far away so that is where I will keep them, high up on a shelf!

Pinvestigator: The Low Calorie Mug Cake

On Fridays I plan on sharing results from popular Pinterest pins that I try.

Today's pin is one that may be particularly popular at this time of year.  It boasts of a quick low calorie yummy chocolate cake made with simple ingredients in the microwave.

The source of this pin is The Hidden Pantry and this cake is actually named Aunt Betty's 3-2-1 Cake.  It's called the 3-2-1 cake because you need 3 tbsp of cake mix, 2 tbsp of water, and 1 minute in the microwave which I thought was pretty clever.

I gathered my supplies: angel food cake mix, dark chocolate fudge mix and a mug.

3 tablespoons of mix and 2 tablespoons of water

One minute in the microwave

It's kind of spongy and a little dry tasting but not a bad cake altogether.  It comes out of the mug fairly easily so i plopped it onto a plate.

I put some cool whip on the cake to give it some moisture.  If the cake is still hot it melts some of the cool whip and absorbs it making the cake less dry.

Overall this was a win for me.  It was a quick, easy dessert that was small but satisfying.

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