Closet Cleanup!

My closet has really been bugging me for a while. I am blessed to have a separate closet from my husband, it use to not always be that way! However, since we moved to our new house a couple years ago, my new larger closet meant more room to stash things!

On Tuesday I finally decided to do something about it. You might remember the green baskets I bought from zulily.com. I decided to put them to use in my closet cleanup! Here are some before pictures so you can appreciate the transformation.

You can see why this was getting on my nerves! Most of the problem was the pile of clothes waiting to go to Good Will that you can see stashed in the corner in the first picture. Those were the first to come out and I also went through my summer items and added a few things to the bags. The next was to pull out the items on the shelves and I also have a 3 drawer plastic bin that you can't see because it is on the back wall. I ended up filling up a whole trash bag worth of things. I also cleaned out my bedside table while I was at it.

*Drum roll please* the results.....

I love my new baskets!! This one closest in the picture is currently empty waiting to go to another space. The other two on the end have belts in one and purses in the other. 

I am very pleased with the results! Next project, my husband's side of the room! *shivers in fear* j/k haha. It is quite a mess though. I think I will have to tackle that one next week! 

Project Organize - Seasoning Pantry

A mess isn't it? I have been wanting to tackle this mess of a seasoning pantry for a while. Since I am on spring break from work this week, I decided that today was the day. Yesterday we went to IKEA and I bought some pantry organizing items. Today I took everything out of the pantry and wrote down what I had. I also checked best if used by dates. Yikes, there were some pretty old ones in there, so they were thrown out. I bought a nice little shelf that gave me some extra room. Here is the result.

Ahh.... so much better!!

I love the white container I found at IKEA. I put all of my baking items in there, like baking soda, cornstarch, cooking sprays so when I need it, it is all in one spot.

I also found this nice glass containers for spices. I got 8, but only have 5 filled. I put the spices I used the most in these. You can also see the white shelf that I bought. It made a huge difference in what I am able to fit and be able to see and get to easily!

I also made this spread sheet on my computer. I listed all the items that I currently have and how many. This will make finding if I have a certain seasoning much quicker than looking through the pantry.

I also used another one of the white containers to put all of our teas and drink mixes in. I also purchased a 24 piece food storage system and got rid of all the plastic rubbermaid containers. Looking forward to using them!

Enjoy what you read here on Golden Reflections? Please vote once daily over at Picket Fence Blogs. Just click on the button below! Thanks! 

Springing into Spring

April is an exciting month; spring will hopefully come here in southern Ohio! My sister Sarah over at Sarah's Heart's Home is going to be hosting a blog theme for the month of April called Springing into Spring. She is going to be having lots of guest posts (one of which is me!) on different topics such as home organization, recipes, spring cleaning and even hosting her first giveaways! I know it is going to be a fun month on her blog so I encourage you to head over there and follow her so you can keep up with the fun!

Enjoy what you read here on Golden Reflections? Please vote daily over at Picket Fence Blogs, just click on the button below! Thanks! 

Weekly Chore List...

Photo Credit: Microsoft Word

I have been trying to keep up with house work ever since I married my wonderful hubby, almost 5 years ago. Working full time has made it hard, since I come home and all I want to do is get on the computer and rest on the couch! So, being the organized person that I am, I decided to make a weekly chore list for myself. This way I am dividing the needed chores throughout the week, instead of trying to play catch up on Thursday or Friday night for Sabbath. Below is what I came up with for myself. I made this in Word and then printed out a copy to hang on my fridge. Hopefully I can stick with it and it will make keeping up with the house easier. You will notice that sweeping the floor is on here every day (3 dogs tend to make that a necessity!) This is a work in progress too. I'm sure other things will come up that need to be split up throughout the week. 

Sunday

• Thoroughly clean kitchen (sanitize, mop if needed from the weekend)
• Laundry!

Monday

• Sweep Floors (downstairs carpet and tile only)
• Laundry, finish folding and putting away

Tuesday

• Sweep Floors (downstairs tile and carpet only)
• Clean bathroom upstairs

Wednesday

• Sweep Floors (upstairs, downstairs if needed)
• Dust (upstairs and downstairs)

Thursday

• Sweep Floors (downstairs carpet and tile)
• Clean downstairs bathroom
• Mop tile floors

Friday

• Quick clean up of all downstairs
• Sweep floors (carpet, swiffer tile if needed)

Saturday (Sabbath) = REST! ** So glad for this day!! ** 

Now it's time to get off the computer and put this list to use!! 

Enjoy what you read here on Golden Reflections? Please vote once daily at Picket Fence Blogs, just click on the button below! 

Good eats and other thoughts

Today I tried a delicious meal for supper! I will be sharing the recipe this coming week. I have always wanted to try risotto. I picked up some boxed risotto to try out last week. I wanted to see how it would come out and how it is suppose to look before I try it from scratch. I also tried a new recipe from my Pampered Chef vegetarian cookbook. It is called pan-fried polenta with mushrooms and zucchini.

I am also excited that I got my new kitchen gadget organizer in the mail from The Pampered Chef. I use to have everything in a small container on the counter, but I needed more room and wanted things to be a little more organized. Since I sell Pampered Chef, it was easy to get this ordered for myself. :) 

I love it! It turns so you can reach things on the other side without having to fish through it. My counter definitely looks a lot better. 

I've been reading Clutter Rehab by Laura Wittmann, author over at Orgjunkie.com. She has written 101 tips to help us de-clutter and form good habits to keep our houses organized and neat! I am loving her book and it has energized me to organize areas that I haven't touched since we moved into our house 2 years ago. The closets in the upstairs have been holding lots of things that I thought I needed two years ago, but when I went through one of them the other night I was thinking why in the world did I save this? I have quite a few piles of things to move to the basement or get thrown away. While going through one of my boxes, I found all of my old journals, as far back as 1996. Wow, how silly I was back then!! I came to the one where I started talking to my now husband and when we started dating, ah young love! It was definitely a good laugh to read back through all the memories. And no I didn't throw those out! :)

Project Organization

This past week, right before Christmas, I finally talked my husband into organizing the basement with me. We have been putting this off for a long time, well a couple months. I did have it all nice and organized at one point, then we had the basement re-sealed so we had to move everything to the middle so they could jack-hammer around the perimeter. So everything has been sitting in the middle of the basement since then, like this...

I brought a radio player down with Christmas music and we got to work! David took care of the camping equipment and his tools, I organized all my decorating things and the books. We both had school books from when we were in college. We decided to only keep the ones from our majors and got rid of  sell the rest on ebay. So after about 4 hours of huffing and puffing, we finally finished!

The mattresses in the middle are going to be donated to our churches disaster relief program and there is a huge pile of trash that is hiding in one of the rooms off to the left in the first picture. There is also a little pile that is going to be donated to Good Will.

My next organization projects: 
The upstairs closets
The kitchen cupboards
The linen closets
The bookcases in the dining room

Hopefully a lot of this will get done this week since I am off work. I plan on working on the kitchen and bookcases hopefully today. My head will feel so much clearer after this is all done!

Now to get off of here and get to work; I think hubby is cooking me a yummy breakfast too! :)

Do you enjoy what you read on Golden Reflections? Please vote for this blog at The Picket Fence Blogs. Click on the button below once daily!