Organization

Demolition has officially begun on the kitchen this week - yaayayayyay! I’m sharing all of the play-by-plays on Instagram Stories so please follow along there for the most up-to-date happenings. But before demo commenced this week, we did lots of prep work to get ready for the big day. With a goal of being tidy, efficient, and eating healthy, we took a few steps to maintain our sanity while living without our cooking space for a few months. Here’s what we did.

When it comes to homeownership and home improvement there are lots of receipts, and manuals, and warranties, and documents, and maintenance reminders, and just stuff! Luckily, “organization” is my middle name, so you can bet I get a kick out of keeping that stuff in check. Here’s how I do it.

I love looking at how people store things - especially in their kitchens. I like learning other people’s reasoning for things, I like snooping, and I always like to improve on my own spaces. So, I filmed one of my own kitchen! However, mine isn’t perfect. This whole kitchen was a stopgap solution until we could renovate the space (coming soon!) so there’s no fancy pull out drawers, no custom spice racks, no perfectly sized shelves, and certainly no perfect layout.

I wrote a blog post last year with a list of unique ways to donate a bunch of things when you’re decluttering. Things like dingy towels, toiletries, cleaning products, paint samples, light bulbs, eyeglasses, houseplants, and so so much more. Check it out even if you read it last year because I added a few more tips, and we can always use a refresher.

I mentioned the Buy Nothing Project in that post but I want to give it a big shout out and profess my love for this group. I mean LOVE. I’m in this group’s page literally every day and I’ve decluttered a bunch of hard-to-get rid of items (read my trash - I’ll explain later), plus I’ve saved oodles of money in the group, too. What is it, you ask? Well, I’ll tell ya.

With Netflix’s Marie Kondo special all the rage and her book selling like hot cakes, I wanted to chime in with my experience folding clothes and purging clutter the KonMari way. You may remember that a year ago my pal Natasha Habermann helped me clean out my closet using Marie Kondo’s method. Well, I started folding my clothes in the KonMari way and I’m smitten, so I’m here to show you how, too!

I guess I’ve made it known that I’m a type-a neat-freak that likes cleaning, sorting, and organizing because I got a bunch of requests for an organizer gift guide. I’m not surprised because I admitted the other day that one of my hobbies is oiling my wooden utensils. Anyway, I’m a proud neat-freak, so here’s a collection of goodies for your tidying loving friend.

Over the years, our house gained a few additions in the technology department. It has always had electricity, but then it got a phone line, and then a cable line, then another phone line, then satellite, then another cable line to route to another room, and so on. By her 100th birthday, our house had wires, conduit, and cables on every side of her. Naturally, I wanted all of this visual clutter gone. Here’s what I did!