OH: Week Eight

Organize Your Home: Week 8

Create a Simple Address Book and Organize Contact Information

This week's challenge was originally completed last winter. I was unsatisfied with my current address book system. I knew that in a short amount of time I was getting a new cellphone with a new provider and would need to put in manually all my current phone numbers. With these two things in mind I began organizing and creating an address book.


This is how it looked at the beginning of the week.
Before:

Everything was falling out and numerous addresses were whited out and new address written in.

Instead of using the blank spaces I left for such situations.. I wrote new people and their contact information on post-its. 

Steps I completed for this week's challenge:

1. Evaluate current system. What did I like, what did I want to change?

2. Update the addresses and phone numbers.

3. Reprint!

4. Put back together.

5. Enjoy a [re]organized and simpler way to get in contact with family.

After:

Newly updated address list, in ABC order!

A phone number list (already created).

A Christmas card list for the next few years (already created, just updated).

A Birthday and Anniversary List (already created).

Birthday, anniversary labels and stamps in the back. 

One step closer to a organized home! 

OH: Week Seven

Organize Your Home: Week 7

Healthy Meal Planning and Grocery Shopping

I assumed in this challenge there would be some weeks that would not apply to our family. In the months ahead the challenge will move to organizing kid's rooms, closets, etc. and other areas we do not have. The focus of this challenge is to get in the habit of healthy meal planning, and creating a grocery shopping list. 


Right now our Meal Planning/Grocery Shopping goes like this: 
"Ben what do you want to do for dinner this week?"
We plan some meals and we (or just one of us) goes shopping to pick up goodies to last the week. We also have certain items that we buy on a weekly basis (salad, milk, veggies, fruits, some form of meat, etc.) Occasionally we talk about what meals we are going to have each day otherwise Ben just choose what dinner will be and I eat it when I get home from work! Ben is the chef in our family.


For now, this system works for us. But... I couldn't deprive you from the organizing that has happened in our home!


We have a closet that was...well a mess. It was cluttered and practically unusable because of all the junk that was inside. 

Keepsake/Craft/School/Games/Random Junk Closet

Before

There were a few more boxes in here that I took out before taking this picture.  

Everything was piled into the closet

In the middle of the cleaning and organizing process. 

More junk in the dining room. This was quite the process. 

I went through wedding stuff and parted with a few items.

I had two computer paper boxes full of wedding items and got down to one box.

I had three big totes filled with keepsakes and got down to two. 

One of our keepsakes and one with our old toys/dolls, etc. for our future children.

After

Now a Keepsake/School/Gift Supplies Closet

Some of the objects in this closet found a new home, others went to Goodwill. 

I created a gift area: wrapping paper in one container, bags in the drawer, crepe paper, ribbons, etc. in the little tote and a card box on top. Behind all that is a basket filled with goodies for when our little 2 and 1year old friend visit. 

Yeah organization!

So even though Menu Planning is not our thing, organization did happen in our home! 

Valentine's Day

So a little secret, Ben and I don't celebrate Valentine's Day. Instead it is an expectation to do little things for each other throughout the year!

Instead of doing something special for each other on one specific day we do something special for each other ALL THE TIME! 

This can be little things... cleaning up after the other person, surprising each other with dinner, buying each other chocolate, and leaving little love notes around the house.. and let's not forget about our penguin who still can be found in various places around the house. 

This year was a special year. When you spend time with two young girls it is hard to not get a little excited for Valentine's. We were lucky to spend a morning with Addison and Erin a few days before Valentine's.

Together we made a few Valentine's Day decorations to put up at their house to surprise their Mom and Dad. 

The Saturday before Valentine's Day was our day to create!

Then with some help from Ca (me!) the decorations were put up in time to surprise their parents for Valentine's Day. Ben and I babysat so their parents (Lauren and Eric) could spend some quality time together! 

We made heart garland.

And a special project making a heart with their handprints. 

The girls colored the hearts! 

Ben and his Valentine, Erin.

Me and my Valentine, Addison!

Our special Valentine treat, chocolate bread with chocolate chunks and cherries! Mmmmm!

OH: Week Five and Six

We've had a few busy weeks including a weekend that was so busy it didn't even feel like a weekend! 
The last two challenges to 52 Weeks to a More Organized Home were simple for our family. Yes, we could have made them more of a challenge but for where we are at in our lives, what we did is appropriate. 

Organize Your Home: Week 5

Create A Home Recycling Center

The main challenge here was to research your city's recycling policies and begin recycling in your home. Since we already recycle we just took things a step up.

Before:

Using a paperbag for our recycling.

After: (warning the change is drastic!)

WHOA! Look at the difference once $5 purchase can do! 

But really there is more than meets the eye.

Steps I completed for this challenge:

1. Clear out area.

2. Clean floors and wall (Ben likes to throw food in the general direction of the trash and sometimes uses the wall as a backboard!)

3. Empty all containers.

4.Wash out containers, inside and out.

5. Put everything back.

6. Replace the paperbag with a more durable container. 

Optional: Now if I had a Cricut or Silhouette I would cut vinyl to make these awesome decals from Picnik. 

The green bucket used to be our compost bucket but it now holds the potatoes from our garden. 

Organize Your Home: Week 6

Organize Your Coupons

This was an easy one for us. I just went through our coupons and got rid of the expired ones or ones I knew we would use. I only keep a few but do look online occasionally if we are going to a specialty store (some place other than Meijer). So nothing changed here. 

I clip out coupons and stick them on a clip on our fridge. Ta-Da! 

OH: Week Four

Organize Your Home: Week 4

Organize Recipes and Cookbooks

This week's challenge did not take a lot of time. This was a great challenge for this week because I didn't have a lot of time this week and barely found time to squeeze this challenge in.


A few years ago I made a recipe binder. Since then have printed off recipes and have done a fairly good job of keeping things organized. Since moving into our apartment in July are once organized recipe area got a little out of hand. This is what the recipe area looked like before I started the challenge.


With this challenge it was important to get rid of recipes. With places like pinterest.com and  foodgawker.com it is very easy to find new recipes. If I hadn't made the recipe yet I really considered if it was worth keeping. My cooking style has changed so I got rid of recipes that included canned items or other ingredients that I do not use.

So not terrible but not organized... 

I put recipes here until I have time to file them. 

Steps I completed for this weeks challenge:

1. Pull out all the recipe books.

2. Clean shelf.

3. Empty previously made binder and put all the recipes floating around the cabinet into one pile.

4. Go through recipes. Be honest with yourself about the recipes you will actually make. 

5. Recycle recipes you haven't made or ones that you know you can find quickly online. 

 5. Organize recipes into categories that makes sense for you and your family. My main categories were appetizers, salad, soup, chicken, main dishes, drinks, desserts (separated further by cookies, cakes, summer/ice cream based, muffins, fruit based (cobblers), etc.) and winter desserts. 

6. Hole punch ALL recipes including recipe cards. 

7. And finally put everything together! Before I did not have my recipe cards in the binder which led me to forget about some recipes. 

8. Take a moment to enjoy the progress!

9. Go through recipe books and donate what you have not/will not use.

10. Put everything back sorted from tallest to smallest. 

11. Leave room to grow. 

A cork board and recipe folder to store recipes until they can be organized into the recipe binder. 

There you have it! An organized recipe area! 

OH: Week Three

Organize Your Home: Week 3

Fridge and Freezer

So I did not do too great with the before pictures again this week (I keep forgetting!) but here is a picture from when I did remember a few days after the challenge started.


It won't look too different from the after picture mostly because I believe our fridge/freezer is already pretty organized but just needed to be cleaned. This was taken at the end of the week so our fridge was really empty! 


Steps I completed in this weeks challenge:
1. Go through each shelf and drawer one at a time and first get rid of anything old, check expiration dates. 
2. Wash the area, pull out drawers, use a vacuum, do whatever you have to do to get every nook! 
3. Put everything back in, organized into like areas. 
4. Don't forget the outside, scrub that down, throw away old coupons, sort through art work and put away keepsakes. 

I went through our coupons, put the artwork from the kids at my schools into our keepsakes and organized the magnets. I placed kid friendly magnets on the bottom and others on top. (Best friend's kids like the letter magnets so we like to keep them at their level!)

Like I said, it doesn't look that different. Got rid of some old items in the door, in the cheese drawer and really cleaned the bottom drawers. We used to put the garden vegetables in there and there was dirt and random other goodies collecting at the bottom. I had to pull out the vacuum to help me out. 

Our freezer just needed a tiny bit of love. Wiped things down and reorganized a bit. Our freezer door has the tomatoes from our garden and the rhubarb we grew. Oh and of course some coffee! 

Here is a labeled look at the organizational aspect of our fridge and freezer. 

The tomatoes, green beans, strawberries were grown and picked by us! The pesto was made almost entirely with ingredients we grew (garlic, basil) or that were local. Cudighi is our favorite sausage from the UP, Vension from brother and Uncle Jake. Whiskey needed for Ben's bread pudding and whiskey sauce! Mm! The cool whip containers is vegetable broth Ben made with leftover veggies. 

The fridge not too exciting, but keeping it real here. :) Yes, our fridge really is this empty most of the time. . . 

And that is our fridge/freezer make-over. Not that most exciting but there it is! 

Connecting with Kinect

For Christmas my parents surprised us with a fun new toy, X-Box Kinect. It attaches to our X-Box and then using a little "webcam" type device to capture your movements. How you move changes how your character on the game moves and with this cool technology you can play interactive video games. We have one game as of right now but on this game there is fun games like an obstacle course, rafting, a game called rally ball and a few more. We often have people over and it is the perfect way to laugh, have fun and be silly with our friends and family. 

Here is a glimpse at all the fun we've had with all the friends/family that we've played with! 

Tia and Justin

Stevie and Justin

Dad and Mom (really intense playing happening here!)

Ben and Mikayla

Myself and Gramma Kathy

NMU Friends, Kelly and Kurt

High School friends, Lindsey and Jordan

This is the go to game we play! Ben and I are looking at getting a work out game and another fun group game to add to our collection! SO MUCH FUN!

Want to play? Come visit!