400 Item Purge Complete!!

Well, we did it!! Our family set out to purge 400 items from our home last weekend and we accomplished that feat!!

First, we made a plan! In order to make this an easy job for my kids (and husband, who is really like a third kid) we planned to purge areas where we could get the most bang for our buck. In our house, that meant clothes and books!

I knew that both girls had an overabundance of shirts and sweaters in their drawers, to the point where Miss A could barely close her drawer! My mom is a serial shopper and if she gets a great deal, my lucky girls get new outfits… sometimes three or four at a time!

Miss A got right into the project – we emptied her three (yes, three!) drawers containing shirts and sweaters and let her pick choose which to keep and which to purge. I can proudly say that she managed to let go of 45 tops!! And she still has a ton of clothes left!

Miss E was too busy playing outside with her little friends to help out at the beginning, so I meandered through her tops and found about 25 that she could let go.

Since Miss A was on such a tear, she went next to her (massive) stuffy collection that was living in the corner of her closet. After sorting through her beloved Beanie Boo’s and Webkinz and other items she couldn’t bear to part with, she managed to find over 30 stuffies to send on to loving homes. Miss E also pulled out 20 stuffies to add to the pile! Unfortunately for the neighbors she brought the pile downstairs and let the kids next door have first dibs!!

The girls also agreed to part with over 30 coloring books, and 60 books! We passed our favorite books down to my niece and nephews and donated the rest of the books.

Not to be outdone, the hubs finally managed to part with about 15 shirts (hardly 100 items from him, but it’s better than nothing!!). He also promised to filter through the kids dvd collection and pull out anything that they have grown out of… maybe… next weekend…

At this point, even though we had made great progress, our purge total was only at 225 items! My turn!! A quick purge of my drawers and closet found 74 items that found their way to better homes, 12 holiday themed towels that I didn’t even bring out this past Christmas, a box of wine glasses, almost all of my cookie cutters, some pillows, six coats and some more toys – 402!!

You would think after a purge this size I’d be super excited with our progress and have a ton of new space? Nope. Now I have stacks and bags of stuff to be donated, I have a pile of empty containers from clearing out closets and bins and I have a million ideas of ways to get back to my minimalish path!

We are off for a few days next week. Hopefully I’ll be able to put the plan into action!! Thanks for stopping by; I hope I have managed to inspire you today!

Money Saving Challenge

Hello all! I hope you are all having a fantastic new year! I have been loving having the week after Christmas off – getting started on some organizing projects, hanging some artwork I made for the girls’ rooms.

Today I’m here with a bit of a different post. My cousins over in Ireland did a weekly money-saving challenge and managed to save a huge chunk of money over the past year. I found a similar one on Pinterest  and thought it would be fun to see if I could stick to it and save up some cash. I don’t have a plan for what to spend the money on, I’m just excited to save it up!

The challenge that I found said that by saving $1 the first week, $2 the next week, and so on until by the last week of the year, save $52 for a grand total of $1378.00 saved! This sounds like a great plan, but I thought I needed to make a little tweak. Rather than having to save $49, $50, $51 and $52 in the month of December (prime Christmas present buying time), I decided to switch it up and work backwards for the 52 weeks. So this week, I’ll be putting $52 into my savings canister, next week it’ll be $51, and so on.

For me, the trick is going to be NOT dipping in to the piggy bank when I think I “need” to. So, I scoured the house and found a not-in-use container with a lid, grabbed my trusty hot glue gun and some wrapping paper and got to work making it sealing it up and making it pretty.

I think it turned out alright, I’ve got my savings container and my list of deposit amounts in a kitchen cupboard (because that’s where my purse ends up most nights) and I’m ready to start building my little nest egg.

Thanks for stopping by, I hope I’ve inspired you a little today!

Kitchen Chaos - Week 2 Progress!

Hello my organizing lovelies, and my friends who have stopped by for a read today! Thanks for coming by to check out my progress with this month’s 31 Day Organizing Challenge! I started out last week with organizing my glassware cupboard.

In this week’s post I’m going to try to tackle the chaos in the kitchen cupboards where I store my mixing bowls, platters, and my pots and pans. I don’t think I have a lot of items to purge in these cupboards, but the area is in definite need of some organization.

I have a fantastically handy little brother, who comes to my rescue often. A few years ago when I complained that one of my cabinets had terrible shelving, he created some shelves and placed them close together to allow for additional storage. This allows me to put many more platters and serving dishes in the cupboard without the worry of them chipping and breaking from being stacked one on top of the other.

Tonight, after making my girls Shamrock shaped pancakes for dinner, I got straight to work on what was supposed to be two cupboards. You know how it is though... start a small project and somehow your organizing ADD takes over and all of a sudden you manage to sort through the chaos in four places? That's not just me, is it??

I started with the cupboard that holds my stainless steel bowl collection (I know, I have a ridiculous number, but I use them all a lot!!), platters and serving dishes and my crockpot. Step one: Empty the space completely, wipe down all the surfaces assess the storage situation. I managed to part with only one serving dish, but I use and love all the ones that are left, so I think I did ok!

After organizing the dishes and bowls by size and frequency of use, I was able to put them all back in the cupboard with room to spare.

The next planned space was the pots and pans and bakeware cupboard. I have one set of pots and four pans/skillets. I do however have seven cupcake pans, four round and three square pans, four loaf pans and a bundt pan. This doesn't include the specialty pans I store in the garage.

 

These are just my everyday baking pans, so they need to be nearby, easily accessible and most importantly, organized.

Voila! I laid down the last of my pretty contact paper on the two shelves and started reassembling the space. I added a couple of hooks to the inside of the cupboard to hold the awkwardly shaped attachments for the mixer. I also made use of my turkey pan to hold the lids for my pot set.

 

Next up? Tupperware. It seems like I sort this cupboard out at least once a month. If I could just get the hubs to put the lids back on the containers when he empties the dishwasher instead of chucking them in here I would be a happy mama. Until then, I guess it's going to be a space I tackle often.

The last organizing spot of the evening is one that I have wanted to tackle for ages. I made the mistake of buying horrible (really really horrible) microfiber cloths. Those had to go! I also managed to shove FIVE aprons into the same drawer that is supposed to hold my beloved handmade dishcloths. After purging about 1/3 of the items from the drawer, moving two of the aprons to another space in the house (I kept one each for me and the girls in the kitchen)and neatly folding the remaining cloths, I was finally happy with my dishcloth drawer. It's the little things that make a girl happy!

Wow! What was originally supposed to be a two cupboard mini-project turned into a bigger project. All in though, it was done in under an hour. A pretty successful Friday night if you ask me! I'm going to link my progress up to OrgJunkie's 31 Day Organizing party. There are some amazing transformations taking place over there, you should totally check it out!

Thanks for stopping my my little corner of the internet today! Have a great weekend!



Linking to Joyful Homemaking, Not Just a Housewife and A Bowl Full of Lemons.

Simple Living Lesson #10 – Routine

Hey all! Thanks for coming by to take a read through my attempt at living life a little more simply. To take a look at the lessons I have worked through previously check out lessons 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8,  and 9. This week’s lesson is focussing on routine, which makes me really happy!

Although I’ll be the first one to pass up on an afternoon of housework to have tea with the neighbours, I do try to keep a pretty tight ship at our house and routine totally plays into the plan. I work out every day during the week, and since I don’t get home from the gym until the kids are supposed to be ready for school, part of our morning routine is to be prepared for the day.

I try to lay out the kids’ school clothes the night before. The girls like to lay them out so they look like a kid in an outfit, socks, undies and hoodies all splayed out on the floor. Whatever works, as long as they are getting ready!!

When I get home from the gym, I make the lunches while the hubs is busy wrangling the girls into the outfits they splayed out onto their floors the night before. 

While I put together the lunches, my rock star teammate gets breakfast, toothbrushes, vitamins and backpacks sorted. Our morning routine, though chaotic works for us and usually gets everyone to school and work on time.

Housework is becoming more of a routine for us too. We used to have a cleaning service come in every two weeks to do the nitty-gritty cleaning (bathrooms, vacuuming, all the hard-core housework) but now it’s all on the hubs and I to get it done. Since I only work part time, I do the majority of the cleaning on my day off and the hubs in charge of the two things I hate the most: vacuuming and all of the laundry.

I find that I feel happiest in my home when the kitchen is clean. Clean counters, an empty sink and the smell of cookies baking gives me a euphoric feeling! I always try to spend 15 minutes once the kids go to bed walking from room to room, straightening pillows and towels and picking up the little bits and pieces of toys that the kids don’t see when they put their toys away.

My evening routine of quick pick up and running the dishwasher makes our morning routines run just that much more smoothly. I guess I can say that this week’s simple living lesson is to streamline your life to make things easier. It certainly helps that we don’t have as many pieces of clothing or furniture or toys (though we still have a TON of toys) as we did before we began to purge, and purge and purge again!

Do you have any routines that help you keep the ship afloat in your house?

I am linking to some of these fun linking parties:

I'm An Organizing Junkie, A Bowl Full of Lemons , Delightful Order , and Joyful Homemaking

Simple Living Lesson #9 – Money

Hello again, and thanks for checking in for my meandering journey through Lorilee Lippincott’s Simple Living: 30 Days to Less Stuff and More Life. I have taken on eight tasks so far to propel my life to run at a simpler pace. I would love it if you took a read through lessons called Dream, Underneath, Quiet, Surface, Incoming, Outgoing, Time  and Libraries.


photo source

In case you hadn’t noticed, my little blog rarely touches on serious matters, and money is definitely a serious matter. I certainly don’t plan on telling all of you how to spend your money, nor do I plan to tell you how I spend mine! Although it’s fairly clear to most anyone that comes to my house that a large portion of my disposable income goes to cupcake supplies and chocolate chips!

If you are interested in the actual simple living lesson, please check out Simple Living: Thirty Days to Less Stuff and More Life, there are great tools and ideas there. For now, here’s a funny ecard about money to brighten your day!

Next up on the list of simple living lessons is something much more my speed: ROUTINE. I’ll get started on that one right away!

Thanks for reading!

Simple Living Lesson #8 - Libraries

Hello everyone! Thanks for coming over for a read! Last year I started a journey toward minimalism. I call my version minimalish. I found a great ebook called Simple Living: Thirty Days to Less Stuff and More Life. For those of you clicking by for the first time, I’ve been working through the lessons one week at a time. So far I have dreamed, looked underneath, tried (and failed) at finding quiet, cleared off surfaces, managed my incoming  and outgoing life and just last week examined how I spend my time.

This week’s lesson is called Libraries. The task for this week is to go through my books and dvds and ask myself if I have ever read or watched them, and if I ever will again. Uh-oh. I might have some trouble with this one. I have been pretty good about decluttering the books that I once hoarded. I managed to donate four big boxes of books when I did the first big cleanout for my Scrapbook Room challenge. I don’t have a huge collection of books anymore, but the DVDs are another story altogether.

My husband is a great guy. He is surrounded by girls and frilly pink things in our house. He doesn’t have a man cave anymore, as it has been turned into the dollhouse/dressup clothes room. He doesn’t have a space for guy stuff but… he has a collection. A massive DVD collection, that takes up an entire wall in our craft closet/room. I have begged asked him to pare down the collection to a more manageable selection, but much in the way my girls think their stuffies have feelings, my husband has strong feelings about his DVD collection.

Since we have managed to contain his rather large collection (over 400 dvds!!) to one wall in one room, I guess I can’t really complain about the space they take up. So, I better find another area to lessen my library! Off to the magazine rack, with the stack of parenting, organizing and cooking magazines that I still have not read.

While gathering my stack of unread magazines I tried to think of a way to repurpose them instead of just chucking them into the recycling bin. Then I had an A-Ha! Moment! I have a few pairs of boots falling all over themselves in the garage. I grabbed some elastic bands, rolled my magazines into handy-dandy boot stander uppers!

What do you collect? Do you have a library you could pare down? Next week’s Simple Living Lesson is entitled Money… I fear another tough challenge is coming!!

Simple Living Lesson # 7 – Time

Anyone who knows me knows that I L-O-V-E my lists. I create a list every week of our menu, our to-do’s, and our activities. Recently I set up a planner for my little blog, to help me plan posts and what projects I have in the works. If you know me, you probably also know that I am the Queen of Over-Scheduling. I think that I am physically incapable of saying no to people.

photo source

This week’s challenge was examine how I spend my time. I had to examine which relationships I need to spend more time on, and what I could do to make the biggest impact on my time, my happiness and my peace of mind.

Obviously the relationship that means the most to me and makes me the happiest is my relationship with my husband and with my sweet little girls. In order to make sure that we can spend the time we have together doing the things we love, I need to make time for just us.

One of my New Year’s resolutions is to learn how to and actually practice saying no. I find myself booking our weekends full of events and parties and plans. The plans are for fun and exciting family things, but sometimes I feel like it’s just too much packed into two little weekend days. We don’t get enough time to just be ourselves, with each other.

I know that the only thing standing between me and being able to live a simple life is, well, me. Sometimes I need a reminder that time should be spent with those you love, doing things that make us happy. In that vein, I’m planning a day out, just the four of us - a snow day, ice skating on an outdoor, mountaintop pond and some yummy hot chocolate. I can’t wait.

How do you spend your quality time?

Simple Living Lesson #6 - Outgoing

Do you love these flowers?
 I took this photo at a photography workshop last year.

Hey all! I am happy to have you back here, following along with the Simple Living Lessons from Simple Living: Thirty Days to Less Stuff and More Life. Last week we talked about streamlining the incoming clutter in the house - the junk mail.

This week involves finding ways to streamline the clutter going out of your home. For the two years or so I have been on a major cleansing, decluttering path. I have purged clothes, toys, kitchen gadgets, pretty much everything thing in sight.

How does your household deal with outgoing clutter? What works in our house is the Donation Station. We have an Ikea laundry hamper in the corner of our spare bedroom where outgrown clothing and unused household items are stored until I have a chance to take them to the second hand store. 

 
Between clearing the drawers and closets and bins and shoes for my Forty Bags in 40 Days Challenge (more on that later in the week) our donation station is pretty full! I think I'll be making a trip to the VV Boutique later this week.

Another way to help streamline the flow of excess clutter out of our home is to have an out-of-here shelf. We have a little area in our front entryway where I put anything that needs to be returned - library books, something to go back to my mom's house, something to return to the store. If I have all of the "outgoing" stuff in one place, hopefully I'll be more likely to remember to return it to its rightful owner when I leave the house.

Of course, if you are very organized, you may have a Sell Pile. I will be honest, I'm pretty lazy and most of the stuff I am purging I couldn't be bothered to try to sell. However, if you are purging things of value, you may benefit from some Craigslist postings. A couple of tips though - price things to sell, so you aren't holding on to them for ages and ages. And if it doesn't sell quickly, maybe you need to rethink selling it and just donate it!

Sometimes you need help with a big purge, I have a couple of cute little sidekicks!

If you are following along with these Simple Living Lessons, you are already practicing some of these decluttering techniques. Hopefully I can give you some tips on other ways to live more simply. I don't think I will ever be finished purging things out of the house (kids grow out of clothes and toys, I get bored with decor items) but hopefully with less stuff in the house, we have room for more living!

Thanks for reading, I really appreciate it! I will hopefully be linking this post up with A Bowl Full of Lemons, Delightful Order and Joyful Homemaking. Have a great week!