Day Three Hundred Eight: Organize Your Kitchen Cabinets

January always makes me want to get my house in order.  Right now, my kitchen cabinets are horrendous.  This is partly due to mediocre organization, and partly due to the fact that my one-year daughter thinks the cabinets are her own personal playground.  If the cabinets are her playground, the contents are a small stainless-steel toy store.  This is a photo of a fairly-organized cabinet, prior to toddler infestation.

I decided to take Martha's advice on Drawer Organization and install drawers and a lid organizer in my cabinets. This allows you to easily access those deep lower cabinets...without having to physically crawl inside.   My favorite store, the Container Store, sells these chrome roll-out drawers and lid holders.  This is my newly organized cabinet with drawers:

These drawers have been installed for a few days now.  I have to smile every time I open the cabinet.  It looks fabulous.  If you come over and all the doors of my cabinets are flung open, please don't question my sanity.  I'm simply reveling in my newfound cabinet organization.

p.s.  My daughter is in heaven.  Her favorite playground has new toys! At least the drawers make cleanup a cinch.

Day Two Hundred Sixty-Four: Hang Me Now

This week has been filled with Christmas decorating for me.  I've decked the halls and trimmed the tree all week.  Actually, make that trees, plural.  I have six.  Why I started putting Christmas trees in our bedrooms I will never know.  We started it when our son was born six years ago.  Now it's tradition and I can't get around it.  :such a sucker:

You may be wondering why I'm rushing to decorate.  Christmas isn't for weeks and it's not even December yet.  The push is because Saturday I'm hosting a Sip & See for a friend and her new baby girl and I'm pretty sure the guests don't want to sit on boxes of Christmas decorations I've just hauled down from the attic.

Probably not the most festive atmosphere.

So, when we returned home on Sunday from our Thanksgiving holiday, we pulled out the Christmas decorations and I started trimming the faux tree.  Since we have three ornament murderers kids living under our roof, I wanted to make sure all my lovely ornaments were secure.  Luckily for me, Martha has a tutorial on Tree-Trimming Secrets.  Namely, How to Hang Ornaments.

Now, I'm sure you've been hanging ornaments since your own mother let you hang up that awful thing you made in Kindergarten.  But you've probably been doing it All Wrong.

Martha suggests suspending ornaments from copper wire instead of the tiny hooks that we all use.  To make your own hangers, thread a five-inch piece of wire through the ornament loop, twist one end of the wire to secure the ornament, then wrap the other end around the branch until the ornament is secure.

This is Martha's lovely Visual For Idiots:

The drawing is so nice and neat, no?

Now I will be honest.  I tried this...for a while.  After the first dozen ornaments, I started getting a bit sloppy.  See photo below:  

After my fingertips started going numb, I gave up.

Calling all members of the O.C.D. Club:  this method is for you.

Day Two Hundred Thirty-Nine: Appliance Manual for Dummies

Since we have three children we often utilize the services of a babysitter.  We will often feed our kids dinner and leave them with the babysitter and a bowl of popcorn watching the latest Disney movie.  The problem is only a Mensa member can operate our entertainment center, and we often return at night to our babysitter watching Cars on repeat.  So I decided to use Martha's idea of an Appliance Manual and make a manual for our entertainment center.  (Okay, so it's really just a sheet of paper, but there's a lot of information there.)  It's brilliant and I'm pretty sure a person of average intelligence can understand it.

Certainly the average babysitter.

 

Day One Hundred Ninety Five: Movin' On Up

For the last few years, I have been living my cosmetic life out of this adorable bag my sister-in-law bought for me:

Every morning, I would pull my makeup out of this bag, then put it back in when I was finished.  It occurred to me that I was living like a homeless person. (Albeit a stylish-preppy homeless person.)  I'm not sure why I kept doing this, when I have a perfectly good, and nearly empty, drawer available to me.

And so I moved in, Martha-style, with wooden Drawer Dividers.

 :Insert The Jeffersons theme song:

Day Thirty-Seven: Conquering Mt. Laundry

Now that our out-of-town guests have departed, kids have returned to school, and husband has left for a business trip, I have loads of downtime in which to get the house back in order.  In fact, let me just put this box of bon-bons down and I'll be right with you.

First order of business: Conquering the mountain of laundry.

As ever, I look to Martha for support.

Although the chapter on Laundry Rooms in her Homekeeping book is quite long, Martha does not have a section on "How to Make the Laundry Wash and Fold Itself".  She does have sections on: Detergent vs. Soap, How to Dry Laundry, and How to Iron Ruffles.  I'm sure that's all very helpful to someone, but it's not helping me ascend Mt. Laundry. (Side note: Martha also has a lengthy section on Line Drying, including types of clotheslines and techniques.  Since I'm in no rush to look like the Beverly Hillbillies, I went ahead and skipped that section.  You, however, may be able to get away with it.)

If you are like me, sorting and throwing the clothes into the washer and dryer is not the problem.  It's what happens next.

Folding.

It's not that I can't fold laundry.  Last time I checked I did have both arms intact and operational. It's more that I lack the motivation to fold laundry.  Part of the problem is that the resulting piles of towels, shirts, etc isn't all that pretty. Every shirt is folded slightly differently, producing a lopsided pile of clothes.  I want my completed laundry to look perfectly folded and stacked:  like I walked into the Gap.

Towels are the biggest culprit.  You fold them and put them away, then you see them looking slightly untidy all week, until it's time to use them again.  Luckily, Martha tells us How to Fold A Towel.  (Homekeeping p. 413)

She starts with a reminder that there is a right and wrong way to fold a towel, "so that the edges are hidden and the towel looks fluffy and neat."  By this Martha insinuates that you've probably been doing it wrong, so you better go ahead and read on.

You should start by folding the towel in thirds lengthwise so that you have one heck of a skinny towel. (Martha alerts us that a towel hung over a towel rod should also be folded in this manner, in case you were wondering.)

 Next you should fold the towel into thirds: one-third from the top, then fold over onto the bottom third.  This may bamboozle some of you if you are very bad with fractions. If so, you can give that excuse to your guests when they arrive and your towels are in disarray.

:Guest opens bathroom cabinet, towels fall on her head:

You:   Sorry, I'm bad with fractions.

Guest:   Ah!  I understand.


While all of this towel-folding business was very enlightening, I must be off:  My trek up Mt. Laundry has hardly begin.  Wish me luck.


See Homekeeping, p. 361 et seq.

Day Thirty One: Six (More) Things to Do Every Day

Martha instructs us to complete six basic tasks every day to "keep chaos at bay":

1) Make the bed,
2) Manage clutter,
3) Sort the mail,
4) Clean as you cook,
5) Wipe spills when they are fresh, and
6) Sweep the kitchen floor.

Today I decided to put this into practice and see if I could, indeed, "keep chaos at bay".

1) Make the bed:  Done.  With the help of my lovely sister-in-law (who is visiting from out of town), I managed to make all five beds in a few minutes.  Never mind that this task was completed approximately five minutes before bedtime. 

2) Manage clutter:  I presided over all the clutter in my house today.  I told the toys to put themselves away and ordered the laundry to fold itself.  Of course, I had to do everything myself in the end.  You can't find any good help these days. 

3) Sort the mail:  Done. I get a ridiculous amount of mail every day.  In an effort to save myself from being crushed under an avalanche of mail, I resolved long ago to sort our mail every day into three piles:  Recycling, Bills and Catalogues.  Observation: the size of the Bills pile is directly proportionate to the size of the Catalogue pile.  

4) Clean as you cook:  Done.  If I didn't clean as I cooked I would probably never cook...the sheer number of dishes at the end of a meal can be completely overwhelming. :shudder:

5) Wipe spills when they are fresh:  Done.  When I knocked over that bottle of wine while cooking dinner, I wiped it up immediately and told my husband I used it for cooking. 

6) Sweep the kitchen floor:  Done.  Kitchen floor is food-, dirt- and toy-free.  Observation:  My children are messy eaters. While I may not be keeping chaos at bay by sweeping the floor, I'm definitely keeping the ants at bay.

Conclusion:   I'm not sure how any of these things "keeps chaos at bay". To me, chaos entails something more than dried food on the floor and a stack of mail next to your unmade bed. My house, however, is tidy and clean, and bedlam seems to have been averted for today.

Day Nineteen: Organizing for Lazy People

You know those busy weekend days where you fly from one  (insert one)  kid's birthday party/baby shower/soccer game to the next  (insert one)  kid's birthday party/grocery store/swim practice?

Today has been one of those days....I need a weekend from my weekend.

Cooking dinner was the very last thing I was going to do after all that running and partying and showering of pregnant women.

So we ordered take-out.

As I was looking at our collection of take-out menus I realized I needed a little help from Martha. 

Martha recently debuted a new collection from Avery (you know, the label folks).  It is beyond adorable.  I bought a couple things from her collection last week. 

(Note to my dear husband:  you should skip the next paragraph.) 

 If I'm being honest, I did a little more than pick up a few items from the Martha Stewart collection.  If someone said Hurricane MRS had hit the Martha Stewart aisle at Staples, that would be more accurate. 

But I digress.

At any rate, I bought one of these super-cute wall pockets: 

....popped my take-out menus inside, and hung the whole thing in my pantry:

Organizing the take-out menus took less time than ordering the take-out.

Now if the delivery guy would get a move on....

Day Thirteen: Organize the Ones You Love

My husband possesses many talents:  He's a wiz with numbers.  He's handy.  He's not afraid to throw on an apron and make a mean dinner.  And if you want someone to spin you around the dance floor, he's your man.

He cannot, however, choose his own clothes (he's color blind), choose a decent greeting card (he once gave me a card addressed "to the man I love"), he cannot spell (he once wrote me a note addressing me as his "angle"), and he cannot organize.  Anything.  I asked him to organize some gardening supplies and this is the result:

Supplies.  In a box.

Also in the box were: 3 empty plastic bags, an old battery, an article on Peyton Manning and 2 Tootsie Pops.

The Gardening Box Issue came to a head when I was sent to the hardware store to buy some rubber hose washers.  Apparently, we were out of rubber hose washers and needed to stock up.  So, like a good wife, off to the hardware store I went...

After buying the washers, I went home to discover a cache of hose washers already in The Box.  It was like my husband was stockpiling the things in case there was a run on hose washers.  Panic in the streets!  Rubber Shortage!

I suspect he could not find all the hose washers hidden at the bottom of The Box.

Martha says we should organize small supplies into compartmentalized boxes, but cautions us to also buy something large enough for future acquisitions.  Accordingly, I set out to find an organizer for the contents of our Gardening Box.

What I bought is large enough to fit an infant or small animal:

I was worried that the tool box was a bit overkill for our meagre needs (after all, the contents were formally housed in a BOX) but after organizing the contents (and trashing the Tootsie Pops) we had just enough room.

I stopped just short of labeling all the different compartments...it is a manly toolbox after all...and I didn't want him to be teased by the other handy husbands on the block.

Despite his obvious organizing deficiencies, I think I'll be keeping my husband.

I tried to return him, but his mother wouldn't answer the door.

Day Six: Napkin Storage for Neurotics!

I recently moved this chest into my entryway, which is just outside of my dining room.

Since I have limited storage in my dining room, my table linens are now stored in another room...and on another floor.  Call me weird:  I'm itching to move my table linens into these new digs.

When storing napkins, Martha instructs us to keep sets of napkins together (natch).  She also suggests that you store them in acid-free tissue to prevent yellowing, and to wrap these bundles of napkins like the baby Jesus on Christmas.  Whaaaat?!?!

Oh, yes.  It is not enough that your napkins be organized to within an inch of their lives, they must also be wrapped in swaddling clothes, or as Martha suggests "simply wrap a sleeve of tissue around the stack and secure the bundle".

I'm a mother of a newborn.  I soooo have this covered.


My little babies waiting to be swaddled:

Wrapped and labeled:

Cozy in their new home with all their swaddled friends:

Besides having a ridiculously organized napkin drawer, the added bonus of this chore was that I was able to use my label maker.  :high five:

Don't be surprised if you come over and I oh-so-casually retrieve the napkins.  It's an excuse for you to check out these babies.

After all, babies are meant to be admired.