confessions of a clutterer: kitchen day two

Even the best laid plans....

I was going to focus on the table and island today, but then I thought maybe I should save that for last.  Let it collect the stuff off of everything else that needs to be sorted and removed or taken to where it belongs.  I thought maybe I should work on the metal shelving we have.  I started that and then I got sidetracked by the cabinets.  Yeah, it doesn't make sense.

So here's where we were in the beginning:

I didn't get too far with the shelving.  With all the snacks we had on this first section I realized we have snacks and food all over the kitchen without too much order to it.  So I started going through all the cabinets.  It was incredibly ridiculous.  I couldn't believe how much expired food we had in our cupboards.  But then there was so much of it.....

The 'bread' cupboard has bread and everything else in it.

The cabinet underneath the bread nook has a ton of canned foods & snacks.

An add on pantry-like cupboard.  Everything from oatmeals, chips, cookies, drinks & snacks were in here.

These are the pull out drawers in the island.  Teas and crystal light packets on the left and pastas and other dried goods, dressings in the right.  What I didn't take picture of are the drawers in between these cabinets.  Full of pastas, lentils, dried soup packets, candy, etc.  Above the cabinets is a junk drawer and my drawer of zip lock bags & parchment paper, wax paper, that kind of stuff.

Now, I didn't get through everything.  The junk drawer is a project in itself.  What I tried to do was go through all the food and get rid of the expired items.  I had stuff that expired in 2009!  One of the problems I found is that our cabinets are deep and we are lazy.  Rarely do I go through what we have already before I go grocery shopping.  So may boxes of Wheat Thins!  One of my hopes is that with all this cleaning I will keep a better working knowledge of what's in my kitchen so I can use it up instead of letting it go to waste.

I ended up with this:

For the first time ever I oiled the butcher block!  It looks so different now!  I thinned out the snacks and got rid of most of the baking stuff.  A lot of things I will never use (I'm not much of a baker so the basics is probably all I need).  What I do use, for not I put them in a cabinet that has other baking stuff in it.  Ray wants to move the bottom shelves up so the Roomba can get under there.  Once that's done I'll figure out how to use that shelf.

This looks so much better!  I put our bags of chips that were in the bread nook on the bottom shelf with some of the snacks that I eat.  Emma's snacks I kept on the metal shelving since that's easier for her to see and get to.  The canned foods and dressings, marinades are on the top shelf, but in a way that I can spin it and see everything clearly.

The bread nook has just bread in it!  Woo hoo!  Well, bread & tortillas.

Here's the right side pull out drawer.  I took my dried goods (oatmeal, red lentils, quinoa, barley, coconut flakes, chia seeds & wild rice) and put them in some of the canning jars I have.

Ahhhhhh pantry.  Did you know that chips only last a couple of months unopened?  I didn't.  Now I do.

My plan of getting areas done in chunks didn't go exactly as planned, but I did go through most of the food cabinets.  I can get behind that.  I've got to figure out what to do about our garbage though.  Monday was garbage day and by Monday evening our freshly emptied garbage can was filled up again.

Little by little we're getting there!

confessions of a clutterer: kitchen day one

Today is day two of my get out house de-cluttered project.  I've decided to start with the kitchen for a couple of reasons:

1. It's where I spend most of my time cleaning.  Every surface in the kitchen is covered.  We have the kitchen table, an island, a butcher block, shelves & my desk.  There's always stuff on them.  I'll clean them off and the 2 days later they're covered again.  I don't know how it happens.
2. It's the biggest project in the house.  Part of me worries that this will overwhelm me and I'll give up, but I feel like I'm determined in a whole new way and I'll finish what I started.
3. I could break it up into smaller sections so it wouldn't be so overwhelming - I hope.
4. The kitchen is the center of the house.  Everything happens in the kitchen and if we could get that under control everything would flow better.
5. Once I finish the kitchen I'll be able to do anything!!

I tackled the desk first.  It's been a mess pretty much since we moved it from my 'office' (which is now Olivia's room) to the kitchen.  Here's my before:

I did a really bad job of capturing the awfulness of this area!  It doesn't look that bad in this picture (but it does look pretty messy).  I have a cart next to the desk which I got to organize my paper and junk since the desk only has that one drawer.  The cart is full of everything that I didn't want on the table.  Also, underneath the desk is a shelf of sorts that you can kind of see at the bottom of the picture.  There's no reason to that madness.

Here's what it looks like now:

Soooooo much better!

I cleared everything off, either threw it away or filed it away.  I have two file boxes.  One for my Girl Scout troop stuff and one for my personal stuff.  In the cart I have paper, photo paper, envelopes, pens, pencils, markers & notebooks.

I love repurposing my stuff.  I use the tea tins for rubber bands and erasers (I use a lot of pencils).  The Glee card game was a gift from a friend, but no one could pay it with me because either they hadn't watched the first season or they just weren't Gleeks like me.  So I took the cards out and I'm using the tin for my furoshikis (Japanese fabric used for wrapping presents or food containers to take to a party, etc.).  And even though the Eclipse gum container is plastic and kind of plain, the top sticker has Edward, Bella & Jacob on it so I had to find something to do with it.  It carries my thumbtacks.  :)

Awhile ago Ray and I saw these sugar skull tequila bottles at Costco except they were MUCH bigger and kind of pricey for tequila I never tasted.  We were at BevMo looking for something and found two of them in small baby versions.  Score!  Ray went to another BevMo and found the third one so we have a complete set!  I also have my yummy smelling Orange Clove candle that was a gift from one of my GS Moms last year.  It takes me forever to burn them.  I'm pretty stingy with my candles.  I don't know why!

That's what I got done on day one.  Stay tuned for day two....cabinets!!

confessions of a clutterer

A month ago I got to reading more about a bunch of different ideas all centered around living better.  Everything from doing more yoga, eating whole, real foods and living a little more frugally.  It all started with all natural insect repellant (that I haven't tried yet).  I found that recipe and from there found another blog and another blog and another blog and so on.  It's been enlightening, to say the least.  Some are a little over the top for me.  A little too focused on religion or too strict or I get that underlying sense of judgement, but lots of bloggers out there are all about doing what you can and they'll help you get to wherever that may be.

The library has also been a great resource.  I've looked into raising chickens, soap making, green cleaning, whole food cooking & canning.  While I do love finding info online I also like having that book in my hand so I can quickly flip through while I'm in the process.  It's not quite the same 'flipping' through my iPad to find what I need.  There's lots of reviews on every book I've looked into and some people love them and some hate them so instead of spending hundreds of dollars on books that end up not being what I want I've been checking them out from the library when I can find them and then today I bought a couple that I really loved.

One of them is Green Clean by Linda Mason Hunter & Mikki Halpin It's a great little guide to cleaning.  Sounds simple enough, and it is, but I think it's fantastic.  The book itself is waterproof & stain resistant which means I can have it nearby while I'm spraying or mopping and not worry about ruining the book.  Inside you'll find a short explanation as to why we should try to use less chemicals and what's really in the brand name cleaning products we use without really thinking about it.

Then, they systematically go room by room with a scheduled check list for daily, weekly & monthly chores.  Here and there they've peppered the book with helpful tidbits on how to clean keep your dishwasher clean, houseplants that will purify your air quality the best, and what you can and can't recycle.

I don't mind cleaning.  In fact, I kind of enjoy it.  It's one of those things that you can immediately see the results.  There's an great feeling of accomplishment when you've gotten your house clean.  The thing that's difficult for me is that no matter how much cleaning I do, it seems like it's neverending.  I know there's always going to be dirty dishes and dirty clothes, but I'm talking about how there's just everything everywhere.  I can't keep up with it.

I guess the step that I missed was the 'getting rid of the clutter' step.

Now, I come from a long line of clutter collectors.  I wouldn't necessarily call us 'hoarders', but it's close.  We're sentimental and we all have collections of stuff.  Ticket stubs, t-shirts, baby toys, figurines, etc.  When Ray and I got married I had a lot of junk.  As the years have gone by I've whittled most of it down.  My parents dropped off crates of baby clothes, school work, yearbooks, toys and blankets a couple of years ago.  At one time they had the intention of buying us each a footlocker and keeping our mementos in there.  Of course, it spread to a few crates in addition to that footlocker.

After making sure my parents didn't care what I did with everything I got rid of most of it and only kept what could fit in the footlocker.  I have my mementos from bar crawling, Vegas trips, ticket stubs and stuff from when Ray and I were dating in a small box about double the size of a shoebox.  I have a book (School Years Memory Keeper) that I got at Costco that I keep a few things from each year of school for Emma and a birthday memory book where her birthday party memories go in.  So not too bad.

Of course, that's not it.  I have a crate of Buffy the Vampire Slayer (TV, not movie) and I have bookshelves cluttered with not only books, but Twilight junk, figurines and Legos.  So it's not completely under control!

But after reading Green Clean I'm determined to get everything under control.  I'd like to get rid of at least 75% of my clutter.  I feel like if I can do that across the board, linens, kitchen gear, paperwork, toys, clothes, etc. then cleaning will become a much more satisfying chore.

My plan for the next couple of weeks (although I'm hoping it takes only a week *fingers crossed*) is to get our house under control.  If I can get that done then I can focus on getting our meal plans done and get rid of the processed foods and move onto my other projects.....and work on convincing Ray we need to raise a couple of chickens.

All the advice says to start and finish one room - or section - at a time.  Here's my to-do list:

• Kitchen/Dining Room
1. My desk
2. Dining room table & kitchen island
3. Kitchen cabinets
4. Refrigerators - inside & top
5. Kitchen shelves

• Living Room
1. Baby's toys
2. Bookshelves/cabinets

• Hallway
1. Linen closet
2. Bookshelf
3. Coat closet

• Master Bedroom
1. Night stand
2. 6' Bookshelves
3. Short bookshelf
4. Closet
5. Dresser

• Master Bathroom
1. Sink Cabinet
2. Above the toilet cabinet
3. Shower

• Guest Bathroom
1. Sink Cabinet
2. Above the toilet cabinet

• Emma's Room
1. Closet
2. Bookshelf
3. Toy Bins
4. Dresser

• Olivia's Room
1. Bookshelf
2. Wardrobe
3. Crib drawer
4. Changing table
5. Closet

It sounds like a lot now that I've typed it all up.  Ugh.  Some it's not going to be take too long.  I can probably do both bathrooms & the hallway closets in an hour.  And Emma's room has been de-cluttered so I just have to make sure we haven't gotten out of control there again.  Olivia's closet is going to be somewhat of a nightmare because it's basically full of stuff of mine.  Olivia's room used to be my office and when we cleaned out her room I never got to the closet.  *sigh*

I've taken 'before' pictures and I'll post them as I finish.  It's pretty embarrassing, but I'm going to show you anyway!  I worked on my desk today, but I'll post about that tomorrow since this has turned into a 70 page post already!

Here we go!