top 10 :: spring cleaning ideas

I'm not sure what it is about springtime that prompts organization and cleanliness... but regardless, I have spring fever.  I'm loving this warmer weather and I'm ready to knock out a few things off my spring cleaning list.  Here are the top 10 things on my spring cleaning to-do list... and all Pinterest inspired (of course:)...

1) Organize my expedite shelves.  I recently moved some stuff around in my office, which included a big expedite shelf... and for now, there is all kinds of crap shoved into the shelves.  I'm hoping to bring some order to the chaos eventually.

2) Create a "life folder" of some sort.  With all of the adoption paperwork we have been doing lately, now is the perfect time to clean up and update our personal files.  I've been using a similar system for our adoption paperwork, so I'm thinking this will be fairly easy to create.

3) Paint something.  Spring is the perfect time to paint that old piece of furniture that you keep talking about, or maybe you're super artsy and need to pull out the brushes and canvas?  I'm not quite sure what yet... but I'll be painting something this spring:)

4) Do something with my pictures.  I have been working on a Project Life album this past year, but I am incredibly behind.  I would love to figure out a system that works for me... especially in getting all of those past year's photos off of my computer and into an album of some sort.

5) Bring order to my closet.  I may not be able to have a customized walk-in closet... but I can organize parts of my closet.  I love this idea of using an old dresser in a totally new way.

6) Organize those recipes.  I may not cook much... but you would never know that by the amount of recipe cards I have stuffed all over the place.  I have a cute little recipe book... but the cards just never seem to make their way back to the right spot... which is proof that I actually used some of them at one time... 

7) Make use of unseen cabinet space.  This is the perfect spot for take out menus, important phone numbers, baby-sitter notes, and even calendars and doctor appointment reminders.  And those little Martha Stewart self sealing protectors make it super easy to corral everything in one spot.

8) Clean out the fridge.  With my new job, I have been trying to make my lunch more often... and the task is way easier if everything is visible in the refrigerator.  I also love the idea of having all of the sandwich supplies in one convenient container... makes the whole "make-your-lunch-experience" way more tolerable.

9) Splurge on fresh flowers.  It's amazing how much fresh spring flowers can boost your mood.  And how cute is this bouquet in this adorable teapot!

10) Keep going.  And just in case you run out of spring cleaning ideas... here is a website that lists out 40 very attainable organizing ideas.  Most of these are 5-10 minute tasks.  Brilliant.

What about you?  Do you have a spring cleaning list?  Have you already started?  Finished?  Any tips for us late bloomers?


Linking up with...
Michelle at The Vintage Apple
Angie at Many Little Blessings

project organization :: all those holiday cards

I had big plans this weekend to complete yet another project... my Christmas card montage.  For both 2011 and 2012... Yeah.  I'm a little behind.  I even took all of the 2012 holiday cards off the display wall finally (insert sad face here)...

I even went out and purchased a new 3.5" square punch (my other one is totally MIA).  Then... I sat down... got all of my cards out...  ready to punch away... and I was able to punch one.meesley.card.  Yep.  You heard right... one card... one teeny, tiny square.... then my square punch broke.  Straight up stopped working.  I'm hoping to return it soon and still knock this project out in the next couple of days.

In the meantime, I thought I'd re-post my thoughts on the Christmas card montage from a few years ago...

I wish I could take credit for this... but I can't. This is another genius idea from Ali Edwards. 

Ali basically takes all of the Christmas cards and photos she receives for the year and creates a simple photo montage with all of them. I love it. I have always been one of those people that keeps cards (Christmas, birthday, thank yous, valentines... you name it, I keep it), but really they just sit in a box somewhere stored away. I am in love with this idea. At first, I was a little tentative about cutting and cropping my family and friends with a square paper punch... but I must say, it was kind of liberating. Nice to let my Type A personality live on the wild side a little. I just put the photo or card in my square punch, found my favorite part, and punched away. Here's the basic process...

I ordered this awesome square punch, the Marvy Uchida. I totally copied Ali again here, and purchased the same square punch she recommended on her blog. This punch was the perfect size, and for the most part allowed me to crop everyone inside the square. There were a few families who apparently don't like to stand very close to one another during Christmas photos... and for them, I'm sad to say I had to either separate them into two squares, or cut off some ears...

After punching out all the cards, I had to decide on some type of layout. I tried not to be too OCD about this, and really just tried to mix up the colors. You'll notice that I tried to select a good mix of both pictures and good old fashioned Christmas cards. I like the variation of it all.

Then I just used my favorite adhesive to paste the squares on some red 8x11 paper. I knew I would be using 8x11 sheets, so I let that determine how many squares would go on each page. I changed my layout ever-so-slightly (I guess the OCD did get the best of me) and called it finished. I ended up with 4 pages with 12 squares each.

A few years ago, I put these in the back of my December Daily book... but seeing how I'm super behind on those too... I'm just aiming to getting my cards on paper.  What about you?  How do you organize your holiday cards?

project organization :: january cards

Last  week I shared about how I organize my card-hoarding collection... all of those zillions of cards you receive each year.  But what about the cards that you send out every year??  For you, this might be your family's annual Christmas card... for us, it's the infamous January card:)

We have been mailing out January cards for 7 years now... and for 7 years now I've been trying to figure out the best way to preserve these fun cards.  Then it hit me.  An album.  I've had this beautiful blank Kolo album sitting on my desk for months now...  just waiting for the perfect project.  And since I deemed February my "finish-all-those-unfinished-projects-month" I figured there was no time like the present...

This was by far the easiest project I've ever done.  The hardest part was managing to find all of our year's past January cards... 2010 and 2011 are completely MIA.  But once I was able to scrounge up most of our January cards, all I did was slap some acid-free tape on the card itself and stick them right to my album.  Technically I needed 2 copies of each year... one for the front and one for the back... which yeah... wasn't really a big deal until I realized I couldn't find 2 copies for the very fist year...

Welcome to 2007.  The birth of the January cards.  I hadn't quite perfected the font on the front yet.  This is also the year that I was obsessed with putting ribbon on everything.

2008.  We fixed the font and went all out with color photos on the front and the back... big time.

2009.  We scaled back this year and went solid black & white. 

 2010. And 2011.  Use your imagination... Hoping these bad boys surface very soon.

2012. We finally upgraded to professional photos.  2011 and 2012 cover photos are compliments of the talented Shaelyne Meadows.

2013.  My favorite year for sure... but I say this every year once I get my January card shipment in.  2013 cover photo compliments of Firm Anchor Photography.

So, there you have it.  My somewhat-completed January card album.  This should be a fairly simple project to keep up with over the coming years.  And I love seeing the "snapshot" of our year-to-year life with each turn of the page.  Even more excited to see our January cards fill up with children in the coming years:)  

If your family sends out holiday cards every year, this would be such an easy way to corral them all together.  Do you already do something similar?  I'd love to hear.

my {crazy} december 1st wrapping deadline

So... about a week ago I was on the phone with my sister... we were talking about Christmas and about how crazy busy this season can feel... you know, with the holiday parties... the shopping... the baking... the traveling... the gift wrapping... And then I started thinking, "man, it sure would be nice to have all of my Christmas shopping done and wrapped early this year..."

I say this every.stinkin.year.

It never happens.

So this year I decided to give myself a due date.  You know like a tangible a deadline...  December 1st, to be exact. Yes... Saturday.

I have exactly 4 days to turn this pile of stuff... into glorified-wrapped-goodness.  And truth be told... I'm pretty excited about it.  I love wrapping gifts.  Like, really love it.  But more on that another day.

In the meantime, I've collected my gift wrapping supplies and will start the wrapping madness tonight!  Chop, chop... 4 days people... four.flippin.days.

What about you?  Do you have a gift wrapping deadline?

project organization :: project life photos

Once upon a time... long, long ago... I decided I wanted to jump on the Project Life bandwagon.  I've always been an avid fan of memory keeping... specifically capturing the everyday moments of life.  I'm really good at taking lots and lots of pictures... but not so great at actually printing my photos and putting them in some type of album.  Enter Project Life.  It's an awesome memory-keeping system designed by Becky Higgins with the purpose of simplifying scrapbooking.  

Only problem??  I'm a tad behind.

Like 7 months behind.

Yeah...

I've been doing a great job of keeping a bunch of shit... ahem... I mean, precious memories.  I've even been doing a pretty decent job of printing my photos... but I haven't gotten much further than that.  See that box in the bottom right corner of the photo above?  Yeah... that's my July and August photos... unopened.   Some might call it hoarding... I call it documenting life:)

Well.  This past weekend I finally decided to tackle the massive pile of photos and stuff.  I opened that box of photos.  I sorted through months and months of memorabilia.  I purged through the bits and scraps of paper.  I separated the photos and stuff as best as I could... by month.

But then my OCD kicked in and I took it a step further.  I separated the bits and pieces by week.  When I actually work on my Project Life album, I document our lives week-by-week.  So, it made the most sense for me to go ahead and separate things into weekly piles.

I folded sheets of paper in half... jotted the week down with a sharpie... and even wrote the exact dates in the upper right corner.  Then, the real fun began.  I tucked all the bits of memorabilia and photos pertaining to each week right inside of the folded sheet of paper.  Then, before you knew it, I went from this...

to this...

Some might call it crazy... I call it progress.  

Now... if only I could make some time to actually sit down and start doing some of this...

Sigh... soon.  Very soon.

project organization :: free the stickies!

Confession: I have a slight sticky note obsession.

Okay, okay... maybe a huge sticky note obsession.  It's a problem, really.  But I'm seeking treatment... limiting my sticky note writing... meeting with fellow-sticky-note-addicts... joining a support group.

I consider myself to be a fairly organized person... I prefer clean, tidy places that are appealing to the eye.  But you probably wouldn't guess that by looking at my sticky-note-infested desk.  My desk was at sticky note capacity.

But what to do??  I couldn't just throw them all away.  Most of them were still valid and contained information that I needed... an array of work reminders, photography appointments, adoption deadlines, and blog ideas.  One thing's for certain... I'm a visual person, no doubt.  So I needed to think of a system that works for me...

I found some old cardstock in my stash and got to work creating some quick "title pages" in the categories that naturally made the most sense for my current sticky note collection...

The categories I used were: 1)work... 2)photography... 3)new house... 4)adoption... 5)finances... 6)blog...  Yes... perfect.

Stepping back to admire my work... I'm not sure if it was the fact that I actually got to use some of my washi tape or if I was suffering from a major Sharpie high... but either way, this was shaping up to be a really brilliant idea.

Now, I just needed to transfer the gazillion sticky notes from my desk, to my new door system... Free the stickies!!

This solution works great for me right now... I'm still testing it out, but I love that everything is still super visible and that I created a system that works for me...  not the other way around.  I love that I didn't spend any money and that the whole thing is portable.  And if I decide in 2 months that this isn't the best system for me, I won't lose sleep if I end up trashing the whole thing... it's paper.  And the best part??  My desk went from this...

...to this...

Oh crap.  I still see one lonely sticky note on the side there...  Dangit. They're everywhere!

What about you?  Any organizing secrets or systems that you've recently discovered?  Or what about the tried and true systems that never fail??  Do share...

kitchen pantry revamp

In yesterday's Thankful Thursday post, I briefly mentioned our recent pantry organization project. This was a big deal people. A huge undertaking...

We went from this...

to this...

The beautiful Jessamie over at Bird & Branch Redesign was kind enough to feature my entire pantry organization project over on her blog yesterday... so if you're interested in any of the pantry details head over here to see the entire post. If you've never visited Jessamie's blog before, be sure to head over there with a fresh cup of coffee... you won't want to leave.

That's all friends... HAPPY FRIDAY!!

top 10 :: organizing ideas

I've been in one of those moods lately. You know the kind... The kind where you feel like your life is in utter chaos, but you have absolutely no time (or motivation) to do anything about it. So, instead, I just daydream on pintrest and my favorite organizing blogs... thinking of all of the wonderful ways I could get my life in order. Maybe this is the motivation I need... I mean, this post does kind of make me want to alphabetize something...

Here you have it... top 10 organizing ideas...

1) Hanging files are your friend.

Especially when found in a beautiful color. Organizing my paper stash (bills & finances) always gives me a headache, but Toni over at A Bowl Full of Lemons has some great file organizing ideas. Click on the source for the actual post. {source}

2) Compartmentalize your thoughts...

...and jewelry. Create super easy, affordable drawer compartments with simple jewelry boxes. {source}

3) Think vertically.

Love the idea of using old wooden crates as wall storage. {source}

4) File those paper scraps.

I never know what to do with all of my paper scraps... this is brilliant. Maybe I'll actually use my scraps now. {source}

5) Free up valuable drawer space.

Genius. I will definitely be doing this soon. {source}

6) Create a recipe binder.

I mean, I would totally do this... if I cooked. {source}

7) Hide stuff under your bed...

...in an organized fashion, of course. I love the idea of using drawers on wheels for linen storage. This would be a great spot for unsightly toys too. {source}

8) Organize your canned foods.

This is so smart. Install some wire shelves at an angle so you can actually see your canned food goods. Maybe if I did this I wouldn't have 18 cans of green beans. {source}

9) Use office supplies in the kitchen.

I love this idea. What a beautiful way to store onions and lemons. {source}

10) Create a family binder.

Jen over at I Heart Organizing is an organizing goddess. Her ideas are always brilliant and realistic. This is one of my favorites. {source}

What about you? Do you have any organizing tips or ideas that you've been wanting to try lately? Or maybe you're already super organized... then share your secrets!

Linking this up to Oh Amanda.