March De-Cluttering ReCap

Even though I spent some time this month de-cluttering and cleaning up spaces I never got around to writing about it.  So instead of a recap with links to the post, I’m doing it all in one.

Saturday, March 5^th

I started with my cake decorating tool box.

The top tray…

Under the tray which didn’t look too bad…

Everything out of the box…

Cleaned up and organized…

What didn’t go back in the box, but did go in with the other cake decorating stuff I have…

That same afternoon I for some reason opened the cabinet under the kitchen sink and found two bottles of carpet cleaning stuff for the steam cleaning and a bottle of carpet stain remover.  Since all of my carpet was removed in January I decided I didn’t need them any more.  I actually pulled these bottles out and closed the doors, then actually came back and decided to clean out the cabinet while I was at it.

The before…

I’m not going to post the yucky before I wiped it all out pictures.

This is the after…

The ‘to go’ pile is on the left and the trash pile is on the right…

Last but not least for that day, one of the kitchen drawers…

The drawer before…

Everything pulled out of the drawer…

The organized and containerized drawer…

The pink container went into a different drawer a few drawers down.  I didn’t do away with anything in this drawer because while some of it may not be used often I like having it.

Sunday, March 13

Because I could not put off washing clothes any longer I needed to rescue the washer machine from being the catch all of the moment.

Before…

After…

I'd hoped to get more done inside but I didn't manage too.  I did spend some time outside de-cluttering the yard though, which made a huge difference. 

I'm linking up over at A Slob Comes Cleaning.  Check it out to see more decluttering adventures.

March De-Cluttering: The Outside Addition

Last week in this post about dealing with my outdoor mess I had mentioned that I was doing some cleaning up.  I’m not sure if this counts to other people or not, but since it made a big difference in appearance and I got rid of things, I’m counting it as a de-cluttering adventure.

All of my flower pots ended up in a big square in my front year.  This square was at one time a flower bed, because of rotten timbers I just had them removed so it could become yard again.

I’d actually removed a few pots before this picture was taking, since it was an after thought.  I also did take the pictures with my cell phone, sorry.

This would be the trash after day 1. 

The pots shown are cheap pots.  The bonus of cheap pots is that they are, well cheap.  The crappy thing about cheap pots is that they usually don’t lost more than a summer in the Texas heat, they get brittle, crack or break when you pick them up.  I’d also whine about how people seem to have a habit of weed eating right against the pots, but I won’t.  First because I didn’t have to do it, and second because really they were stuck in the middle of the yard, then never moved because I never did that ‘I’m gonna’ that I had thought I would do.

The bag of trash is mostly the weeds and grass that were pulled out of the flower pots.

This is another area that I needed to work on.  This is also an after thought picture.  The large orange and green pots off to the left, as well as the two larger white pots on the steps were beside the steps. There were also some smaller pots along the front of the house.

This is the trash from day 1 and day 2.

Are you ready for some after pictures?  Hmmm?  I feel like I need a drum roll for this one!

This picture is why it is nice to take before pictures.  The after picture just looks like a normal yard huh?  But when you see the before picture you realize how much work was really done.

I pretty much weeded any pot that had dead flowers in it.  I was lucky enough to have some flowers that were come back so I weeded their pots, and in a few causes give them more room to spread.  I also planted the dahlia bulbs I bought, the one ‘flower’ I’ve allowed myself to buy so far.

I have learned that fire ants love potting soil, so if I find them in the pot, I totally ditch the potting soil.  Other wise I had to kill them, then be sticking my hands in potting soil with ant poison in it.  I had to do that with numerous pots this year.  Unless the pots were very large the potting soil got dumped into a couple of tubs so I can put it in the pot size I need and use it later.  I’ve got a pile of pots hanging out if I need them.

Of course I had a nice pile of trash when I was done.  And yes I know I could have carried the trash over after each day, but doesn’t this just look like I did so much more work? *wink*

Here is the pile of sticks I gather from the yard.  Sadly there are more out there that I will need to pick up before we can mow.

After 10 trips to the dumpster this is what I had.  I ended up keeping one of the buckets so that I could carry it around the yard to pick up sticks later.

The trays and stacks of little flower pots are going to be passed on to someone else to use, after I finish gathering the rest from off the porch.

I do still have more work to do but this was a great start and it make a big difference in how things looked out there.  I will also confess that I didn’t do anything out in the yard this weekend.  *frown*

But I’m not giving into that *I’m gonna* just yet.



I'm Gonna & The Flower Bed

Ignore the weeds in the picture! :)

A phrase I use a lot is “I’m gonna” and being the procrastinator that I am, the “I’m gonna’s” rarely end up happening.  I forget about them or just keep putting them off.

One of those I’m gonna’s has been to turn the space between my house and drive way into a flower bed.  That is a year old gonna project.  Before that it was to remake the two strips between the drive way and the fence into flower beds.  I did that years ago, but by the following year it was over grown with grass and weeds.  Two years ago I dug up what was left of the bulbs I had originally planted out there, and put those in flower pots.  Last year I even got 6 rose bushes to go along those two strips.  One of them is still alive and they are all still in the pots that they came in. 

In the past I have been really good about rushing out and buying a bunch of flowers then sticking them in flower pots with the thought that they would be transplanted later.  That never happens. 

This year I am trying something different.  I will make the flower bed first.  Novel idea, huh?  Wonder why more people don’t do that?  Oh yeah, they probably do.

Instead of the I’m gonna, this year it is I will!  Actually it is more of an I am, since I have already started the project.

Sunday afternoon I decided to get out there and start weeding the flower pots from last year.  Seeing what, if anything survived, how many pots had fire ants in them, and how many of the pots were broken and needed to get trashed.  I spent about three hours outside, and while I got some of that accomplished, I still had more to go.

Wednesday evening after work I spent another two hours outside dealing with the mess I left last year.  I love that feeling you get when you start to see your work pay off.  Before Sunday my front yard looked trashy.  Believe me I still have a ways to go, but it is starting to look a lot better. 

I’ve decided instead of spending the weekend inside painting like I had originally planned I will now be working outside.  For one, I don’t want to lose the momentum I have going from seeing the yard go from crappy looking to starting to look better.  Second, I know me, this is the time of year I get antsy and want to go flower shopping especially when you start seeing them pop up everywhere.  If I don’t want this to be another I’m gonna year for the flower bed, I need to do it now.  And last but not least, this is Texas, and we are already getting temps in the mid 80s.  It would definitely be wiser to do it now before it gets hotter.

Unless something else comes up, I plan to work outside tonight again.  I have some more picking up in the yard to do, trying to get it ready to be mowed.  If I get that done before it gets dark then I will probably start working on cleaning off the front porch.  It has a bunch of crap on it as well. 

Friday night I plan to go to Walmart, so no working outside then.  I’ll use the evening to do some food prep, catch up on my daily/weekly tasks and maybe to work on my bathroom arts and craft projects.

The weekend plan is to start removing the grass and weeds from the flower bed area as well as finish cleaning up/off the drive way.  While I am working on that I will have plenty of time to think about how I want to set the area up. 

Oh the possibilities!

A February De-Cluttering Recap…

The beginning of February was a busy De-Cluttering time for me.

Because I wanted to paint the dining room I first had to clean it out.  Basicly while doing the big floor switch out my dining room became storage for everything from both bedrooms, some kitchen stuff and a lot of odds and ends that had collected in various plastic containers that it was time for me to deal with. 

Next up I tackled the hall closet as well as the shelves in the bathroom.  While cleaning may not have been everyone’s first choice of spending a snow day I was excited about what I accomplished.  I did get rid of some finger nail polishes (some not even covering it) as well as lotions and body washes that I just never use. 

After being tired of having hard things falling out of the freezer on my feet, not to mention having to do the quick open, shove and close before anything else could fall out I decided to work on the freezer.  Even though I threw out everything out of date and freezer burnt I still have a freezer that is pretty full.  I used containers to help be able to find things much easier.  Oh how I wish  my freezer had just one more shelf in it.

Of course after the freezer was more manageable, I decided the fridge needed to match it.  I cleaned it out, including pulling the shelves/drawers out and washing them.  I also introduced some containers into the fridge, so far so good there.

The last de-cluttering I did this month was on four of my kitchen cabinets.  Two cabinets got switched around, and all of them went through some scrutiny on what I really needed in them.  I did stick some more things in a ‘to go’ box when I was done.

At this point I kind of wished I’d kept track of how many items left the house, even if it was just counting boxes.  But at the time, my goal was to just get things out of the house.  The ‘to go’ pile as very large though, and when it did leave the house, I could feel the difference. Which is the point of de-cluttering, right?  For doing all of that the first half of the month, I think I did rather well. 

I'm linking this up over at A Slob Comes Clean for her February Decluttering Update.  Hop on over there and link your own decluttering experinces or read others and maybe get motivated to do some during March. 

A Weekend Recap

Well another weekend has come and gone.  Oh how I wish I could brag about all these wonderful things I had gotten done, but my weekend hasn’t gone as planned at all.  Not always a bad thing, though it can be a little frustrating.

I am taking a step back and remind myself that while I may not have crossed off everything from my weekend goals list, I still got some things done and I did a couple things for myself. 

Friday Night:

- I did get my menu plan for next week done on Friday night.  I‘ll need to tweak it a little to add in some leftovers.

- I did make out my grocery list.

Saturday:

- I did go to Walmart, and managed to get everything on my list this time, plus I bought me some tulips (pictured above).

- I did clean out the fridge, really cleaned out the fridge.  As in pulled out all the shelves, washed them, and threw out bottles of stuff that were out of date, cleaned out the fridge.

- I did spend time in the kitchen with the nephew making yummy homemade raviolis.  And we kept up with the dishes as we worked.

- I did wash, dry and fold a load of towels, as well as washed and dried a load of clothes, though I still need to hang them up.

Sunday:

- I did remove everything from three and a half cabinets in the kitchen, then rearranged/organized them.  I also added a few more things to the garage sale pile.

- I did take some time out to pamper myself by painting my toe nails.

- I did go on a date.

Even though I didn’t do anything on my big project of getting the dining room ready to paint, I did accomplish some little projects that I had on my to my list.  I’m calling this weekend another success, maybe a minor one, but a success none the less.

A January Project: The Craft ‘Chest’

I wish I was a natural ‘out of the box’ thinker, but I’m not.  Thankfully, there are people out there that are.  And they are people that are kind enough to share their ideas.

I had seen some ideas online that use pieces of furniture for different things than they were made for.  Use a dresser for something other than clothes?  What a great idea! Since I had a piece of furniture, that I picked up at a garage sale 6 years ago, currently sitting in my house that I didn’t need for what it was meant to be used for, but I did need some extra storage. 

When I put everything back into the cake room / all purpose storage area, I had decided that it would be nice to separate craft/office type supplies from cake supplies.

The three boxes on top of the Chest of Drawers in the above picture, as well as the boxes on the table in the picture below are the items I had separated out that needed new homes.

Armed with some dollar store plastic containers I set about grouping things together.  It is really amazing how many rolls of tape or bottles of glue you find when you start putting them all in one place. 

I arranged and rearranged and ended up with this...

The Craft ‘Chest’ ended up being full when I got done.  While I would have loved to have some empty space in it, I decided not to stress over it.  As I sorted through the rest of the stuff in the house I’d have more to go it in, and when I got to that point, I’d re-evaluate everything in it.  My goal on the second look through will be to put more items from it into the garage sale pile.

While I only had one container of garage sale stuff in the end this time, I’m still happy to see all those empty containers behind it.  That makes me fell good, that at least the items that were in them are nicely organized in one place, and I don’t have to dig through several boxes to find things.  The two smaller boxes are on the right were odd stuff that didn’t end up fitting in with the craft stuff.  I’m working on homes from them.

I wanted to try the Chest of Drawers out with its new purpose in mind, before I got all into beautifying it.  If it works out well for me, then in the future I will consider giving it a paint job.  For now I’m perfectly fine with the way that it looks.

A January Project: The Cake Room

Well the Cake Room / General All Purpose Storage Room that is.

I do cakes as a hobby, but I also teach cake decorating classes at a local craft store.  This room has been pretty much a storage area for all things cake that I have collected over the last 10 years, and crafts/odds and ends, and the stuff I just haven’t known what to do with.

Back in the fall, it was decided that all the floors in the house would be replaced.  At that point I started cleaning this room up and putting some things in the garage sale pile.  I didn’t get a picture then, but I did remove several things from the room, including a large number of cake pans.

The floor replacement actually started on Jan 10th, and consisted of having to pack up all the rooms and move everything from one room to another while they pulled up carpet and laid new floors.

The below pictures are what I was left with from the fall clean out.  Like a lot of my projects I got stalled in the middle, and left everything as was. 

These are cell phone pictures, so the quality isn’t great.  At the time I did this, I didn’t know I’d be starting a blog.  I just wanted the pictures for my reference so I could see the difference.

The first is standing in the door way and then the pictures go counter clockwise from there. And yes those are four big 48x72x18 shelving units in this room. Plus the picture doesn’t quite show everything. There is a stack of boxes about waist high to the left side of the white shelving unit.

This is the empty room, after the new floor was put down.  Ahhh, a blank slate!

And this one, well this one is almost all of the cake stuff moved into my kitchen. It really doesn’t show the full scoop of things either. There were literally things piled and stacked from my fridge to the washer and drier. I even had boxes on top of the washer and drier.

I’m sharing this picture, because this was a little of my decluttering efforts. What cracks up me most about this picture?   Well my best friend’s daughter just turned 4. I’ve done all but this year’s cake, and I bought candles the last three years for the cake. And for any other of the number combinations, I’d have to wait two to three years to use them. Considering these have been in a box for probably at least 6 years, I decided it was time they go and when the time comes I’ll just buy new candles. Because really, am I going to remember I have them?

This is another decluttering of mine. The boxes are full of cookie cutters.  The bigger stack on the left would be the ‘to keep’ pile, but at least I was able to let go of about a third of it. That’s progress for me, especially when I didn’t think I’d get rid of any of them when I first started opening the boxes. I still have candy molds to sort through, but because I was able to condense down a lot, and I was already drained I decided that they could wait for another time.

And now… (You may want to go back up and look at the before pictures just for a moment.)
 

The white file boxes in the corner of the two shelving units are the candy molds that I need to go through. There are also some boxes that are on one of the shelves I’ll need to sort through as well.

Now I’d love to tell you that the other side of the room looked like this… 

  But then I’d have to be honest and show the other two pictures…

These two pictures show the rest of the stuff that came out of the room, that would need to go back in there or somewhere else.

At least 4 of the plastic containers (two tall and two skinny) were moved out to my storage building. I’m not sure if they are there to be stored or if I’ll put them on the garage sale side. But for now they are not in my house.

The metal boxes, there are two that size, and smaller ones inside of them, which are my cake travel boxes are also out in the storage room. I don’t want to get rid of them, but I won’t need them until the next convention I go to, which won’t be this year.

So this is the other side of the room now…

 

The boxes stacked in the corner are 3d or shaped cake pans. Most of the other boxes are papers, magazines and books. I’ll go through them and scan what I want to keep then get rid of the books. Right now, I have too many other things going on to worry with it. It’ll be nice to clear it out and have more free space. And the items from the Wilton tool box/Castle cake set and the 4 boxes to the left are items that I plan to use as give a ways for my students.

The only cake related items that were missing from these pictures are my two rolling tool boxes, Wilton tool caddy and my bag, all of which are class stuff.

When the room was finished that day, there was also one wall that just two boxes of lids for various plastic containers.  My ‘craft storage’ has since been put on this wall.  And well to be honest other items have been moved into the room from the dining room clean out.  My Grandma’s Wedding China and all my vases/candle holders have been placed in here for safe keeping, for now.

 
I have two rows of empty plastic containers.  Some of these containers were used for the hallway/bathroom projects and also for the ‘craft storage’ (pictures coming soon for that project).

Since the fall quite a few items have come out of this room.  They have either been thrown away or put in the garage sale pile, so I really don’t have a clear idea of how much has left the room vs what stayed. My main objective was to get it cleaned out and organized, so I really haven't kept a tally while I was working on it.

I do know that by looking around the room that it definitely has less in it, especially randomly piled up. I also feel less stressed when I enter the room.

I did learn one lesson.  Do not use removable labels on plastic containers. They just don’t stay stuck.

A wasted day, sort of.

I am really not a big fan of this middle of the afternoon Saturday demos.  I could go in to a whole rant, but I won’t.  Let’s just say that I went the simplest, easiest route I could have and the demo was exactly what I thought it would be, a waste of my morning and part of my afternoon.  But I did it, got paid, spent money and it is over and done with, until the next one comes around.  Thankfully I have a manager that totally understands my feelings on the demo.  And while that doesn’t get me out of it, at least I know my thoughts are mirrored.

After the demo, I’d picked up The Nephew, headed home to clean out the fridge, make a grocery list and plan something for him to cook for dinner.  Mom went with us to Walmart, and as always we tend to take our sweet time in the store.  By the time we were done shopping, we’d opted to go out to eat instead of cooking.  Dinner was pushed to a late lunch idea.

We decided, at my urging to go ahead and do some prep work tonight.  We are making an adaptation of a recipe I found for spaghetti pie.  I liked the idea of it, which is sort of a cross between spaghetti and lasagna, but I didn’t really want the whole bread ‘crust’ idea.  Plus this is just kind of how I cook, find a recipe, then make it my own.

Tonight we made the sauce and cooked the meat.  Neither was hard, but I knew it would save time tomorrow.  Tomorrow all we will have to do is mix the meat and sauce, cook the noodles, mix the cheese, layer and bake.

Because I knew it was way past time and I was really tired of opening the freezer door, shoving something in then quickly closing the door and hoping what ever it was didn’t fall out on my toes the next time the door was opened, I decided to clean out the freezer.  Not a task I enjoy, first because your fingers get so cold and second because when you start pulling out the freezer burnt food you get depressed about it.  Or at least I do.  But I know the freezer needs to be treated like the rest of the house.  I need to get rid of things out of it that need to go in the trash, to be able to organize it.  And organize it I did. 

I didn’t take a before picture, but it looks 100% better.  I rearranged the shelves so that I could put some plastic containers in it.  With the food sorted out I’m hoping it is easier to see what I have in there.

I didn’t buy a ton tonight, mainly fresh dairy and veggies/fruit because I knew I had stuff in the freezer and had planned to use some of it up.  Tomorrow I’ll look through the freezer again and make a list of what is in there and do a meal plan around all of it.  I should have done it tonight, but didn’t think about it until I had put everything back in and at that point I was just ready to be done.

Besides spending time with The Nephew, and the menu plan, there are a few other little things I may work on.  I really think I’m at the end of the list on the major sort through items, at least for now, so that is a plus.  I do know the little things are just as important to deal with.  Maybe after they are done I will be able to turn my focus on to my projects I have for decorating the two bedrooms. 

I’m going to close this up, make a quick list of some things I can do tomorrow if I find the time, and then get some shut eye.  Before I know it I will have a hungry teenage with a hollow leg wanting to cook breakfast and I’ll have to crawl out of bed to play kitchen supervisor.  I’ll do it though, because pancakes sure do sound good! 

Snow Day Tasks 1 & 4 Pictures...

They say pictures are worth a thousand words, well here we go...

Because of the postion of the closet I can't get a good full on, full shot.  So I broke it up into top and bottom.  The big white part on the top shelf is from the bottom.  I guess that was the out of the way place when they were doing the floors.  The stuff from that shelf and the bottom shelf were under the kitchen bar so they had already been sorted through.

This is everything that came out of the closet, minus the towels.

It doesn't matter how great free samples sound,

they really start to add up and take up space. 

But yes I kept them, since they are travel size I can use them for trips.

This is what we had after I dealt with the items from the two pictures above. 

How nice does that look!!   And look, there is empty space.

Then I remembered that this was still in the living room.  It came out of the bathroom.

And this was currently in the bathroom.  This is actually the "um, yeah I gotta move that shelf and need to clean it and the floor off where can I still it all' container.

I also looked around the rest of the bathroom and freaked out when I saw all the bottles of stuff in the shower as well as the stuff on the bathroom sink.  Because I knew I had to do something with them too.

And then I got to work!  This is the shelf once put back in the bathroom.

I did reduce the amount of bottles in the shower as well as cleaned out under the the bathroom sink.  I used the extra space there to put the over flow of shower gels from the shower.

The hallway closet, finished.  For now at least. 

I'd like to clean it out a little more, especially those bottom shelves,

but I think it looks worlds better.  Plus I can find things with out digging around.