I Have a Secret.

While my house has been getting in order, my work has been doing just the opposite. I've been spending so much time doing house stuff, that the organization of my work has suffered.

I work on my own for the most part. I'm in outside sales and my office is my car. I have A LOT of things to carry in my car (literature, samples, display boards, education materials, etc). I live out of my car and am on the road for most of the day. I'm pretty much a free bird, but every once in awhile, I have to work with my boss. This is the case for the next two days.

I desperately needed a big overhaul of my work life. So, my husband took over tonight by making dinner and putting the kids to bed. Thank the heavens for him! Here are the tasks I tackled tonight:

• Cleaned out my car
• Cleaned out two work bags
• Organized and printed reports to go over with my boss
• Organized my samples
• Organized my promotional/educational materials
• Organized my target list
  

I hate working with my boss. I always feel like it's so unnatural. At any rate, I wanted to make sure all of my ducks were in order. I'm not totally done, but at least I'll appear on top of my game tomorrow!

I'm Baaaaaaack.

No, I didn't fall off of the face of the earth! Nor did I forget about the Our 10 Things endeavor. My power cord simply went kaput on my personal computer and my work computer's firewalls wouldn't allow me to sign in and post. Problem solved: The new power cord has arrived!

We had our garage sale on Saturday. I forgot to take pictures. You've seen lots of the things I had collected from around the house. We made $400 and sent the rest to the thrift store that benefits the local/regional children's hospital.

I've also made good attic progress. I will post pictures.

Just a short post for now to say that I am back!

The cabinet

Last night I finally got the nerve to do the kitchen cabinet that holds my kids stuff. I anticipated this to take 1-2 hours. I was sick of thinking about how I had to do it, so I just did it last night. Here is the hot mess before. Here are the 2 bottom shelves aka an embarrassment to post! There are coloring books, crayons, paints, trash bags, plastic bags just everything thrown in there. In my defense I have cleaned out this cabinet many times before but it always ends up like this again. My kids are OK about putting stuff back, just not neatly. I need to stay on top of this!

So 40 minutes and 5 shelves later this is what we have.

Top shelf is all cups, 2nd shelf bowls & plates, 3rd is cards, paints, stickers, tattoo's etc., 4th is coloring books and crayons and 5th is playdoh & bags.

Here are some of the random papers I got rid of. This was mostly from the 4th shelf. Aye! I also got rid of some random playdoh holder that never gets played with.

Here is more stuff I got rid of. We have a million cups, I can afford to get rid of all of these, more papers, random spoons. I put the holiday plates in storage w/ the rest of the holiday stuff. I don't need to see them all year round!

and here is a close up of the bottom 2 shelves that were the worst. I love organization!

So my goal is to keep this as neat as it is now, not easy with a 3 and 5 year old but I have to check this often before it gets out of control like it was. It's SO NICE to have this project done. I am not good at the 10 things a day, but I'm good at bigger projects. I need to get them done and then maybe focus on the 10 a day. This project took less than an hour and I am so pleased with the results.

Next up is the hallway closet which will be my biggest embarrassment yet (even worse than my bedroom closet before!) That will be next weeks project and I know that will take awhile!

p.s. I made 60 bucks off e-bay last week, have more stuff to list and am selling books on amazon!! Yeah baby. My goal with this is to make enough spending money for vacation in July so we don't have to take it out of our own pockets.

happy house

My month of purging is still going well even though I have not written about it. I got sidetracked gather kid items to sell in the church re-sale. In one week over 100 items were ready to go out the door. Thanks to my BFF for all the help pricing them--I don't think I could have done it on my own. I did not make a ton of money, but that was not really the point. I got enough to cover the items I bought--mostly items I needed for the kids plus a few books--and have a little spending money left. I defintely sold more than I bought.

But the real point of this is to say I am loving my house now. Things are cleaner than they have been in a long time. I can walk into rooms and not immediately get upset. This keeps me going. We have been planting our first garden the last few days so purging has been put on the backburner. The fence is all that is left and I plan on making up for these lost days because I will have 300 items out of my house by the end of this month!

pictureless pantry

OMG. My mom said I could tackle a few projects for her... and I say that loosely, be/c actually it's like this: Mom, I'm cleaning out the pantry, kay? Mom there's no room in the fridge for the milk, I'm cleaning out the fridge later, kay? LOL But Anyhow, my almost brother-in-law and I cleaned out the pantry today. Oy. I can't upload the pictures just yet but I have before and afters. We had TWO big black garbage bags full of EXPIRED items. EW. A whole counter top of expired items. It was awful. It looks so much better now, it's insane the difference! I will post pictures when I can.

I Can't Believe I'm Showing This....

This is my shame: The attic. I was not going to post before or progress pictures until I was totally done because I am too embarrassed. I am embarrassed by the amount of STUFF. No one needs this many possessions. It's a battle I constantly fight. As you all know, I'm a sucker for a bargain. This is how my attic got this way. When I finally realized I had too many things, I made a conscious effort to buy less. I'm not perfect, but I have gotten much better. At any rate, since I'm turning over a new leaf in that respect, it's time to organize and purge this mess.

Without further adieu, my attic before (LEFT side):

(And yes, that's an Elvis on velvet on the left near the stairway.)

And where I stand as of this morning. (LEFT side) Before (RIGHT side):

Progress (RIGHT side):

I still have a long way to go, but I wanted show the progress I have made. This project is totally intimidating to me. Little by little, I'm getting there.....

Spice and Booze...

So I got motivated before I thought to take a picture. Oops. Okay, that might have been sorta kinda on purpose. I filled a tall kitchen bag with expired spices. Ew.

But here's the after. This is our spice/daily meds/alcoholic glassware cabinet.



And the winner of the oldest medication? Generic Target Robitussin. July 2007. Niiice.



I can now serve martinis for at least 10. And wine for...well, a lot. There are at least 14 other wineglasses in other cabinets in this house.

Who wants a drink?

Attic Progress

I've made the commitment to try to get our attic organized and purge some of the stuff up there. We are planning for a garage sale next Saturday, so there is some incentive to a) get it done in a timely manner, b) get rid of things. This is an ENORMOUS project and I don't expect to get it completely done any time soon (I'm aiming for the end of 2010).

Here is some of the loot I've gathered over the past two days:

Pillows, Christmas wreaths, a flower arrangement, a cardboard file cabinet (new in package), a picnic set, an electric caulking gun, a new Rowenta Iron, a bumper for a baby crib (new in package), drapes, and tons more.

I have one more week until the garage sale to purge. Working up in the attic is temperature dependent, so I'll see how much I can get done in that time!

My dresser is done!!!!

ahhhhhhhhh my dresser is done my dresser is done, ding dong the son of a bitch is done! (sorry for the cursing, let me know if it offends you, I'll do it more often, JK (sorta))
So anyway, the dresser is done!!! YEAH!! God this has been bugging me for a LONG time. If you remember, it's 6 drawers, 5 of them needed cleaning. My goal was to do one a night. Night one I started with the top drawer and got it done. I started my "I need to lose 10 pounds to fit into these" pile, my e-bay pile, my donate pile and my throw away pile. Day 2 came with the 2nd drawer aka the worst bitch in history. I didn't do before and after of every drawer because well frankly no one wants to see 10 pics of my clothes. So here is the drawer 2, the worst of them. This is the before, God help me. I have no idea what shirts are stuffed in this drawer. I feel like a 10 year old whose mother told her to put her clothes away and this is what I did. The pic doesn't do it justice on just how bad it was.
and here is the after shot of drawer #2....ahhhh nice. This drawer is mostly just fitted tee's (Go CUSE!!)

I took a pic of an after shot of drawer 3 because I like my workout clothes. I love buying them, like wearing them and think I should be hired to endorse Nike gear. p.s. see how good my reflection vest works!! I don't care how much of a dork I look like when I wear this, it works!

Here is pile #1 and #2, this is my I need to lose 10 pounds pile and my e-bay pile. This got switched around more after this pic. I gave up some of the I need to lose 10 pounds pile over to the e-bay pile because let's be honest, I need to lose more than 10 pounds for some of this stuff.

This is the donate pile and the trash pile.

I was SO happy about this project being done. I even cleaned out the 2 drawers in my nightstand so I could use them. I realized I had way too many bathing suits (who says fat girls don't like buying bathing suits??) and I didn't want to waste a whole drawer on them. I live in the northeast and am PLUMP. I don't wear them often, I don't want them in my main dresser. So they are in a drawer in my nightstand. I felt SO good when this project was done. It was weighing on me for awhile. I was so happy last night. I didn't anticipate doing this all. My goal was just drawer #2 which turned into the entire dresser, which turned into the night stand. It was a good night. One last pic because I was so happy I kept opening and closing drawers. These are some old tees I didn't want to get rid of because I still wear them around the house with my jeans. Jeans that fit me.

I can exhale. Some of the weight has been lifted off my shoulders!

Next 2 projects are also big ones. I write about it so I'll do it. First is the dreaded cabinet I've been talking about forever-the kids cabinet in my kitchen. I just need to devote 1-2 hours one night and get it done and shut up about it. This is my next project. After that is my hallway closet aka hottest mess ever in the world. It holds pictures and pictures and pictures and vases and door wreaths and easter eggs and other random crapola. Everytime I open this drawer I always kick something back in to get it shut again. AHHH. I dread when I start this project. But next up is the kids cabinet.

I also have to say that since this blog I have been really good about keeping up what I have cleaned out. It's very easy to just shove shit around again but I'm trying really hard to keep the things nice that I have cleaned out. Bye, sorry for the longest post ever!! YEAH it's clean!

Children's Closet Before and After

I finally finished my youngest son's closet. I had bins upon bins of clothes that we literally tore through as he grew into the baby giant that he is today. I got rid of (donating and selling) three full trash bags full of clothing in the process. The rest was just a little reorganization.

As a reminder, here is the before:

And the After:

I moved the little armoire (which, by the way, I got for $64 at K-Mart on clearance) into the closet.

I still have way too many baby things, but this is a good start. I worked on it in bits and pieces and am finally done with this project!....for now.

Happy One Month Anniversary, 10 Things!

Yeah! We made it through one month on the 'Our 10 Things' blog!

While I have not followed through every day, I have on most days. If I had to guess, I've gotten rid of about 1,000 items in my house (most from cleaning closets and the garage). Unbelievable. What's even more unbelievable is that there is plenty more to go!

I've made a little money ($340) on Craigslist and eBay and have begun to see the difference in my home. I'm looking forward to another 300+ items in the next month and some extra cash from our garage sale!

Keep up the great work!

Ixnay the Lanpay.

That's Pig Latin for "Nix the plan".

I had planned to work on the attic yesterday and today. I had planned to take a couple of hours off from work to take advantage of the unseasonably cool weather to work in the normally sauna-like attic. I had plans of grandeur.

Fast forward to yesterday. My husband had to unexpectedly, get this, practice taking over ships in the ocean leaving me as a single mom with no time. So, no attic. But, wait. It gets better! I had organized my work week/day today so that I could spend a couple of morning hours working up there....only to find that both of our cars had been broken into overnight. As a result, I spent the morning filing police reports, working with credit card companies, working with my company (because mine is a company car), etc. instead of working on the attic.

BUT, I did manage to make it up there for a few minutes today and grabbed some give-aways/donations/trash/garage sale items.

Behold my loot:

This pile includes, but is not limited to, a high chair, stuffed animals, a Christmas tree skirt, a tube TV, an inflatable headboard (probably my favorite item du jour), a pillow, and toys.

So despite setbacks, I was not totally defeated.

As I have said earlier, the attic will be my epic "10 Things" event. I am waiting to post before pics until I have successful after pics. This may not occur for many, many months!

I don't suspect there will be much attic action again tomorrow since my husband is once again taking over ships. But hey, someone has to do it, right?

Slacker

I've been a major 10 things slacker lately. There are so many projects looming over my head too that I want to tackle so I need to get my butt in gear. Today I cleaned one of my kitchen drawers. This one holds measuring cups, oven mitts, pot holders and cutting boards. I needed to go through my cutting boards because I have some wood ones in there I never use because wood cutting boards skeeve me out. I got another plastic one this weekend to urge me to start this drawer. It was a quick and easy project. Before: everything shoved in there (are you surprised, this is me?!! I am shover!!!) I desperately need new oven mitts. I have non matching old ugly stained ones.
and the after. I can open and close it easily and don't have to push stuff down to close the drawer.

Stuff I threw away

1-2. Two wooden cutting boards

3. Louisiana pot holder I had forever

4. random mini spoon

5. clips for who knows what?? It's amazing I never stabbed myself with these!

6. random tupperware top

7. tiny measuring spoon I never use

8-11. LOL seriously. This wasn't in this drawer but I found these in a random drawer in my bathroom and they needed to go. It's tubes of vaseline from when my son was circumsized....um yeah he's FIVE. WHY are they in there still? WHY WHY WHY??

So in order to not be a slacker anymore this is my next goal-my bedroom dresser. AH. It gives me heebie jeebies thinking about it. It has 6 drawers, 5 of them need major work. Guess what??? All my clothes are shoved in all the drawers. God I thought I was semi neat before this blog! So my goal is one drawer a day for the next 5 days. I can and will do this. I want to get some of this stuff up on e-bay too or donate it. So now that I told you, hold me to it. I will start with drawer one tonight.

I am also listing 3 pairs of shoes on e-bay that I got rid of when I cleaned my closet a few weeks back. I gave them to my sister thinking they'd fit her and they don't. I can't wear them and the sandals are basically brand new so I will sell them. I'll be happy w/ the extra change in my pocket and to not have to look at them anymore.

Back to Basics

I’ve been down right lazy and have not tackled a single project on my large organizing to do list. I was feeling guilty about it and even more so as it meant I had nothing to contribute to the blog. But yet again I remembered the idea behind Our 10 Things was to maybe make being organized and clutter free something you don’t have to stress about.

So I got out a giant garbage bag and took it upstairs. I cleaned out a jewelry box I had put away in my night stand and not opened for at least two years -- I dumped a lot of cheap nasty jewelry no one would ever want to wear, and put away the more quality pieces in my primary jewelry box. My husband and I then tossed out at least a dozen empty soap, shampoo and conditioner containers from the shower. It wasn’t hard work and it didn’t feel very gratifying until I got in the shower today, looked around, and thought, "Wow, it looks tons better!"

The garbage bag is sitting in the corner of the master bathroom waiting for 10 more things tonight.

Amidst the Chaos

It's been one of those weeks. Since Wednesday, we put our St. Bernard down (my sweet Oscar), had to travel to NYC on Thursday and Friday for a benefit event, had my youngest son's first birthday, celebrated Mother's Day, tended to an ear infection, had a dentist appointment, made it to a one year well-check, etc, etc, etc. Did I mention the full-time job on top of it all? You get the drift. Well, the good news is that I made it through to the other side! And despite the chaos, I managed to not forget about our efforts here at Our 10 Things!

No big before and afters for this post. Just a pile of trash, donations, and a couple of garage sale items.
The weather will be relatively cool for the next couple of days. As a result, I will re-arrange my organizing plans accordingly and venture up into the attic (the attic is not temperature controlled and gets quite steamy). I figure my days are limited up there and I therefore need to take advantage while I can. The attic will take many, many, many hours. I'm just hoping to start chipping away at it while the going is good.

Desk take 3

I spent about a half hour at the desk last night dealing with this stack on the top shelf. It was not something I'd planned to do yesterday but my husband needed to hook up our new-to-us (used) printer! So I needed to clear everything off for him to get to the old one and set up the new one. This one has a SCANNER feature, oh baby! I spent a lot of time going through the papers, deciding what was worth keeping or trashing. I ended up with a decent size trash pile. Among it all, I found missing CDs. Nice to know they aren't lost for ever. I added them to my binder promptly instead of setting them somewhere else to be forgotten. Overall, still a slight stack of things that just don't have a home elsewhere, but I'm really pleased with the results! Lots gone and what's there is stacked in categories instead of just being a heaping pile!

Before:

And after!

goals updated

Just wanted to see where I am on my goals:

This is what I posted Monday:

This week:
-Today will be nothing unless I tackle my purses. Which actually may take several days. I have dumped two of them into a bigger bag. That bag is sitting staring at me, waiting for me to go through it but I don't have the desire yet.
-Tomorrow will be a pass as well. MUST do laundry.
-Wed will be just walk around and grab ten things.
-Thursday- more desk. It's getting there, but still not complete.
-Friday- something in the kitchen.

And here's what really happened:
Monday-- purses, coats, book stack
Tuesday--freezer
Wed-- nothing
Thursday--nothing
Friday-- three kitchen problem spots!

Not too bad, huh?!
Yesterday was just a bad bad day, I would have liked to have been in my house more, but it didn't happen, we were out a lot. So next week the desk will go back on the agenda!

Because I'm leaving town next week my posts will become sporadic, unless I start cleaning out my parents' house...

3 kitchen spots

I did nothing yesterday, but this in total took less than twenty minutes this morning.

The first was a cabinet, I was trying to fit "one more thing" into.
I decided mid way to stop, take a picture and purge, instead of stuff.
Before:
After:

The second was a drawer that was bugging me for a while.
It's the "I don't know what to do with that, so throw it in there" drawer.
Before:

Here's what I threw out: a list of doctors from the ins company, 6 old manuals, a box of last year's tithe envelopes (We're so bad, we never use the envelopes),
Here's the after drawer:

The third was a cabinet, same story as the first one.
I was trying to put something away, but I'd have to just toss it in and hope the door shut,
so I sat down and emptied the whole thing out. Ew. Ew. Ew.Mark was helping...

I threw out two old nasty gross falling apart shelf protector stuff. Again I say, nasty! Also trashed: a metal bread pan that I hate and have three other bread pans, so why hang on to it? Also a rusted cheese grater that we don't ever use. Also a glass cutting board that makes me nervous. And two hospital water mugs we never use.

And the after: TA DA!


So, way more than ten things today, but really it barely took me 15-20 minutes I'd guess between all three. And now I have three new happy places in the kitchen instead of stuff stuffed everywhere. Yippie!

11 minutes

11 minutes.

That is how long it took me to clean out and organize my freezer. Why did I wait so long to do this? I find myself asking this question again and again. Ok so here is the freezer. Story of my life, everything is crammed in there and when I get something new..I cram it in! Sorry for the photo quality in the first 2 pics, my kids were messing w/ my camera and got the lens dirty. I didn't realize it until after I emptied my freezer.
This is what I got rid of:
1. empty box of ice cream sandwiches. There were only 2 left, I didn't need the whole box in there.
2. freezer burned fries
3. freezer burned hashbrowns
4. freezer burned waffles
5. freezer burned stuffed shells
6. freezer burned chicken patties
7. freezer burned sausage links
I was out of stuff to throw away in the freezer so I grabbed 3 more things
8. old bacon that was in the fridge, lol luckily I have back up in my cleaned out freezer
9 & 10. Two chocolate bunnies. I don't need them, my kids get enough sugar and have more than enough candy in the house, they won't miss these.

and here is the after, and it's organized!!!!

p.s. mmmmm monkey bread

Ok I realize this pic below looks no different than the before, lol

All it took was 11 minutes this morning and I can finally exhale about my freezer!

I have two sorta big projects on my brain. Next to this fridge is a kid cabinet and it's a friggin mess. I need to get it done. I've talked about this before. I need to just do it. I also need to clean out my dresser. It's disgusting and guess what-everything is crammed into my drawers, surprising right? UGH. These are my next two things and if I put it out there that I have to do them, then maybe it will make me do them.

10 random things

I didn't have time for a major project yesterday so I threw away just 10 random things. No pics.

1-4. Old sippy cups of my daughter. She has been asking me to throw them away, why was I keeping them?
5-6. Two broken humidifers...again, why was I keeping them?
7. a random art pencil that only goes to one coloring pad, coloring pad is nowhere in site.
8. old pics my kids drew. I felt bad about this but I keep a lot of it, I just can't keep everything.
9. an expired bottle of Aleve
10. an empty box

Three Bags Full

I've been working on Z's room here and there for the past week. I've finally made it through all of the bins of children's clothing and came up with THREE garbage bags full of donations. Remember that Z is my little preemie who we now nicknamed Giant Baby. He skyrocketed through clothing sizes sometimes bypassing a whole size...leaving me a whole lot of mess. His room is just about done. I will post before and afters soon!

My husband and I are headed out of town for a benefit dinner. But, I'll be back to finish this project hopefully by weekend's end!

freezer

I decided to do the freezer yesterday since I had two frozen pizzas to fit in there and they wouldn't fit. After emptying the shelves completely, and organizing as I filled it back up, I was pleased with the make over. It isn't as drastic as some of the fridge/freezer face-lifts have been on here, but I found things I didn't know where in there! Now I have leftovers on the top shelf, meat on the second (with the pizzas), open bags of: fish sticks, skinless boneless chicken, nuggets, etc on the third and then our never ending supply of carbs on the bottom. ((we are blessed enough to know a bread man, so we get bagels, English muffins, bread, buns for free, and we can't eat them all so they go in the freezer. Praying for the day we get a deep freeze!))

All in all 7 items went:

I threw out two bags of nasty growing something veggies--no clue how long they'd been in there.

An empty box of butter.Really? We couldn't throw that out when the last stick was used?!

A left over moved to the fridge for us to eat tomorrow.

Three unidentifiable leftovers, unlabeled.

And the final result: I know in the picture it doesn't look that much different, but it really is so much better! I didn't do the doors, that's for another day. The goal was to fit the pizzas in. LOL

Since that was only 7 things from the freezer, I also walked around and grabbed three "pretty" candle holders that I no longer ever use, and added it to the "to sell" pile in the storage room to make my ten things.

(SORRY about the craziness that is the font in this post. I kept trying to change the font to get it to all match, NO clue why it kept changing on me. No clue what happened.)!

Who knew?

Who knew they made wood hangers for kids? I have a personal hatred of wire and plastic hangers. I will not judge or think twice if you have them, it's just my own personal idiosyncrasy. Anyway, I was shopping at Ollie's (a closeout store) yesterday and came across these: beautiful, gorgeous, non-plastic and non-wire hangers for kids! This small joy prompted my 10 items for today.

1. Plastic hangers from my boys' closets. You know I love a bargain and I did not disappoint. They were 51 cents each.
....and while I was in the closet, I found:
2. Animated gorilla.
3. Changing station/pad.
4. Toy for stroller.
5. Some kind of TV interactive game for kids.

And while at Ollie's, I found new pillows for our porch furniture. So....
6. Old porch pillows.

7. Two small wine fridges. We do not have the appropriate place for them and they have been sitting in our kitchen for two years unused.

8. Over sized mirror that I tried to repaint, but failed.

9. An automatic screwdriver that my son broke last night.

10. Plastic faceplate for an outlet that I switched to a stainless steel one.

We are planning a garage sale for this weekend or next, so it seems easier to get rid of these larger items than if I were just giving them away. Also, it's becoming easier and easier to part with things!

Next up: Continuing the children's clothes purge.