Simplifying Our Mornings Pt. 1

October 10, 2012 By 3 Comments

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When Vera started 1st Grade in September our mornings had to get started 30 minutes earlier than in the past.  I didn’t want to have to wake the kids up any earlier than necessary, so I evaluated how we were doing things and tried to make things more efficient.

Like Stacey mentioned yesterday, the kids and I prepare their clothes a week at a time and put them in organizers in their closet.

I thought that this was already pretty efficient, but this school year we have even taken that a step further.  In the morning instead of having the kids open their closet to take out their clothes, we pull everything out the night before.  Our 3 little ones in preschool and kindergarten also have to take an extra change of clothes (which makes for even more laundry each day…AAHHH!!!), so this includes preparing their backpacks with a clean set of clothes.

By knowing that we have prepared their clothes and backpacks the night before, we are able to eliminate more stress from our mornings so that things flow smoothly and quickly enabling our kids to get as much sleep as possible before the school day starts.

How do you simplify your mornings to help you get out the door in time with as little stress as possible?

Laundry Solutions — Part 1

March 21, 2012 By 5 Comments

Stacey recently shared about the trials she’s experienced in keeping up with laundry as her family has grown.  You can read about her laundry trials and solutions in Part 1 and Part 2of this series.

Early on in adding two more children to our family I didn’t have a good solution for laundy.  We had a hamper in the boys’ room, one in the girls room, and a couple of bigger ones in the master bathroom.  It did not take me long to realize that was not working well.  I’d remember to get clothes out of one bedroom and not another, or I’d think we only had a little dirty laundry and then would realize that both of the kids’ hampers were full.  I eventually took the hampers out of the children’s bedrooms.  I considered a solution like this:

 The only reason I didn’t get a 3 compartment hamper was because I couldn’t find one in China.  What I could find was a laundry hamper like this one from Ikea.  I bought 3 of them — one for whites, mediums, and darks.

This is what our bathroom hampers look like on your average day.

Because we all put our clothes in the same hampers, I know when we have a full load to wash.  Some days they seem to all fill up at the same time, and other days none of them are full.  Those are the days when I try to throw in a load or two of sheets and towels.  I don’t have a schedule for when I wash sheets and towels; I just do it when they are dirty and the washing machine is empty.

For lots of moms, laundry is a dreaded household chore.  I’ve found that through using this system I’m able to keep up with laundry and find it to be one of my easiest tasks.  It only takes a couple of minutes to drag a hamper to the washer, throw them in and start the load.  If I have time when they are dry, I fold them right away.  If I don’t, I throw them on my bed and fold them after Matt is home from work or after the kids are in bed, but I always make sure I fold them before going to bed.  If you are having a hard time keeping up with laundry, give this solution a try.  Just make sure you are not letting your baskets overflow!

If you think this is a good idea, just wait until you see the laundry solution I’m going to share with you tomorrow!

Laundry Trials Part 2

March 14, 2012 By 5 Comments

As I shared in Laundry Trials Part 1, the sudden growth in my family pushed me to start thinking about my laundry process more actively.  It’s not going to do itself and the piles grow faster than I expect.  I want a system that is doable within my daily schedule and flows where my family has the clean clothes they need (ie, my husband’s not searching for clean underwear or I’m not searching for that certain pair of pants for one of the kids).

As I talked to friends about what they do, Charlie shared how she does it with her family of 6 and I now use an adapted version of her plan.  Thanks, Charlie!

  • Dee and I have a hamper with compartments in our bathroom.  I sort towels, lights, darks, and underclothes.  The children don’t have hampers.
  • I aim to wash 2 loads a day during the week and 1 load on Saturdays.
  • I wash one load of Daily Clothes which includes all the kids’ clothes, pajamas, Dee’s and my underclothes, and dish towels for the day.  When any of us are getting dressed at night or in the morning, the clothes go straight into the washer.  If the washer’s not full, I don’t turn it on until we’ve added more (which doesn’t take long).  If the washer is already in use, we use the hanging laundry hamper right in front of the washer.
  • During the week, I wash one load that is ok to sit in the dryer if I don’t have time to fold it right away (towels or Daily Clothes).  I also wash one load of our clothes that need to be folded or hung right away to avoid ironing (Dee’s and my lights or darks).  The order depends on what I’m doing that day.  If I’m out in the morning I start a load early and put it in the dryer before leaving the house.  Then I do the other load in the afternoon where I can dry and fold/hang right after dinner.  If we’re home during the day, I wash in the opposite order.
  • When I fold, I use the drawers in the laundry room to sort as I fold for the children and hang clothes on the rack right above the washer.  This way, if I can’t put the clothes away immediately, there is a place to put the clothes that isn’t messy or in the way.  My laundry room re-do has helped tremendously with my laundry process.  I’ve also just recently started keeping the kids’ pajamas and socks in the laundry room drawers to free up space in their dressers.
Of course, with any plan, I still have to work the plan in order for the plan to work.  If I take a few days off from laundry, it quickly gets out of control.  Thinking through and using this process has helped me the most in my stage of life.

What helps you get your laundry done?

Stacey’s 29-Day Organizational Challenge Reveal

February 29, 2012 By 28 Comments


**Be sure to check out our current giveaway HERE.**


Well today is the Reveal Day for OrgJunkie’s 29-Day Organizational Challengeand I am super excited about this! I chose my laundry/office area in my house to organize. It is either a large laundry closet or small laundry room that flows into a former storage closet that we use for more laundry work space and a desk/office space. Here are the weekly updates along the way:

And here are my results with BEFORE and AFTER pics:
BEFORE – looking into the laundry room
AFTER – with a bifold door that opened up the space tremendously!

This was by far the biggest improvement to this space. It was constantly annoying to me that I couldn’t open the dryer with closing the laundry room door. Now, I can leave the door open and still hear the kids while I’m folding laundry. :)

BEFORE – disaster behind the door with piles of clothes coming out of the dryer
AFTER – trash bin on the wall and no piles of clothes!

I really loved this trash bin when I saw it at Ikea. I have always just hung a plastic grocery bag on the hinges of the door. And it just looked so messy. This is perfect!

This was another great Ikea find. Laundry hampers on the wall? Love it! This really helps prevent the piles of clothes on the floor. My girls will actually put their clothes in this hamper because it’s right beside the door.

BEFORE – cluttered shelves above the washer and dryer
AFTER

Here we replaced the 2 storage shelves with 1 high hanging shelf to hang clothes. I replaced the boxes with matching boxes to store old pictures and keepsakes that are now labeled. I got rid of all those hangers and decided to just hang any stained clothes I needed to work on instead of just piling them up. This has worked great and is much cleaner. Also, keep reading for what I did with all the other stuff on those shelves.

BEFORE – more laundry work space with hanging shelf and more piles
AFTER

We took down the hanging shelf in this area since I really needed the hanging space close to the dryer. Here I put a wire basket system that I had in another closet for sorting clothes as I fold. Each child has a drawer and the bottom drawer is for clothes that they have outgrown that need to be put in their storage boxes in their closets. Oh yeah, and I got rid of the 3 bulky laundry baskets I had and only kept the 2 collapsible ones that neatly store behind these wire drawers when I’m not using them.

I love love love this! Before I had a basket where I threw in stray socks that didn’t yet have their match. It just ended up a bigger and bigger pile where I couldn’t find any matches. This keeps the strays right in front of me all the time. I went through that big pile of socks I had hope of finding a match for so long and gave them to a crafty friend who could use them for a project.

These great little Ikea shelves were perfect for all my cleaning products. And they fit great on this tiny little unused corner beside the washer. Love it!

BEFORE – ironing center and dirty clothes hampers
AFTER

I took the ironing center with hampers out of this space and put it in the master bath. I love how it has opened up this space. It has worked really well to have laundry sorted before it even comes to the laundry room. That way, I’m not continually piling up dirty clothes here. The goal would be just to bring in what dirty clothes are to be washed that day and have only clean clothes in this area. Now, that’s the plan anyway.

BEFORE – drying rack that sat completely in the way when in use
AFTER – retractable clothes line

I love this thing!! It just goes all the way down the wall and you can actually walk by it when clothes are on it.

BEFORE – desk right beside ironing center with shelves of paper underneath
AFTER

We moved the desk to a different wall and I really like it. It creates more of a division between the laundry area and the office area.

BEFORE – behind the desk with 2 filing cabinets, piles of unused artwork and bookshelves
AFTER

Can you believe that is actually the same space? I took out those bookshelves and one entire filing cabinet. That felt good! A lot of the contents from the filing cabinet and the notebooks on the shelves needed to be thrown away and the part that we want to keep, we have ready to take to a scanner so we can just store them as PDFs.

More pics of the shelves

I love these shelves and brackets! They’re simple but decorative and added just the right touch. They hold a lot more than we expected too. We could even use the bottom shelf for our paper supply instead of having shelves under the desk. Again, vertical storage saves the day!

OrgJunkie’s Reveal Day Questions:
1. What space did you decide to organize and why?
I chose the laundry/office area in my home.  It is an odd space that connects to a former storage closet that I use for more laundry work space and a small cubby for an office/desk space. After almost two straight years of nesting from back to back pregnancies, I have cleaned out, rearranged, purged, and organized almost every nook and cranny of my home. In spite of all this, this is one area that stays cluttered and chaotic.  I have to spend a lot of time in the laundry area and I want to spend more time in the office area.  

2. What steps did you take to ensure you completed the space within the 29 day timeline?
The weekly update link-ups were so motivating for me.  Having to write about the progress each week was key in helping me see where I was in the process and where I needed to go.  We tried to use our weekends to do the bulk of shopping/researching different products and solutions we needed and used the early part of the week to implement those solutions.

3. What was the hardest part of the challenge for you and how did you overcome it?
I went in knowing I wanted a “better” space, but did not have a clear plan for what I was trying to accomplish.  I spent the first week asking different friends and family to look at the space with me.  They asked great questions that I didn’t have an answer for.  I also browsed catalogs, websites, and the aisles of Ikea for inspiration.

4. What did you do with the “stuff” you were able to purge out of your newly organized space?
I found a few bags of just plain trash in there.  I used Facebook and word of mouth to advertise what I was getting rid of and gave unneeded items (bulky laundry baskets and all those extra hangers) to friends that could use them.  I repurposed a couple different sets of shelves to different closets in my house to help organize those spaces better.  I stored our unused artwork and keepsake notebooks/material in our storage shed.  I sorted through an entire filing cabinet and about a dozen big 3-ring binders to get rid of.  I now have the paper that we want to be able to access stacked and ready to go to a scanner so we can store them as PDFs.

5. Tell me one of your proudest moments during this challenge?
After thinking through a few different options for the standard door that took up too much space when open and talking to several friends about what to do, finding and installing the right solution was great! The bi-fold door has added 2 feet of usable space to that area.  It has felt so good to just be able to walk into the laundry room and have room to work!

6. Explain any organizing “tools” you used to help you create additional space and to establish some limits and boundaries?
Vertical storage has been the biggest help to me in this challenge.  Because this is such an odd-shaped, cramped space, I just don’t have a lot of floor space to work with.  Anything I put in the floor seems to block the walking space.  So the two sets of shelves, hanging laundry hamper, sock organizer, retractable clothesline and trash bin all went on the wall.  Getting all of those things off the floor is definitely what opened up so much space.


7. What is ONE piece of advice you’d give to someone else to encourage them on their organizational journey?
Communication and collaboration is huge in an organizational challenge.  Use friends to ask questions, look at the space with you, and shop with you to find different ideas and solutions.  It is so easy to get stuck in the details of the process that you don’t see solutions anymore.  Other people have fresh eyes and ideas that can help tremendously.


Thank you to everyone that helped me with this, listened to me talk about it, gave me ideas, and went shopping with me.  And thanks to my husband and brother Chris for installing everything while I gave directions.  

Thank you, Laura from OrgJunkie!  This has been a great journey for me and I really love this space now!

Leave a comment if you have been part of the Organizational Challenge.  I would love to see your spaces!!  

Stacey’s Organizational Challenge Update #3

February 23, 2012 By 7 Comments
**Be sure to check out our current giveaway HERE.**
I’ve joined Org Junkie in her 29 Day Organizational Challenge and have been tackling my odd-sized laundry/office area.  This has been my journey so far:

I’ve been following a loose version of OrgJunkie’s PROCESS to get organized.  I got a good Plan after the first week.  I’ve still been doing a lot of Removing and Organizing.  This week I got rid of one of my filing cabinets and gave it to a friend.  I did keep one of them with our essential paperwork, but as I was consolidating, I definitely see a need to revisit those files soon to better organize and purge even more.
We have so much paper in these filing cabinets and in three-ring binders that I don’t want to trash but don’t want to store anymore either.  I’ve been researching options to easily and inexpensively scan all of it and save as PDFs on our computer.  So here’s the pile I took out of the filing cabinet that I still need a solution for along with all those notebooks.

With the other areas, I’ve been able to move on to Containerizing.  I found this great hanging mesh laundry hamper at Ikea and I love it!  Since the laundry area is so tight and a lot of the work space is through the next doorway, my little ones just don’t walk through there to put clothes in a hamper.  And I don’t have a lot of floor space to work with.  Vertical storage has been a great solution for me in several ways!

These shelves (with a couple more support brackets) are going to be great for our books.
And I love these shelves for a seemingly useless small wall space.
With all this vertical storage, I have opened up the floor space and just don’t feel so cramped.  However, by far the biggest improvement in space is replacing our door with this bi-fold door!  It feels like the laundry area gained five feet.
From the outside
From inside
These improvements already feel so huge and I’m actually looking forward to doing laundry in there!  It doesn’t feel like such a cave.  Now is the time for me to continue to Evaluate how things are flowing and Solve any remaining issues.  I also want to add a couple more cute touches if I’m able.   Looking forward to finishing this space!

Stacey’s Organizational Challenge – Update #2

February 17, 2012 By 3 Comments

I’m still working on my laundry room/office area for OrgJunkie’s 29 Day Organizational Challenge.  If you’re just tuning in now, you can see my before pictures here and my first update here.

My main focus this week has been purging and either donating, storing, or re-purposing purged items in different areas of the house.  I haven’t gotten any of the big projects started yet, but all this has been necessary to just clear out the space.

I took the shelves that used to hold all that messy looking gift wrap above the washer and put them in the bottom of the twins’ closet for extra shoes.  With four kids, being in between sizes and seasons, we have lots of shoes we’re not using yet, but will be soon.  All those little shoes fit really good on these shelves.

I took out all the infant size hangers and bagged them up ready to pass on to my sister-in-law, Dana, who will be having a sweet baby girl in April.  I still have a lot of hangers to get rid of, but this is a start!

I’m getting rid of all my bulky laundry baskets and keeping only the collapsible ones.  They’re going to Goodwill tomorrow along with a couple pair of jeans I finally admitted I just don’t like and need to get rid of. Purging is contagious!

Here’s the rest of the report:
PROGRESS:
Laundry

  • Took down the shelves above the washer/dryer
  • Removed all the hangers & got some matching same size hangers from a friend to replace them
  • Ordered red clothespins and a retractable clothesline
Can not wait to get rid of this thing.  It’s just in the way in a small space.

Office

  • removed unused artwork from behind chair and put in storage

PLAN:

Laundry

  • Replace laundry room door with a bifold door.

Office

  • Get wall hanging shelves for the books.
  • Purge contents of one filing cabinet so I can remove it.  I really want to scan all this paper from the filing cabinet and lots of notebooks and store them as PDFs.  I just can’t find an inexpensive way to do this.  Any ideas? (It’s a lot of paper.)
Do you have any other ideas to help this space?

Stacey’s Organizational Challenge – Update #1

February 9, 2012 By 8 Comments

I’m tackling my laundry/office area this month to try and get it under control and make it a more pleasant place to be.  In case you missed it, I posted Before pictures last week.  My biggest goals this week have been:

  1. Get the laundry caught up so I can actually move in there!
  2. Purge any unnecessary stuff out of the room.
  3. Get a clear plan for how I want to use the space.
I have had lots of consultants over to listen to me ramble, look at it with me, ask questions, give ideas, and help me clean out stuff.  (Thank you so much Rebecca, Jill, Donna, Erin, Kari, Mom and Dee!)  Almost every one of them have asked, “What’s your plan?” or “What are you trying to do in this area?”  And I just haven’t had a clear answer other than doing laundry and having a desk space.  My friend Kari and I went out Saturday to browse Ikea to get ideas.  I also have Ikea’s catalog sitting by my bed that I have looked through a hundred times.  I love their theme of getting the most out of small spaces.  So here’s what I’ve come up with so far.
PROBLEM AREAS:

Laundry

  • Shelves above the washer/dryer look very messy and cluttered.
    • too many hangers
    • overflowing pile of mismatched socks
    • messy pile of stained clothes I need to work on
    • gift bags on top shelf, although stored well, just look messy
  • Laundry baskets are big and bulky and often end up in the way.
  • I need a better place to put clothes coming out of the dryer if I don’t have time to fold right away.
  • The hanging rod is too far from the dryer, so I don’t use it like I want.
  • The door to the laundry room takes up a lot of work space.  It has to be closed in order to open the dryer.
  • My drying rack, while easily collapsible and stored away, is bulky and in the way when in use.

Office

  • Paper shelves under desk get messy and are in the way.
  • Messy cords from computer are visible right when you walk in.
  • Area behind the chair is too cramped – just too much stuff back there.

PROGRESS:
Laundry

  • Pulled out the washer/dryer to clean behind and find any stray socks (There weren’t as many back there as I thought there would be).
Ummmm, I mean Dee did.  Thanks honey!!
  • Moved the ironing center downstairs to master bath.
  • Cleaned off the shelves above the washer/dryer.
    • Gift bags are now stored in another closet
    • Repurposed two memo boards to hang stray socks  (Love this!!)
  • Repurposed a basket system (set of wire basket drawers) so I can sort laundry as I fold and have a neat place for it to go without laundry baskets sitting around.  Each child has a drawer. (thinking about adding cute labels to this)

Office

  • Turned the desk around to a different wall.
  • Moved the paper shelves from under the desk to on top.
  • Took out the bookshelves.

PLAN (so far):

Laundry

  • Take down the 2 shelves above washer/dryer and replace with one high shelf/rod to hang clothes.
  • Get rid of all those extra hangers.
  • Replace laundry room door with a bifold door. (So excited about this one!!)
  • Hang retractable clothes line to replace drying rack.

Office

  • Get wall hanging shelves for the books.
  • Purge contents of one filing cabinet so I can remove it.
  • Remove all unused artwork sitting behind chair.
Well, that’s where I stand for now.  Thanks for all the ideas and suggestions!  It truly helps me get thinking about different options.  So, keep it coming!
Do you have any ideas to help this space?

Go to orgjunkie.com to see more organizing projects!

Stacey’s Organizational Challenge

February 1, 2012 By 19 Comments

Michelle has already announced that we are taking the 29 Day Organizational Challenge with OrgJunkie this month.  She shared about her upcoming playroom overhaul and my laundry/office space definitely needs some work! 
After almost two straight years of nesting from back to back pregnancies, I have cleaned out, rearranged, purged, and organized almost every nook and cranny of my home. In spite of all this, there is still one area that stays cluttered and chaotic. We have an odd space that is either a small laundry room or large laundry closet. It connects to a former storage closet that I use for more laundry work space and a small cubby for an office/desk space.  I have to spend a lot of time in the laundry area and I want to spend more time in the office area.  

I want the laundry area to be:
  • more organized
  • easier to work in
  • just cuter. 

I want the office area to be:

  • less cluttered 
  • functional
  • a peaceful space to get work done

So, here it is, the real deal, folks.  It is in major disarray right now and I didn’t straighten anything before taking these pictures.

Come on in!  By the way, this door isn’t halfway open to look inviting.  I just can’t open it all the way because of the pile of laundry behind it.

And, here is the embarrassing mess behind the door.  This is usually where clean laundry gets piled up coming out of the dryer if I don’t have time to put it away right then.  One of the problems here is that the dryer is behind the door, so when I am faithfully folding clothes right out of the dryer, the door has to be closed to work.  I definitely don’t enjoy working in this cramped little space with the door closed.

Above the washer and dryer, I have great shelves, but they get piled up with stained clothes that need more work and mismatched socks.  It’s also storage for laundry products and the top shelf holds old boxes of pictures and my stash of gift bags that I pull from on birthdays and Christmas.  And I just think I have too many hangers.  There are definitely plenty of clothes that need to hung right now, but I don’t think I could use all of those.

Directly to the left of the washer and dryer is a former storage closet.  We took the door down to give more space and added a shelf and an ironing center with divided laundry hampers underneath.  The shelf and hampers are very helpful to use except they are not right next to the dryer where I’m pulling clothes from and not next to the door where we are walking in to put dirty clothes.  So, as you can see, clothes get piled on the floor.

And this is where I try to spend a few minutes every evening ironing at least one of Dee’s dress shirts.
Then there’s the office/desk space.  It sits directly to the right of the ironing board and just holds the desk with computer, shelves with paper underneath and lots of stuff behind the chair.

There are two filing cabinets and a tall bookshelf right behind the chair as well as a stack of pictures that Dee used to have in his full-room office.  That got taken away long ago when I was pregnant with Karis.  So, it’s all boiled down to this.  A desk crammed into a cluttered space right beside piles of clothes waiting on me.

So, there it is and it needs a lot of help.  I am tempted to think about tearing out walls, but this is not a remodeling challenge. :)  And we don’t have the funds for that.  So, I would love suggestions and ideas!!  We’re going to be posting updates on how things are going every week.  So, stay tuned to see how it’s coming along.  And we would love any suggestions you may have for ways to get these spaces better organized.

Not Exactly The Container Store

September 22, 2011 By 3 Comments

The Container Store just opened a new site in Charlotte.  I haven’t gone yet.  I’m not really the shopper, browser type.  I usually like to have a specific goal, go in, buy it, and leave.  But this is not the case with organizational products.  I really could roam through those aisles for hours, more than shoes or clothes or jewelry or music.  Feels rather homemaker-nerdy, doesn’t it?  And while I would love to have the budget to sustain those designer, organizational sets for my kitchen or closets or office at The Container Store or Ikea or even Target, I just don’t.  However, this is the level I think and process on a lot, how to better organize all the stuff in the space I have to use it or hide it or store it more efficiently.  
I’ve noticed an unintentional trend in a lot of my cabinets lately…plastic bins.  I would like those cool roll-out shelves, but what I have are plastic bins I bought from Dollar Tree and ones I used in my former life as a first grade teacher.  I am admittedly a pack rat and have to talk myself through getting rid of anything, especially any type of storage container, that I just might be able to use again.  I found several white bins in our shed that used to hold books in my classroom, cleaned out the spider webs, and they work perfectly.  They appear in a few different places in my house…
  1. Every bathroom has them under the sink holding all the bottles of various lotions, makeup, extra toothpaste, and all the things I hoard or store under there.
  2. The toy closet has 6 small bins and 2 or 3 large bins for different kinds and sizes of toys.
  3. The laundry mini-room/large closet has 2 bins for dirty dish rags waiting to be washed and one for socks that have lost their mate hoping to be reunited.
  4. A lower cabinet in the kitchen now houses all plastic ware – kids’ plates, cups, bowls, utensils and all food storage containers.  There are bins for each type of dish – one with just sippy cups, one for plates, one for bowls, and one small one for utensils.  It really helps to pull out the bin of cups when I need to get some out without them all falling over in the cabinet.
  5. Another lower cabinet is like a corner cabinet, but poorly designed.  It’s really big but has a single door opening which means there’s this abyss of small appliances and large bowls that you can’t get to.  I have hated it for the 6 ½ years we have lived here.  It’s always a mess and you have to almost unpack the entire cabinet to get to anything.  So this year I pulled out some trusty plastic bins that are large enough to hold several items in one but small enough to move around and get in and out of that darned cabinet door.   Why didn’t I do that sooner?


While I still love the idea of permanent pull-out shelves, I’m probably too frugal/cheap to ever invest in them.  I did look into it once but just couldn’t swallow the price.  Maybe if we ever build a house I’ll have them included in all the cabinets. Until then, my dollar store and old classroom bins work just fine.

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