Organizing

Corralling Your Cords

March 12, 2014 By amusingmjblog Leave a Comment

I am out travelling for work this week, which happens quite a bit (you should ask my husband how much he loves that since my crazy lovable yet totally neurotic dog has separation anxiety issues). But it occurred to me that I have a pretty great way of keeping my work bag organized. I started it a few months ago as a part of my attempt to organize everything in my house before I turn 30. And for the most part it has done a good job of keeping my computer bag from turning into a rats nest of cords.

I bought a fairly inexpensive organizer thing called a Grid It from Amazon. Mine is about the size of a sheet of paper and fits nicely in my computer bag. But it has several elastic straps with grippy things (scientific description) to hold all your cords in place. Since I regularly travel with a mouse (seriously who can use touchpads!?), several chargers and an external hard drive, this keeps all of those neatly in place and ready to use.

I recently spruced up my iPhone and iPad chargers with a bit of washi tape since mine have a habit of disappearing around certain members of my family. But its a great system and it slides right down into my bag making it easy to keep the cords without any of the clutter.

Its been nice so far to always have my chargers and headphones right where I want them to be! The only bad thing about it is that my computer charger doesn’t fit very well on this size, which is how it got left in Waco last week. Oops!

But I am definitely making progress on my 30 Before 30 organizing spree… more to come this week!

Filed Under: 30 Before 30, Organizing

Storage Container Organization

February 18, 2014 By amusingmjblog Leave a Comment

Want to know what has been one of the most aggravation inducing spaces in my house?

The ever dreaded tupperware cabinet (note… I don’t actually own any tupperware, but like Kleenex and Q-Tip… I can’t seem to call it anything else). Here it is on a good day:

This cabinet has been driving me bananas for almost a year now, and makes it IMPOSSIBLE to find a matching storage container and lid. So for Christmas I asked for these pull out drawers from The Container Store. They are a bit pricey but I knew they would be the perfect thing for this space. And I had the best of intentions of installing them RIGHT AWAY and taking advantage of how awesome they would be… but here we are in mid February and I’m just getting around to getting them installed! (Which should give you some small explanation of WHY ON EARTH I haven’t been posting quite as regularly in 2014!)

So bright and early Sunday morning I decided it could wait no more! This was happening BEFORE I left for church at 10:15. (I get a lot done on Sunday mornings while my husband is working… check out the storage closet I redid much to his surprise!) So first things first, I took everything out:

And then followed the super simple instructions on the install:

Center them and use their alignment guide to figure out how far back they go:

Then drill pilot holes (using a 1/8ths drill bit)

Then screw in your base:

Attach the drawers with the screws provided and easy peasy you are ready to load all your crap back into them!

I purged quite a bit of the things that didn’t belong… messy cabinets tend to attract things that don’t belong in my house. I guess my head figures if it is already a mess, why not make it worse! And seriously… I had 6 13×9 glass pans. I may have a brownie addiction issue. I’m fairly certain some of them belong to my mother and they just managed to find a semi-permanent home in my cabinets, but I’ve taken them down to a reasonable number (2). And found a more appropriate home for my toaster.

I bought 20″ rolling drawers which was the largest size I could accommodate, but that leaves a few inches of space on each side of the drawer. That empty space however is PERFECT for storing the extra lids. I tested it out quite a few times and they don’t get jammed at the back or under the drawer, but i’ll keep you updated if that becomes a problem.

For now I am LOVING being able to see everything in the cabinet and not having to unload everything to find a matching lid! I am eradicating the clutter from my house one cabinet at a time!!

If you are new here, one of my 30 before 30 goals is to organize everything in my house… not an easy feat for someone as messy as I am!

Filed Under: Organizing

Quick Laundry Room Re-do

January 27, 2014 By amusingmjblog Leave a Comment

So do you remember here where we upgraded AJ’s kitchen? Well it had a dirty little secret. Its actually more of a clean dirty little secret: his laundry room. The laundry room in in a small hallway between his kitchen and his dining room. Both the kitchen and dining room have had major upgrades lately, but the laundry room was looking less than ideal:

With his soon to be wife about to move in after the wedding, something needed to be done to spruce up this area! So his fiancee and I decided to tackle this as an afternoon project! Back when they bought Elfa for their closet and garage they went ahead and purchased a little extra for the laundry room. The way it was there wasn’t any space to hang clothes to dry which led to them being strewn around or hanging on the door frame.

And there was absolutely no organization for his cleaning supplies. Since we needed to pull down at least one cabinet to add hanging space, we decided to pull both down (since they no longer matched the ones in the kitchen) and put Elfa in its place. First step: clean everything out of there:

I would have taken a few pictures of us taking the cabinets down, but the 3 people in the tiny little space pulling the molding off and then unscrewing the cabinets from the wall and pulling them down didn’t leave much space for picture taking.

After we got everything cleared out, we painted the laundry room a pretty light gray color and then they hung the Elfa shelves. It made a dramatic change!

And has made it a much more usable space for laundry! Since it is in such a central location in their house, function is a top priority! Check out that difference:

I love this navy and white striped basket… I bought the same one for the back of my car to corral all my junk!

One of the things I love most about their space is that they used the insides of the doors to maximize the usable space (and make all those cleaners easily accessible!)

And because before and afters are so fun:

It is always amazing to me what a fresh coat of paint and some new shelving can do for a space. By taking a cabinet away and adding the hanging space, this closet laundry room is so much more usable and bonus… the doors can be closed on the mess if there are clothes drying!

Filed Under: AJ's House, Organizing

Corralling Your Cords

Storage Container Organization

Quick Laundry Room Re-do

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