Is my house always clean? Or, put better, is it ever totally clean? Well, not really. I often joke that I can only keep one level of my house clean at a time. It would probably be a funnier joke if it weren't true. However, one of my favorite activities is organizing. I have a ton of stuff. However, my house doesn't look like I have a ton of stuff (I am not a big fan of clutter) because I have it very organized and out of the way.
I get frustrated sometimes reading magazines (typically the January issue) which feature articles on organizing your home. My frustration is from the fact that most all of their organizing ideas require buying expensive organizing boxes and baskets. I don't know about you, but I don't have the resources to pay $15 for one box or magazine file. So here are some pictures from things around my house that I use to organize.... hopefully this can help someone else out there who is looking for an effective, but affordable, way to organize.
These two pictures are a perfect example of how I save nice containers to reuse them. Baby wipe containers are perfect for sorting and storing craft supplies, and Swiffer containers are great for larger supplies.
I have quite a collection of sewing patterns, and at first I had them stored in miscellaneous boxes. These inexpensive boxes from U-Line (I believe about 40 cents each) are the perfect solution. I made sure that they were exactly the right size to fit patterns in and not stick out from the edges of my shelves. I think that the simple repetition of same-sized boxes with uniform labels makes it appear much neater even though they are just cardboard boxes!
In our house we are lucky to have a storage room in the basement. I have heavy-duty storage racks where I keep decorations, clothes the kids have grown out of, and all the other sort of stuff a homeowner has stored away. I ordered these boxes that are just the right size to fill these shelves the entire length (about the length of two Xerox paper boxes together) in order to maximize the use of these shelves. In the past, I had the shorter boxes stacked two deep, but then I never knew what was in the back! These boxes solve that problem.
This was one of my very first do-it-yourself organizing projects. I made this makeup organizer out of basic white tile that I bought at Home Depot. This project actually was not cheap - costing me about $40 - but I was able to create exactly what I wanted. Those clear plastic ones that they sell in the store never had the kind of compartments that I wanted. One of my favorite things about it is that it is made of tile - so it blends perfectly with my bathroom!
One of my all-time favorite organizing finds has been this corrugated cardboard bin from U-Line. As you can see from the many pictures from around my house, I use them to organize all sorts of things. I bought them originally to help me corral all of Quinton's clothes since his bedroom has built-in shelves, but no drawers. I loved them so much, that I started finding uses for them all over the house. They cost $1.53 each, so although not super cheap, they are certainly less expensive that other options out there. Granted, they are not as pretty as those $15 boxes I was talking about earlier, but I find that grouping many boxes together, as long as they are identical boxes, makes a neat presentation.
I save all sorts of sturdy boxes. I find that low boxes - the kind that perfumes or stationary come in - are perfect for using in drawers. Here is an example of that drawer we all have in our house - you know the one with the miscellaneous hardware, batteries, tools, etc. I play around with several combinations of boxes until I find a perfect fit.
This is another example of using boxes to organize my knife drawer. I personally like to keep all of my sharp knives and kitchen shears in one drawer so that I only have to worry about keeping the kids out of one drawer instead of several.
Here is a picture of our library. You could say that my husband and I have quite a collection of magazines (almost all free subscriptions, by the way!) Neither one of us is good at throwing them away, so I have to figure out what to do with all of them. These magazine files are from Ikea. They are corrugated cardboard and sold flat in packs of 5. The printed ones sell for ~$5 a pack, and the white ones sell for about ~$3 a pack. I have found that all white files look too utilitarian, so I intersperse the less expensive white files with the printed ones. They are certainly not as durable as a leather magazine file, but hey, it is not like I am throwing them around!
Okay, so here is a picture of one of my spice drawers. One of my favorite resources for organizing tools is U-Line. They offer many products in bulk at great savings. The real clincher, however, on why this is such a good deal for me is that they have a warehouse a few miles from my house so I am able to pick up my order and avoid any shipping charges.
These 8 oz clear jars, for example, cost me 60 cents each. I buy all of my spices in bulk at ethnic groceries (where they are invariably loads cheaper) or bulk at Whole Foods.
Another advantage of these jars is that they stack easily, so I also have them in my cupboards. Granted, I love to cook and so it is a sort of hobby of mine to collect spices, so this method has saved me a lot of money compared to the $3 and $4 I used to pay for .75 ounces of McCormick brand spices at the grocery store!
I am a huge fan of Costco, and I probably do about 90% of all my shopping there. Instead of having tons of bags in my pantry, I put everything possible into cans. I save cans from everything, formula, nuts, dry milk, etc. This picture of cans stacked up doesn't look particularly beautiful, but it is an extremely efficient way to keep my food fresh and stackable.
Here is a picture of another shelf in my pantry. I find that the most difficult food to work with comes in bags, so I do my best to make it stackable. For example, I always opt to buy powdered sugar or brown sugar in boxes. It is infinitely easier to stack several boxes of powdered sugar than it is to stack several bags of powdered sugar. When I don't have a choice of a box (chocolate chips, for example), I group them with like products and put them in boxes, as you can see here with the "Dried Fruit" and "Baking Chips" boxes.
