IHeart...IHeartOrganizing!

Have you ever been to this blog before?  If not, check it out.  I seriously, as my sister-in-law would say, have an extreme girl crush on the fabulous mama that runs this blog!  She has seriously changed the way I look at organizing the small spaces in my house, and made me realize that you really can pack a huge organizing punch in every room in your house!

So after perusing her site for a while hours and hours, I planned an attack for a few of the "problem" areas in our house.  It's still a work in progress, but I wanted to share with you because I am so proud!  Today I'll show you two of my completed projects, and then the project in process.

One of the main issues with my little middle man is that he is a non-stop eater.  I swear, the kid has a hole in his leg that prevents the food from sticking around.  He will eat all day.  So I wanted to create a Real Simple snack station in the refrigerator.  The rule is one snack from the bin between breakfast and lunch, and one snack from the bin between lunch and dinner.  I put carrot sticks, cheese sticks, cheese cubes, apple slices, grapes and yogurt(both sticks and cups) into the bin, so he's making healthy choices when he snacks.  So far it has been a HUGE hit.  Gone are the days of him constantly asking me for a snack, and he loves that he can just reach into the bin and pick whatever he wants.  The plan is to make the same type of container in the pantry, and fill it with dry snacks that they can choose from as well.  The whole project only cost me $3.50; the cost of the small bin for the fridge.

The next thing I tackled was under the sink.  We recently remodeled our kitchen, and I have been looking and looking for the product that was "just right" to organize all of my cleaning supplies and stockpile of dishwasher detergent, sponges, etc.  Let me tell you, it is harder to find something than you would think!  I never found something that worked for us.  One day I was browsing around on Pinterest and found a great idea for putting a tension rod into your cabinet to hold spray cleaners and it hit me.  That was all I really needed!  This way, the cleaners that I use everyday would be front and center, and I could use one side for my stockpile of detergent, and the other side could house my household cleaners that I use less often.

So I grabbed a small enough tension rod from Amazon and when it came I got to work.  First I put down non-adhesive shelf liner, stashed away all my Cascade, sponges and Jet Dry that we will use later, put the tension rod up and voila!  The whole project took me less than 15 minutes to do, and it's such a breath of fresh air to open that cabinet now!  It went from a sloppy, disorganized mess to this!

 

The tension rod holds an extra roll of paper towels, our everyday spray and glass cleaner, and an extra kitchen towel.  The organizer on the right I re-purposed from another room in our house, and it holds all of my cleaning supplies.  I just pull the whole thing out and go room to room with it!  Way in the back is my extra dish soap, dish detergent, sponges, etc.  Fear not!  It is securely fastened with a child lock on the outside.  :o)

The final project I want to show you today is our memo station.  It is still a work in progress, but I am glad we are starting to put it to use.  I originally got this idea from Jen over at IHeartOrganizing...we already had a coat hook and shoe basket in place, but I was really looking for somewhere to stash ALL THE PAPERS that come in and out of this house on a day-to-day basis.  So, I went to work on finding an affordable solution.  I came across these super simple mail bins at The Container Store.  They were super simple to put together, and I affixed them to the wall with mini command hooks.

I still want to add a name on each pocket - one for each of the school boys, one for my dear husband and I, and one "to-do" bin that can hold unsigned permission slips, a bill that has to be paid, a Scholastic book order, or our current Market Day order that has to be picked up.  So far so good!  We have been using the bins with great success!  I will update you as the project moves along.

Thanks for looking at what I've been doing around my house...all these additions have made me proud to call this my home!