Organization Part 6 – Clearing Out the Junk Room

One of my deep shames is a room that should be an extra guest room but has instead become a junk room. Yes. I have a junk room. It’s easy when you have more bedrooms than people to occupy them and that’s what happened when the kids grew up and moved out. It was just too easy to put things in a bedroom with the intention of storing it properly or getting rid of it later. In my mind it now resembles an episode of “Hoarders.” Now it’s necessary to turn that room back into a functional bedroom. I have a solid reason for clearing out the junk room and a time frame that won’t allow me to up and quit.

Organization Series Part 5 – Tips for Organizing

There are so many wonderful ideas for organizing that it’s hard to share them all with you. Not everyone will decide to use every idea but, in my world, the more organized things are the better. I love being able to find things easily and to know where things I don’t use every day are stored. Here are some of the great tips for organizing I’ve discovered recently.

Organization Part 5 — Spice Cupboard

Today I’m going to spice it up! Okay, bad pun, I know. But the spice cupboard is so important to the kitchen. Cooking and baking would be incredibly bland without the right spices and I hate wasting time searching for a specific spice. When I’m gathering ingredients for a recipe I want to be able to pull the spices out without getting a headache. And our youngest son and his lovely girlfriend often come over for dinner which he usually takes over making so I want him to be able to find everything easily.

Organization Part 4 – Organizing Your Pantry

A chore that is often forgotten or ignored is organizing your pantry. If you’re lucky enough to have a pantry you may know how easily it can sometimes look like one of those closets in movies where, when the door is opened, everything falls out. It can require a little discipline to keep your pantry organized but it’s worth it. Time spent re-organizing is wasted time. Money spent on things lost in there is wasted money. And having a well-organized pantry makes meal-planning and creating a shopping list much easier.

Organization Part 3 — Everything Under The Kitchen Sink

In 2000 I had a spinal cord injury that left me with central nervous system damage. It’s very difficult for me to bend and getting up and down from bed and chairs is difficult and sometimes impossible without help. Since getting up from a chair is hard you can imagine how hard it is to get down and back up from the floor. I avoid putting my bottom end and floors together as often as I can!

Organization Part 2 — Organizing your refrigerator & freezer

In times past I felt I had a pretty organized refrigerator. After all, I could find what I needed…usually. And things tipped over and drooled down the side of the refrigerator and pooled at the bottom under the crisper drawers only occasionally. But one day, as I was lying on the floor halfway in the refrigerator, trying to scrape up a large, thick pool of what once had been barbeque sauce, I’d had enough! I was tired of finding fuzzy fried chicken. I was done with opening a container only to find a moldy, semi-liquefied glob of who knows what. I was sick of wasting money buying things that I already had three or four of because they were lost in the back of the refrigerator or freezer. I didn’t want to waste one more minute cleaning congealed blood from the back wall. There was a better way!

Organization Part 1 — Getting Started

When our kids were little I was super-organized. Our boys were only 18 months apart so I didn’t have time to waste. Two babies in diapers is a tremendous motivator to save time and steps. Some people thought I may have taken it too far; even my spices were alphabetized. But getting little ones ready for everything from bath and bed to a vacation out of town takes organization. As the kids got older and I was working outside the home some things slipped a bit.