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  As in pulled out all the shelves, washed them, and threw out bottles of stuff that were out of date, cleaned out the fridge.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

An empty dining room!

I’m done, with one major thing, at least.  The dining room has been cleared out, minus a few things that I need help moving.

Of course instead of leaving well enough alone, I decided I would go ahead and start the hall closet.  I pulled everything out of it, and all that is now on top of the dresser and coffee table that were left in the dining room.  This means that I will now need to clean the dresser off again, before I can get it moved out.  It really won’t take me more than an hour or so, I hope, to sort through the stuff.  A good portion of it will go back into the closet.  The rest will go where they belong, or into the garage sale pile.  Even though it shouldn’t take that long to do, I have run out of energy for the night.

I’m hoping I will figure out how to put pictures in this thing, because when you start with a ton of things in a space and end with very little, you just have to show it off right?  Wish me luck and let’s see if I can get this to work…

I was going to plug in a picture from when all of the furniture from the two bedrooms were in her, but you really ccouldn’t see much over the mattresses.  Just know this room was FULL with only a pathway through it.

These pictures are where I started from this week. 

I also realized after I started cleaning that I would have to deal with this area as well.  It is the area under my bar in the kitchen.  It is where the two rolling drawer units that have been hanging out in the dining room will need to go.  When you have no pantry storage one must get creative.

After three evenings of work the room now looks like this…

…and this…

The box and bags on the left are trash.  The containers on the right are ones I emptied while going through the things in the room.  The mirror came out of the middle bedroom, and I plan to hang it on this wall, once the painting is done.

During the remove of items I had a thought I’ve had many of times.  Cleaning is just moving things from one place to another to another.  The only thing different was that I actually understood if I had less items that didn’t really have homes, there would be mess to move from place to place and that cleaning may actually feel totally different to me, once I complete this process.

But until then, I am still having to move things around from room to room.  While the dining room is virtually empty, all of those items had to go somewhere.

My bedroom stuff went back in my bedroom.  Most of the clothes got hung back up in the closet, though I still have a clothes basket full that needs to go in there.  The dresser items are still in the boxes I put them in, because the dresser is not coming back into my room, until it is painted.  Or at least that is my hope.  This limbo business is part of the things that are driving me batty, but anyway.

I had a few items that’s homes should have been the linen closet, so they got piled up in front of the door.  They are now back in the dining room, but that’s okay, before it is over with, they will be where they belong.

That brings us to the next picture…

This my friends is the current ‘garage sale’ pile, items that are leaving my house.

The two of the three big boxes have my previous bedding stuff and actually half of the third box is also some of it, including the curtains.  The rest of the third box are items that came out of my bedroom that I decided would not come back.  The three barstools are also going, they will be replaced with two different ones.

This would be the limbo pile or the to be dealt with later pile.

The cardboard box is full of CDs.  When I get a chance I will go through them and compare them to what is on my MP3 player.

The two boxes behind the cardboard one are staying.  Well the larger of the two for sure, since those are my living room curtains that I pulled down to wash.  Inside the bottom one is placemats, they are a ‘to be decided on later’ deal, since I’m not sure how they will look with the new dining room.

The other four boxes are candles and candle holders (totally different than the ones I had a conversation with myself about last night, as well as some glass jars.  I’m undecided on them at the moment, and am unsure about where their homes will be, or rather the homes for the items out of there I keep.  I’d have to say that compared to all the random boxes of stuff I went through to clean out this room, that these were the least of my problems.

I am, over all, happy with what I have finished.  I am far from done, and some of the things removed from there will have to be dealt with again before I can say I have finished this whole process.  I’m choosing tonight to look on the bright side of things.  While I still may have a box of recipes to go through, that I saved from the trash tonight, it is just one box, and not five boxes with them shoved in there among other things.   I have less random boxes of  the ‘I don’t know what to do with these things, so lets shove them in the box’.  That is progress right?