Organizing 101: Dining Room

Toni over at A Bowl Full of Lemons is hosting Home Organizing 101, a 14-week challenge to get your home organized.  I have not been keeping up with it, but decided to start this week and play catch-up at my own pace  (primarily because I am home today because of Hurricane Sandy).

The main problem with our dining room is that the buffet and table become a catch-all for everyone's stuff.  Mail, paperwork, school work...it all ends up here.

Here are the pictures of the chaos on a daily basis:

To start with, I removed all of the clutter.  Got rid of school papers, junk mail, and filed everything where it belonged.

My clean buffet and Halloween decorations

Crap to be filed.

I pulled out and sorted through some of my place mats and cloth napkins that I use for entertaining.  This is only HALF of the napkins because I have a ton that I need to iron.

Top drawer of the buffet holds place mats (some holiday ones are with the specific decorations):

Second drawer holds napkins and napkin rings:

Third drawer is my camera bag and more napkins will go here:

The buffet has two cabinets.  One has my china and some candle holders that I use for tablescapes (I can't believe I used that word in a sentence).  The other cabinet currently holds my entertaining pieces, although I *may* move these and use this cabinet for something else, like a homework station.

Yeah...our dining room is small and there is not much room to take pictures of the buffet!

Clean and happy. Don't be jealous of the pumpkin coffee mug.

What's in YOUR purse?

 

Toni at A Bowl Full of Lemons is hosting a PURSE PARTY!!   First I took a quiz to see what my purse says about me:

You are concerned with how you appear. Projecting your high status is important to you. (Um, I do NOT care about nor do I have a "HIGH STATUS")

You tend to be relaxed throughout the day. You are naturally at peace.

You tend to be relaxed but alert. You keep your eye out for anything unusual.

You are open and comfortable with who you are. You don't hide anything.

You are a very unique and special person. There's no one else who is anything like you.

Let's take a look inside my Thirty-One Skirt Purse to see what I have going on:

My purse with a  Black Parisian Pop skirt:

My planner, which I carry everywhere:

My coupon organizer (I am always stopping at Target):

My Thirty-One soft wallet:

It even fits my check book in the cover!  Those are my debit cards and my credit cards (which I then took out since we are on a debt diet):

In the flat pocket on the inside...Blistex, a nail file, Wet Ones wipes, hand lotion, and my make-up, lol.

So, what is in YOUR purse???

Staying Organized: Keeping Schedules Straight

One thing that is so important in our household is to stay organized. And I am the queen of the calendar. Which is ironic because my husband has refused to look at one for the last 5 years. He is JUST NOW giving in. We have my work schedule, karate, hip-hop dance, doctor's appointments, show choir, drama rehearsals...you name it. It all goes on the calendar. And I keep a correction-tape dispenser nearby because, well, shit happens and schedules change.

And yes, it is on the side of our fridge, kept up with a 3M Command hook. You can also see our color coded pens, and the invitations I keep next to the calendar. 

And my planner.  I really wanted an Erin Condren that Jen posted about at IHeart Organizing, but I couldn't justify spending that much money.  So I got one from Target from Mead and it works just fine.  It has a monthly view:

And I can go in weekly to plug in details!!

The most important thing about our calendars?  Color coding.  I am purple, C is orange (Go Browns), Alexys is green, Logan is blue, my Thirty-One stuff is pink and family events are red.  I sometimes put things in pencil until I get to the correct pen.

So, this is what works for us!  How does your family keep their busy schedules organized?  I am always looking for new ideas!  Share with us in the comments!!

Adventures with Thirty-One: My Mobile Office

As I previously mentioned, I had been kicking around the idea of joining as a Thirty-One consultant.  One night, I bit the bullet and went for it.  I was signed with an out-of-town director and I wasn't too happy with that.  I talked to my bloggy/real life friend Karen (who ALSO just signed up) and she led me to her sponsor.  I was SO EXCITED that I couldn't tear myself away from their Facebook wall, looking at all of the pictures and gathering ideas for my parties.

One of the first things I did after the new fall catalog was released was order a new Organizing Utility Tote for my mobile office.  This will allow me to stay organized for ALL of my parties and have my papers and hand-outs easy to find!  Sorry for the bad pictures...taken with my Droid.

See? Everything pretty and ready to ROLL!!  I was SURE I wanted the Thirty-One logo on it, along with a Thirty-One rosette, in the new Black Parisian Pop print.  LOVE!

I have much more to show you in regards to getting ready to sell, as well as prepping for my Open House on August 14th!

Be prepared for: The pool!

During the summer months, you just never know what is going to pop up. A trip to the zoo? A lunch at the park? What about an afternoon at the pool or beach?

No one wants to be scrambling around, looking for beach towels and sunscreen and goggles and pool toys, do they? So how do I stay prepared?

I keep our beach bag packed and in our front closet, ready to go. When we get home from swimming, I immediately wash and dry the towels and put them back in our beach bag.  I  usually keep a snack in there as well (note my favorite Cheddar Jack Cheez-Its in a resealable bag!  I make sure our sunscreens, hair detangler, and goggles are always in the bag, as well as a sun hat and rash guard shirt for Logan. 

It makes it so easy to just grab out of the closet and go!

How do you stay organized for everything during the summer? Share your tips!

Thirty-One Gifts

Okay, many people know about Thirty-One.  Many blog hosts give items away on their blog and promote it.

I am OBSESSED with their product (more on that next week and how I use it!) and thinking about becoming a consultant.

Does anyone have experience SELLING it?  Suggestions?  Advice?

Organizing Paperwork

I am participating in both OrgJunkie's 52 Weeks of Organizing and IHeart Organizing's Monthly Challenges. This month's challenge was PAPERWORK so that is what I decided to do for my 52 Week entry.

I suck at paperwork. I have piles ALL over the house. Seriously. It is ridiculous.

First I went through all my piles of papers and separated them:

This is our TO SHRED pile. Yikes.
This system is a work in progress. But I set things up in to file folders in a file box:
And this sits on our counter. It has my binder with my grocery list (courtesy of OrgJunkie!), a file labeled TO PAY, one TO FILE and one for the girls' papers for school. I can easily stash it in a cabinet when we have guests over. It also has my coupon book and my receipt holder (using Jen's labels!) . I can sit down every weekend and go through it all, pay bills and file away papers.
On our fridge I have a calendar and everything is color-coded for the family. I am purple, C is orange (Go Browns), J is pink, A is lime green, and Logan is blue.
I purchased a new coupon holder and got everything together. Must have coffee to do this on Sunday mornings. I cut out the coupons and make my menu and grocery list for two weeks. I end up picking up a few things each week (produce, milk, lunch meat) but I HATE grocery shopping every week.


I am really making an effort to track our spending this month and cut back on purchases. Thanks Jen for leading the charge on this!

I am participating in...

It helps me keep on track with all the organizing and cleaning that goes by the wayside nowadays. Interested? Stop by A Bowl Full of Lemons to sign up!

52 Weeks of Organizing

One of my favorite websites is I am an Organizing Junkie. I link up on Mondays for her Menu Planning Monday, which really helps me create a grocery list and stick to it. I use her grocery list and the girls use her chore lists. She offers lots of printables to help you get your life organized and together.This year, she is doing a 52 Weeks of Organizing and even created a PDF file list for you to write down what you will be organizing each week. Every Friday she will post a link-up party for you to share what you have accomplished that week. I am obviously a week behind, but am super excited to get my list together and participate!

Where will YOU start for the 52 weeks of organizing? Guess where I am started? In our master bedroom closet:
Yikes. I have lots of shoes.

Since becoming pregnant last MARCH, it has become our dumping ground/hiding space when company comes over. Now, since I am going back to work, I actually needed to be able to GET TO MY WORK CLOTHES, lol.

Here is the final product! Actually, it is not 100% done, but we can see our floor now. I will post more photos when I finish, but I still have some organizing to do of my clothes and shoes and some purging to do. Right now, it is just nice to be able to WALK into the WALK-IN CLOSET!
Next on the agenda? Paperwork!

My Secret Shame

This is my secret shame. AKA: The third bedroom. This is what you see when you open the door. Are you afraid yet? You should be.(The curtains are tied up because we had a fan in the window. Our A/C is out, so we had created a wind-tunnel of sorts).

When we were looking for a house, we knew we wanted to stay in the same city we had our apartment in. This also meant that we were limited in what we could purchase in this area, since the prices tend to be on the slightly higher side. So we knew we were probably going to end up with a three bedroom as opposed to a four bedroom. Which meant the girls would share a bedroom and we would save the third bedroom for a nursery.

Once we moved in, the third empty bedroom became a home for my scrapbooking supplies and pretty much everything else that didn't have a home. The closet quickly became packed full of CRAP and the room never really was used for anything. I had originally painted it yellow, disliked the color, and painted it grey last summer. Awesome, since it will soon be seeing its THIRD PAINT COLOR in a year. I also painted the trim white.

I started going through several boxes of papers and this is what the room looked like:

And this, I am sad to say, is the closet:

It is really a great size for a closet, and we have the bonus of having the shelves along the one side. But the sight of it jam-packed makes me cringe.
Oh, and access to our eaves? Yeah...don't even think about it.

I have a LOT to do in the next few weeks if I want to get the room painted by the time school starts in August. And speaking of paint, I think I finally decided on colors for the room! I am so excited!