People, remember the cute kids room I had? Well, it took about a million coats of primer to hide those letters – ok, maybe not a million, but it kinda feels that way!
And. I have to go into the office tomorrow. Now, every time I say that everyone rolls their eyes at me, but I only go into the office one day a week – on a Friday, and I have not worked on a Monday in, I don’t know, a year? So. Right. Monday. Argh! Ok, happy Sunday evening!
I decided to take Laura up on her kitchen challenge, and of course being the “last minute” person that I am, I picked almost the last day to do the organizing!
The last time I actually fed cereal to a baby was more than year ago! Yeah, I am not proud.
Apparently I WILL actually try anything!! I don’t recommend this!
Yes, I like tea, and apparently the Tetley people has all my money now!
Ahh…. so neat and organized! Yey! Thanks Laura!
At some point in the last few months I had to give up drinking coffee, the taste was just becoming too awful to handle, even if admittedly, coffee is my crack!
See, I know that the taste of instant coffee is pretty horrid, but I am not the type of person that would own a traditional coffee maker though, and by “type of person”, I mean that there is no possible way that I would EVER spend 20 minutes trying to figure out how to use those filters!
Let me introduce you to the best coffee maker ever, well, “ever” might be a little strong, but to me at least, it’s just super amazing! It’s a personal coffee maker, and it comes with coffee in little tea-bag looking things, called pods, which are simply placed within the coffee maker, push the button, and “ta-da”, yummy coffee!! And when I say “yummy”, oh my God, it’s really very good, you know, especially for like 1 minute of work!
My problem now is that I am drinking waaaay too much coffee, it’s like my new hobby, you know, “oh, I feel a little stressed… I know, I’ll have some coffee!” Try it! For those of you who are regular coffee drinkers at least, you’ll love it!
Have you ever heard of the Org Junkie or may be Menu Plan Monday? Well, over the past couple months, I’ve had the pleasure of working with Laura, author of a blog called I’m an Organizing Junkie, which is filled with great tips for making things easier for moms especially.
I have a pretty small house, the main floor has basically 2 rooms, the kitchen and then an open area that functions as the dinning room, living room, family room, play room, tv room, and everything in between! The kids toys were always all over the room, and I hated the fact that we didn’t have a play area set aside for them. I think that I was inspired while working on Laura’s website redesign and I did a little organizing of my own.
I used to have the couches at the back wall, and a big empty area in the middle, so I move up the couches to split the living room a bit and created a tiny play area of the kids. It actually has been working out very well for everyone!
The other storage solutions I’ve had for about the last 3 and a half years, but thought that I would show them anyways…
The TV stand actually houses a lot of our “stuff”, there is a toy box, prayer mats, and the cupboards are home to diapers, wipes, books, playdoh, craft supplies, and many other items that need to be ‘hidden’.
The window seat has little pockets that actually serves as a “garage” for their large planes, trains and automobiles.
I hope that you do check out Laura’s website, I know that you will find her and her tips totally awesome!
For the past year I have been trying really hard to increase my recycling efforts, and while I cannot be considered “green” yet, I think I am doing a few things right!
1) One of the simplest things that I did to make recycling a little easier was to get the right “tools”, or in my case, the right bins for organizing my garbage.
When we first started recycling, the first mistake we made was relying on the blue bin as the recycle bin, so we would store the cans and other packaging on the kitchen counter and then take it down at the end of the day. Soon we realized that the counter was filling up and it was somewhat easier to just toss things into the garbage instead! Now, I have a large bin for plastic, glass, and aluminum, then a second small bin for organic waste, and of course my regular garbage bin as well.
You can find a few great solutions at The Bin Company, but make sure that whatever solution you get is one that works for your family and needs.
2) One of the hardest things for me to give up are plastic bags… ideally I would love to have fabric bags when I go grocery shopping, but it’s just not something that I seem to have the discipline for!
I found biodegradable shopping bags which are generally a better choice for collecting your waste than ordinary plastic bags. I also do most of my shopping now at Costco, where they don’t give bags anyways, so that’s actually working out better for me.
3) Most of the waste in our family consists of “organic” waste, you know, fruit and vegetable skins and seeds, Chicken bones, and so on… and I realized some time ago, that I needed a organic waste solution, but I got lucky and our city started a composting program. If you’re thinking of composting, it’s a really great way to reduce your waste, and you can find a lot of different options, including composting start-up kits to get you up and running quickly and easily.
What are you doing to reduce your waste?
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