Day # 11 - Clean the Freezer

Day #11 of the Getting Organized Challenge over at A Bowl Full of Lemons is to clean the freezer.  Besides our regular freezer, we also have a stand alone freezer in the basement for all of the extras.  Over the past several weeks we have been trying to mainly eat from the freezer and pantry and only buy the essentials at the grocery store.  We finally went through enough food to combine everything in both freezers into just the regular freezer.  I have been wanting to defrost the extra freezer for a while and I am also planning a big freezer cooking session once we get through all of the extra food.  We have an upside down fridge with the freezer on the bottom and the fridge on the top.  We purchased this fridge last January and we have absolutely loved it.  It is so much easier to see all of the fresh ingredients in the fridge.  Here are the before and afters.

Freezer Before

Extra Freezer Before

Clean Freezer

See the frost?



Organized Freezer



Even though it looks packed it is actually quite organized.  The meat items are in the bottom basket and the veggies are on the top right.  It is so much easier to see everything that we have.  There will be a lot more room once I cook the big 20 pound turkey on the bottom right.

Day #10 - Laundry Room/Closet Organization

Day #10 of the Getting Organized Challenge over at A Bowl Full of Lemons is the organization of the Laundry Room/Closet.  Our laundry closet is located on the second floor which is very convenient.  This challenge wasn't too bad since I painted the closet and added the cabinets a year or so ago.  As you can see I still have the board up that we used to install the cabinets.  With all of my couponing I needed more storage for all of the items I was stockpiling.  We originally had the builder grade white wire shelf but it just wasn't enough storage.  I use one cabinet to mostly store all of my laundry supplies (detergent, fabric softener sheets, pretreat, delicates bags, etc,) and the other one for personal products.  We have all of the shampoos and toothpaste that we will need for quite some time.  I usually supply my family with "care packages" of products whenever the stockpile gets too big. 

Slightly Cluttered Laundry Closet

Organized Closet

Day #9 - Toy Organization = Toughest Challenge Yet!

Day #9 of the Getting Organized Challenge over at A Bowl Full of Lemons is toy organization. This has been the toughest challenge yet. We don't have a toy room and our living room is on the small side so we store most of the toys in the kids' bedrooms. We do have some toy storage on the first floor but it is minimal. I really need to come up with a better system since the kids are always bringing their toys downstairs and then I have to take them back upstairs once there gets to be too many. I started by gathering all of the toys from the downstairs and lugging them upstairs. Then I went through all of my daughter's books and just kept out the age appropriate books and organized them on her shelf. Then I rearranged the shelves in her closet to make the toy storage more accessible. I also made sticker labels on my computer with pictures of the toys in each bin.  I did pretty much the same in my son's room. I ended up with 4 bags of stuff to get rid of between the two rooms.  I would like to go through everything again some time soon and do another purge but here are the before and afters for now.



Daughter's Closet Before



Daughter's Closet After

Picture Labels

Daughter's Books After



Daughter's Books Before



Son's Room Before

 

Organized Toys