With the new addition set to arrive in less than 6 months, I finally decided to start our home organization challenge. Because we want to get almost everything done before then and because there are actually a lot of items on the 52 week line-up that do not apply to our home, we are condensing it to more of a 22 week home organization challenge modified based on our needs. I've updated the main list here so it's broken up by weekly goals.
It actually really started because I had to switch out my entire closet of clothes anyway. There wasn't a lot of cleaning up to do of the closet, just getting rid of clothes I will never wear and transferring everything from my closet into bins and the clothes from bins to the closet.
The second goal for the first week was the linen closet. Night. Mare.
What you see here is terrifying. We have sheets, and pillowcases, and other miscellaneous bedding on the top 2nd-3rd shelves crammed in there with no rhyme or reason. The 3rd-4th shelves have bathroom towels, kitchen towels, and rags. The 5th shelf has a mix of kitchen towels, some wash cloths, maybe, and a bucket load of "stuff". This "stuff" includes shampoo and conditioner samples, bathroom sprays (I got like 20 of them for free. And we don't use them. Awesome.), a collection of unused toothbrushes, sunblock, etc.) Underneath that last shelf resting on the floor you can see three cylindrical bins of animal food: one for the cat food, two for the dog food.
This linen closet irritates me for many reasons. The obvious reason is that it was so crammed with junk that I could NEVER find what I needed without digging around through everything first. Another reason: it was obviously an inefficient use of space. A more organized closet would hold so much more storage. Lastly: Every time I went to find sunblock this summer something would inevitably fall out of the closet and hit me. Every. Single. Time. There is nothing that irritates me more than crap falling out of a closet or cabinet when I open it because there is too much sh** crammed in there.
On one of my days off from work while C was napping I completely emptied the linen closet and got to work. I started by making a donate pile for the towels and sheets that I just didn't like or didn't want anymore. I folded up all of the bedding sets and shoved the sheets inside the corresponding pillow case. The top two shelves were designated as the bedding shelves.
The third shelf is my favorite because it's the prettiest and has extra space! Unheard of. The white basket was a clearance find at The Container Store for less than $10 and holds my numerous room sprays. I couldn't really find any cheap storage solutions for my sample size shampoos, conditioners, etc. or for my excess number of toothbrushes so I decided to make my own boxes out of fabric and an empty plastic glove box or plastic mesh stuff for the toothbrush box. I love how they turned out!
The last shelves were used for bathroom towels and pool towels. I wrapped each set of bathroom towels with a hand towel so the whole set could easily be pulled from the closet. I also picked up the under the shelf wire basket from The Container Store. I absolutely love that idea because it's an easy way to keep the smaller towels from getting swallowed in the closet.
We bought some rectangular bins for the animal food (why we thought the round ones were a good idea for our square space is beyond me) and bought one big enough to hold all of the dog's food instead of having to store it in two. They didn't actually both fit into the closet though so the toilet paper moved from the coat closet to the linen closet and was placed in the adorable bright orange basket also from The Container Store while the cat food took its place in the coat closet.
The final touch, and my very favorite part of my newly organized linen closet is the over the door rack that I installed (you can guess where it came from...). This created SOOO much storage space that I didn't have before allowing me to clear out some stuff like the bars of soap and sample sizes of contact solution from our tiny bathroom cabinets and putting them someplace that just makes more sense for storage. I even have an entire basket on the door for sunblock so I will never be attacked while searching for sunblock again!
74. Get Passports for me and C
In preparation for our tropical vacation coming up not nearly soon enough, C and I finally got our passports. Is it sad that this is the very first item I have checked off of the Grown Up Business section of the list?
29. Go to a Film on the Rocks at Red Rocks
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| IMDb - The Princess Bride |
At the end of July we went to the Film on the Rocks showing of (classic movie number two of ten) The Princess Bride at Red Rocks Amphiteatre. Neither E nor I had seen the movie before and I didn't realize it was a Robin Hood: Men in Tights type movie (not a bad thing). I ALSO didn't realize that there would be an itty bitty Fred Savage! That totally made it that much better. We both enjoyed the movie and the weather was perfect for it.
57. Give a gift a month
And the best wife of the year award goes to me! C broke E's PlayStation controller a while back so every time you breathed on it wrong it would tweak out and start rewinding or fast forwarding or hop to the menu. So this loving wife got her husband a new Play Station remote. Now, I want you to imagine waking up at 2 in the morning and sleepily looking for a black controller somewhere in the bed with you on the black comforter so you can turn the PlayStation off. Not an easy task in the dark in the middle of the night, right? Now imagine if the controller was PINK! Yep. True story. I got him a pink controller to solve his middle of the night issue. Before I start getting hate mail from all you men, he agreed to it. And we were actually going to go with blue but the pink one was on sale.
64. Go swimming once a month
We were planning on going to the Colorado Dragon Boat festival after C's gym class the other weekend but then we got down to the shuttle parking lot, took one look at the giant line of people waiting for the next shuttle, and went right back home. There was no way we were going to try to stand in that line in the heat for who knows how long with a two year old that close to nap time. Now we know for next year: get there REALLY early. So instead we went home, picked up our swim gear and headed to the pool. The highlight of this month's swimming trip was definitely a toss-up between slam dunking his ball in the basketball hoop and jumping in from the side of the pool.
65. Go to the zoo once a month
We tried to get to the zoo early (not that we ever don't) this time around so we could try to see the new baby snow leopard before the crowds showed up. We did get to see him but didn't get an excellent picture. Here he is!
We also made a peacock friend while we were there. I think he was trying to catch my eye....
I'm pretty sure C thought walking so close to the crazy bird was a bad idea.
And what kind of a zoo trip would it be without stopping by the penguins for my boys?
94. Buy flowers once a month for the house
52 weeks of home improvement?! wow, I thought I had a lot to do around my place!
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