Spring Cleaning:Organizing your Bathroom

We are half way through our series and today we are going to take on the master bathroom, but this will work in any and all of your bathrooms.  Here are the supplies you will need.

In our bathroom there are two narrow closets.  They are kind of a waste of space, but they are there so junk starts to pile up.  This is my closet in the bathroom.

And this is Brian's closet.

Then I tackled the drawers and the space under the sink.

I then brought everything out into our bedroom and laid it on the floor.

Step 1: Look through your medications, make up, etc for expiration dates.  I had quite a bit of stuff that had expired and needed to be thrown out.  Remember don't flush meds down the toilet.  They get into our waterways and pollute the water.  You can take them into most pharmacies and they will dispose of them for you.

Step 2: Put like items in their own bins.  I already had bins, but if you are starting from scratch you will need to make a list of the bins, along with their sizes, on the pad of paper I showed you at the top.

Step 3: Label the bins.  You can use a label maker if you have one or purchase stick on labels if you prefer.

Step 4: Now is a great time to go through your towels and see which ones need to be retired.  If they are still in good shape, you can donate them to a local homeless shelter.

After Photos:

I have a bin for cold meds, first aid, travel size items and dental supplies.  The travel size container is a new one for me, but I think it's going to come in handy.  It will save me a ton of time not having to run to the store the night before a trip for something I need.

I like to stock up on shampoo and conditioner when it's on sale.

I ended up with 2 grocery bags of trash and recycling and a small box of items to donate.  I bought Qtips and toothpaste in bulk at Costco so I decided to donate some of them to our local homeless shelter.  I mean who really needs 600 Qtips anyway.

I have no idea why a Nintendo DS was in our bathroom closet. Ha.  I guess you never know what may turn up.  This obviously needed to go elsewhere in the house.

GIVE AWAY ALERT:  I'm excited to announce that the great folks from Simple Human have agreed to give away one of their sensor pumps.  You may have seen my trashcan in yesterday's post of my pantry.  I love Simple Human products. 

 I was given this sensor pump at Blissdom this year and I absolutely love it.  We use it in our main bathroom and it rocks.  I had a glass soap dispenser that I loved, but it always got clogged.  It was awful.  Soap would be all over the sink and the girls would have trouble getting the soap out.  I brought this pump home and the girls love washing their hands now.

You have 3 chances to win.
1. Go like simplehuman on Facebook.
2. Follow @simplehuman on Twitter
3. Leave a comment on my blog as to where you would use the sensor pump if you won.

I will pick a winner at random on Saturday.  Good luck!

Don't forget to check out Calie's blog to see her green cleaning products and how she used them to get her bathroom sparkling clean.  I know I can't wait to try some of her recipes.

Spring Cleaning:Decluttering your Office

I hope you all enjoyed yesterday's post of my pantry makeover.  I hope it inspired you to start organizing your own home.  I don't know about you, but I am so glad Spring is here.  As I type this the sun is shinning and I can hear the birds chirping outside.  We discovered a birds nest on our front porch and the girls were so excited.  New life is beginning again and that makes me happy.

Today I will be tackling the office.  Our home office is to the left as soon as you walk in the door.  It has 2 french doors, so it's important for me to try to keep it clean and organized.  It's one of the first things you see when you walk through the front door.  Plus, it's very hard to be productive in a messy office. 

This makeover can take a few days, depending on the state of your office. Don't rush it.  Take your time. Maybe you have a smaller office or you just have a desk in the kitchen. Wherever you get work done, it probably needs a little spring cleaning. I'm going to give you some steps today to help you tackle the clutter.

Before Photos:

Yes, that's a baby grand piano in our office. It's has since been moved up to Indiana to my sister in law's house. I loved it, but it gives me so much more space.

Look at my sweet Brooklyn peering behind the piano.  Did she distract you from the mess on the desk and bookcase?  Awful, right?

The storm before the calm. 

Step 1: Like we did yesterday with the pantry, you want to clear everything out.  For me I started with the bookcase.  I took everything off and put it on the floor.  I will be honest and say that the stacks and stacks of books and knick knacks stayed on the floor for a few weeks.  I love organizing, but I got overwhelmed.  I worked on it little by little. 

We have a ton of books.  Brian is an avid reader so we have well over 300 books easily.  I made 3 piles: Keep, Store, Donate.  The keep pile of books went back on the shelves or behind the doors at the bottom of the bookcase.  The stored pile went downstairs in our guest bedroom on a bookshelf.  Finally, I took the donate pile to our local library.  If they can't use them, they sell them to raise money to buy more books.

After photo:  Arranging books shelves is not easy.  Holy cow.  It's still not really finished.  I think I need an interior decorator friend to stop by and help me.



Step 2: Use your wall space.  I made this bulletin board with an old frame and some fabric.  I will write a future post on how you can make one at home.  It was super easy.  I think function can be beautiful.  I keep my blog calendar, my list of when my bills are due and other things that inspire me.

I saw this Aluminum ticket holder, like they use in restaurants, in Martha Stewart's January issue of her magazine. I am going to order one for the wall to hold documents that I need to see on a daily basis. It will help me keep the clutter off the desk.  You can order one here for under $8.

Step 3:  Contain it all.  Once again, pull everything out.  Assess what needs to stay, what needs to be tossed and what needs to be stored in another part of the house.  Once you've done that, then it's time to put it all back in an orderly fashion so it stays clean.  You can find these drawer organizers anywhere.  A great place to start is an office supply store.

Like we did in the pantry yesterday, storage boxes are key.  This is one type of cardboard box that I don't mind having in the house.  These are inexpensive and from my favorite store, IKEA.  They are all labeled so I know where to go when I need to find something.

I keep all of your magazines in these magazine holders from IKEA.  It's hard to tell from the photo but they have a really neat texture to them.  Almost like a burlap.  Oops, I still need to label them.

Contain your bills and receipts.  I took this picture off of Pinterest.  Emily blogs over at Cupcakes and Cashmere.  She has a great office that I adore.

(picture from www.cupcakesandcashmere.com)

Here is what mine look like.  The box with the lid is Brian's and the one in the crate is where I store all of our bills.  It's jammed pack right now.  I need to go through it from 2011 and get stuff ready to shred.  Alot of places will have a free shred day.  Lowes does it here in town.  They have a company in their parking lot where you can take your bags of papers to shred.  I've done this before and it saves me a ton of time.

After Pictures:

As you can see, I made a spot for the girls to draw and do work when I'm in the office.  It works out great.  We can still be together when I need to get some work done.  Sadly, they are outgrowing the table and chairs, sniff sniff.  I'm going to get them something bigger so they have more room.  This is a great set up if you have toddlers or preschoolers.  It's inexpensive too.  The table is called a Lack table from Ikea (under $10) and the chairs are from there as well ($15 each).



Don't forget to go visit my friend Calie over at Broccoli Cupcake for her green tips on keeping your office clean.