Getting organized...and singing in the shower

Admit it, when you read that title, you started singing that Becky G song "Shower," didn't you?

I'm about to do something I never thought I'd do- invite my readers into my shower. Sort of.  There are a few reasons why this is a rare occurrence- we are currently saving money to do a bathroom remodel here in a few years. Our bathroom fixtures, except for the vanities, are cheap and not in good shape. The bathtubs are horrible.

Our bathtub in the master bath is horrible for a different reason. On any given day, when I or my husband are in the shower, this is what you might hear: *running water, running water, crash! running water, running water, BOOM! running water, running water, BANG!**

You get the idea. But why all the noise? Well, our tub and shower are kind of on the narrow side. And by kind of, I mean REALLY narrow. Plus, the inside of the shower looks like this:

Bottles, bottles everywhere. Did I mention that the majority of them are EMPTY? 

Kid shower items in my shower? But their bathroom is down the hall. And do we really need 6 cups to wash little girl hair? 

Ok, this part doesn't look so bad...

I want to get a bigger shampoo rack (or whatever you call this thing) so I can fit more things on it, but in the meantime, I decided to do what I could. I started by throwing away those empty shampoo bottles.

I also looked at what is being kept in the shower that we don't need- I removed all but one cup for washing little girls' hair, and while I left her shower products, I moved them. I also removed that bottle of baby oil gel that was taking up the bottom of my shampoo rack- can't remember the last time I used that. 

Then, I moved that bottle of Tree Hut Shea Sugar Body to my cabinet. I don't use it everyday, and I figured I could get it out when I want to use it. By the way, if you don't use Tree Hut Shea Sugar Body Scrub, stop reading right now, get in your car, go to Wal-Mart, and buy some right now. It'll be the best $7 you ever spent and you'll wonder where Tree Hut Shea Sugar Body Scrub has been all your life.  Wonder how many times I can say "Tree Hut Shea Sugar Body Scrub" in one blog post? 

When all was said and done, I stepped back to admire a shower that looked like this: 

My husband and I both start and end our day here in the shower- we might as well make it an organized and simplified experience. Not to mention, a much quieter one. 

Linking to Stonegable, Worthing Court, Cedar Hill Farmhouse, Confessions of a Plate Addict, and French Country Cottage!

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Getting organized Mondays: desk drawers

In the past few months, we have organized so many drawers and closets at our house, but some of them still remain in need of help. I wanted to devote one a day a week to a small organizational project, and preferably, a free organizing project :) This one is both.

Our office desk drawers were not that bad, but they definitely could use a little help. They certainly could use a little "prettying up."

I used scrapbook paper to line the drawers because I had a bunch of it, and most of it was pretty!

I already had the clear trays; I found them at a local dollar store a few years ago.

I think the overall result is way better, don't you? And best of all, this project cost us nothing.



Linking to Stonegable, Worthing Court, Cedar Hill Farmhouse, Confessions of a Plate Addict, and French Country Cottage!

Getting Organized: Command Centers

I've briefly talked about our command center before, but now I'm about to talk about it in depth.

The command center is completely DIY'd and we really do use it a lot. The bulletin board, which holds inspiration for me (pictures, Bible verses and quotes), is made from a large picture frame that the glass broke out of. We no longer used the frame, so I cut a piece of foam board to fit the frame and covered it in fabric. The calendar board was bought from Hobby Lobby, but the calendar is DIY'd with some line tape. Here is how our calendar looked a few months ago! 

Each week, we use the calendar to look at what bills are coming due, what other expenditures we'll have, and what important dates are coming up. The smaller red weekly calendar is where all of this information gets recorded. 

These frames hold our cleaning checklist, bill pay list (where we list what bills are due and when), the red weekly calendar, and a weekly menu board. The frames were $3 Dollar General specials and the items within the frames were made by me on the printer. 

The mail bins are just Chlorox Fresh Brush boxes covered with black canvas and adorned with mail plates.  You can read about how I made them here. We use these to organize bills that need to be paid, bills that need to clear, and bills that need to be filed. Everything else promptly goes to the shredder. 

Having this command center makes it so much easier to know what's going on in each family member's lives during the week, as well as helping us organize finances and eliminate piles of paper around the house. It's honestly one of the best things I ever did. 

Hope you'll join us next week for some financial organizing tips! Thanks for reading!

Linking to Stonegable, Worthing Court, Cedar Hill Farmhouse, Confessions of a Plate Addict, and French Country Cottage!

Four Days, Four Drawers: a recap

Last week, I participated in a mini organizing challenge with Jen Jones of I Heart Organizing. She challenged her readers to organize a drawer a day for four days. I had recently reorganized several drawers around here, but there were certainly some that needed a little tune up. The first drawer I tackled was the top drawer of our nursery changing table. It wasn't that bad, but there was too much in it, and I figured that would make those late night diaper changes simpler.

Before 

After

My next project was my husband's sock drawer. Once again, it could have been much worse, but it needed a bit of straightening.

Before

                                                                             After

Next, I straightened my daughter's bottom drawer of her dresser. It wasn't bad, either, but it needed a bit of straightening up.

Before 

After

My last drawer was also in my kiddo's room- her nightstand drawer was basically a glorified junk drawer. It contained a plastic pinwheel, a birthday card, a flashlight, a bookmark and some bottle labels. She's four.

                                                                                 

Before 

The book and flashlight made it back in there, but that's it. 

After

Thanks for taking the time to read about #4days4drawers! I hope you have a good week.

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Linking to Stonegable, Worthing Court, Cedar Hill Farmhouse, Confessions of a Plate Addict, and French Country Cottage!

Best organizing apps for your Smartphone

As a part of my blog series Getting Organized, I will share some of my favorite smartphone apps for organization. First, let me clarify that I own an Android OS phone (Sony Experia z3), so there may be far more Apple OS apps out there for organizing, but I have no experiences with those. Since most of us today own and use smartphones, why not use them to organize and simplify our lives? 

Four days, four drawers: Day one

Hi, all. I debuted my own blog series this week, but now I'm participating in a new organizing challenge with Jen Jones at I Heart Organizing! Have you ever been to her blog? If you haven't, you should.

The challenge is simple- everyday for four days, you re-organize one drawer and you take a before and after picture. Post your pics on Instagram with the hashtag #4days4drawers.

So far, I am two days into the challenge. I've reorganized the top drawer of our changing table, and my hubby's sock drawer. There are two more drawers I'll be organizing this week as well.

Here is a before shot of the baby's changing table drawer. It wasn't too bad, but there was far too much in this drawer.

When I started the drawer contained these items: a basket of diapers, two boxes of wipes, pack of Hand and Face wipes, pack of Boogie wipes, paci, nail clippers, thermometer, powder, three different tubes of diaper creams, three nasal aspirators, and four tubes of Diaper Genie refills.

I took everything out of it, lined it with some pretty gift wrap I got at Homegoods, and put back into the drawer only what I needed.


I pared down the drawer so that the items I had doubles of were now down to singles. I left the giant tub of diapers, one box of wipes, 1 pack each of the Hand and Face wipes and Boogie wipes, two Diaper Genie refills, and a small basket filled with clippers, comb and brush, thermometer, powder, one nasal aspirator, and one tube of diaper cream. I also added some cleaning items- Lysol wipes, Febreeze Air Effects spray, and dirty diaper sacks.

Behold! The big picture!

This is soooo much better! Way less cluttery and way easier to find everything! Tune in tomorrow for my day two post. And if you participate in this challenge, don't forget your hashtag!

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Linking to Stonegable, Worthing Court, Cedar Hill Farmhouse, Confessions of a Plate Addict, and French Country Cottage!

Getting organized: A new series

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Hello and happy Tuesday! I am debuting a new blog series this week, simply titled "Getting organized." This series is going to take a look at some organizing tools that I use and some that have been recommended to me. Here are some of the posts you will see in this new series:

1. Best organizing apps for your smart phone
2. The home binder
3. Keeping your closets organized
4. Command centers
5. Motherhood + organizing
6. Organizing finances

Once again, I am NOT a professional organizer. I'm not an expert. I'm just a human who craves order and has learned a few tricks to help me be more organized. I am only passing along that which I've already learned. I'm still looking to learn more, so please, if you have any ideas or tricks of your own, I'd love for you to contribute.

Linking to Stonegable, Worthing Court, Cedar Hill Farmhouse, Confessions of a Plate Addict, and French Country Cottage!

Closet spaces revamped!

 As you know, here at Organized and Simplified, we have been trying hard to make our closet spaces more functional. So far, we have finished all the closets except my husband's and our laundry room closet. I recently completed mine.

Monthly Organizing Challenge: Link Party

Welcome to the first-ever link party on Organized and Simplified! I decided a few months ago that I wanted to try to host a link party for organizing projects. They can be big projects or small projects; that is completely and totally up to you. I do ask, though, if you link up, all your pictures be original. By linking up, you are also giving me permission to repost your pictures on the blog, Facebook, or Pinterest. Thanks so much for linking up, and I hope to see you here again next month for the August Monthly Organizing Challenge.

Life on the go: Schlepping your kiddo to three activities a week

Summer is a busy time around here. I know some people will shake their heads at that statement, since I'm a teacher and people think teachers don't do anything during the summer. I beg to differ- I not only spend time with my family, but I also do a number of things for my job, such as gather lesson ideas, attend professional development training, and organize lesson materials for the coming year.

This summer has been completely and totally different, as I've written several lesson plans and gathered lesson materials to prepare for a twelve week maternity leave this fall and winter. I haven't attended professional development training, as I have spent my spare time prepping our home for the baby. The remainder of my time has been spent with my sweet daughter.

This summer has been her busiest summer to date. She is currently attending Vacation Bible School at our church this week, but has also taken swim lessons and is about to start gymnastics. She is also involved in a summer reading program with our local library. She wants to do ballet as well, but since she is only four, I told her she has to choose between gymnastics and dance. She chose gym.

Our busy schedule involves a lot of planning ahead. On days when we are at gymnastics, meals must be quick and easy. The crock pot is my best friend on these days. We also make sure bags are packed and in the van ahead of time. When I take her clothes out of the bag, I make sure to replace the items immediately so nothing is left out. For example, when I take her swim stuff out of the bag to wash it, I instantly put a new towel and swim suit in the bag.

Here's a peek at what is in her swim bag:

A swimsuit and towel, sunscreen, hairbrush, detangling spray, flip flops for locker room, wet bag for swimsuit, sunglasses and goggles. Not pictured: cover up dress and extra panties.

Here is a peek at what is in her gym bag: (she is a beginning gymnast, so she currently has no need for grips, rosin, etc.)

T-shirt and shorts, hairbrush, detangling spray, hairties, hair pins (not pictured).

Hope you enjoyed this post on making "living on the go" easier! Check back soon for more posts on living on the go.

Linking to Stonegable, Worthing Court, Cedar Hill Farmhouse, Confessions of a Plate Addict, and French Country Cottage!

Organizing: My home office

Remember yesterday when I showed you this mess in my office?

We had several systems in our office that worked quite nicely for managing our finances and schedule, but lately, we have gotten lazy. What you see here is a pile of things that includes mail, owners manuals, and balloons from my daughter's birthday party. 

Today, while my kiddo slept, I made sure to tackle this mess. I started out by separating out the pile. What needed to be shredded? What needed to put away in its rightful place? What needed to be thrown away? 

I shredded some things, thrown some things away, and put away the balloons. I then put the owner's manuals back into our handy dandy file box where we store them all. 

By the way, this is just a plastic file box with some scrapbook paper modge podged onto it and an ornate book plate. 

This is my sewing machine (which I use for a desk often) with a now much neater top. The polka dot binder is actually our home management binder. 

I took the opportunity to neaten up our command center as well. 

I shredded some things, filed some things, and threw some things away. The letter bins house these items, from left to right: bills that are due, bills we have paid and are waiting to clear, and things that need to be filed. The picture frames serve these functions: weekly cleaning checklist, things to remember (usually which bills need to be paid and when they are due), weekly schedule for the current week, and weekly menu. 

This is how we structure our command center calendar: important events (often birthdays) are written in black. Anything having to do with hubby is red, anything having to do with me is green, and anything having to do with our kids is green. As you can see, our daughter is the busiest member of our house! 

Our desktop still could be a little more clean, but for now, it is much neater than it was yesterday. 

Next year, this room is going to change drastically. There will be hardwood floors and floor to ceiling built in shelves. We are hoping to make it more of a sitting room and less of an office. 

Introducing the monthly organizing challenge!

The four-week "wait no more" challenge has ended, but there are still so many areas of our home that need organizing. During the four week challenge, we organized the playroom, my daughter's closet, the pantry and my daughter's dresser. Those areas are still looking great. In addition to those areas, the dining room, kitchen, and our bathrooms are still fairly organized. However, our nursery, the office, the master bedroom closets, the laundry room, and the garage are huge problem areas.

The nursery is still under construction, so there isn't much I can really do in there until the closet organizer is installed and the painting is finished. I have begun to organize the dresser, and we are planning to finish the room by the end of August, when I go back to work. The nursery closet is absolutely terrible right now. I like to call this organized chaos. The baskets across the top are organized, and the clothing items are hung in order of size. The fabric bins are organized. There just isn't a shelf for them yet, so it looks like this:

The master bedroom closets are in need of one more closet rod added on my side, and then it's just a matter of packing away what isn't needed right now and using the space to store what we do need.

The laundry room is a matter of adding another shelf or cabinets, and clearing out the clutter.

The office is just a matter of putting away things in the proper place.

The garage is a huge mess (sorry, no picture. It's too hot right now). This one started out good, but boy, does it need some help now.

So, what I'm trying to say is, since these are bigger projects, I'm going to do one a month. The bigger projects, like the garage and laundry room, will be down the list. Here is how I intend to do this:

July: Office and closets
August: Nursery
September: Laundry room
October: Garage

I'll call it the "Monthly organizing challenge," and I'll even have a link party to go along with it. Let me know if you're in!

Four week "Wait No More" Organizing Challenge: Week Three: My daughter's closet

Hello all! If you haven't noticed yet, I am participating in the Four week "Wait No More" Organizing Challenge with Jen Jones at I Heart Organizing. If you've never been to her blog, you need to. You'll be blown away by her home and her talents. While you're there, be sure to check out some of the other bloggers participating in the challenge as well. I'm glad to be included among so many talented and wonderful people! You can find Jen's blog here.

Here are the other parts of the challenge I participated in:

Week one: my daughter's dresser
Week two: the pantry
Week three: my daughter's closet, baby's closet, and master closet
Week four: playroom

I am intending to re-organize our master closet, and the baby's closet as well, but I am not quite finished with those. I might have to cheat and post those next week :) I did finish my daughter's closet, and boy am I glad! A few months ago, we moved her out of the nursery and into a new "big girl room."  Up until last week, her clothes were still in the baby room closet and the closet in her big girl room still looked like this:

Total. Monica. Closet. The mess you see here consists of clothes that won't fit in the master closet, paint, and junk. Lots of junk.

Needless to say, we put this stuff in the baby closet (for now, until we can add that extra rod to the master closet) and got to work organizing her big girl room closet.

I'm pleased to be able to share this "after picture" that is such a huge improvement:


We added a vertical closet shelf and one lower rod. My dad made this wonderful closet shelf for us using an Ana White plan, some lumber and nails. The lumber ended up costing us about $120 (we used actual shelf lumber instead of plywood), but we already had the closet rods and rod flanges. I purchased them over a year ago for about $10 total.

I already had the boxes, which I made over a year ago using diaper boxes and $7 fabric. You can read about them here.  The Rubermaid totes were already here, and the baskets with the pink liners are from her nursery closet. We also already had the white paint. Altogether, this project cost about $137 dollars, and the closet is so much more useful.

Let me give you a bit of a tour:

The top left corner houses a Rubbermaid tote that holds her baby blankets. I am planning to cover the side of it with contact paper so you can't see the mess inside.

The baskets on the top shelf, which are left over from her nursery closet, house winter hats and gloves, tights, extra coat hangers and leggings.

The top rod holds outfits, while the lower rod holds pants and skirts. Some lesser-used, but still possibly needed items (like a few long sleeved shirts in case of a cool morning) occupy the back of the lower rod, and dresses occupy the rod on the right. We wanted the closet to grow with her, so she has plenty of room to hang her dresses when she's older. 

Because she is a growing kid who regularly outgrows things, I created a "hamper" for donation items. The hamper is made from a cardboard box which I covered with cloth. Nothing wet is going into this hamper, so it doesn't matter that it's cardboard. Her memory box is stored beside the hamper and her weekend bag sits on top of the memory box.

The shoe rack was in her previous closet, so we reused it. 

Well, that concludes Miss E's closet tour! I am not quite done with the baby closet and master closet but I am working on them. I will post those soon. Thanks for stopping by! 

<div align="center"><a href="http://www.thriftydecorchick.blogspot.com/" title="TDC Before and After" target="_blank"><img src="http://www.homestoriesatoz.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/beforeAndAfterButton_thumb1.gif" alt="TDC Before and After" style="border:none;" /></a></div>

Four Week "Wait-No-More" Organizing Challenge! Week 1: My daughter's dresser

Hi all! Welcome back to Organized and Simplified! This is going to be a busy summer for us- once again, I'm homeschooling my daughter this summer, just like we did last summer. We are also preparing for a new baby this fall, so we are cleaning and organizing, and working on the nursery. I am also preparing for maternity leave and am writing lesson plans. We are also squeezing some quality time in there, too. Whew! Just thinking about all of those things makes me tired.

When Jen at I Heart Organizing proposed a four week organizing challenge, I knew I was on board. By the way, you should definitely check out her amazing blog.

My four-week challenge areas are as follows:

My daughter's room
Closets in my room, daughter's room, and baby's room
Playroom
Pantry

For week one, we began emptying out the nursery. My daughter has been sleeping in her "big girl room" for some time now, but her clothes were still in the nursery next door. We moved all her clothes over to her dresser in the new room, and moved all her clothes to the closet.

I began by first weeding out the clothes that no longer fit, or are in poor shape. I put her out of season clothes that still fit in underbed bags and stashed them under her bed. I put any clothing that is used often but not necessarily daily in baskets in her closet, such as her workout clothing for gymnastics, and her leggings (too hot to wear them right now). By the way, check out the closet next week.

I designated a separate drawer for necessity items, such as undies and socks, pajamas, shirts and shorts.

21-day organizing challenge: Week Three Recap

This marks the final post of the 21-day organizing challenge. I hope you have enjoyed the challenge, as have I. Thank you for being patient with me during the 21-day challenge. During this 21-day period, I have been swamped at work, my dad has dealt with a lot of health issues, and we’ve experienced the hospitalization and eventual death of another relative. To say our plates have been full is an understatement.  Rather than my family taking a back seat, I’d much rather my blog take a back seat. Now that things have calmed down, you can be sure we will be back on a regular schedule now.

21-day organizing challenge: Week one recap

Things have truly gotten busy at the Boone house in the past two weeks. In fact, I've barely had the time to DO the 21-day challenge, much less blog about it. I have done the challenge, though, and I've decided instead of making a DAILY post about the challenge, I'll do a weekly post. 

Originally, I had written days one and two as two separate posts, but for the sake of reading, I decided to make it easier. I also back-dated a few posts into weekly posts so I wouldn’t have to write one big, long, exhausting post. In the first week of the 21-day organizing challenge, we organized all of the following spaces in our house: kitchen cabinets, pantry and coat closet, entry way, desk and home office, bathroom cabinets, and linen closet. 

21-day challenge: Day one- kitchen cabinets

Welcome to the 21-day challenge, day one: kitchen cabinets.Before we get started, let me issue a quick disclaimer I failed to mention in my first post: To join the challenge, you do not have to do ALL of the daily challenge. For example, if all you organize is one cabinet, you have participated in the challenge for day one :)