52 Weeks of Organizing- Week 9

So, in case I didn't already know enough how badly I needed this organizing challenge, my inability to find my camera battery charger is a definite sign! I can't even begin to imagine which box it would be in. I think the preggers brain is finally kicking in. I'm usually one of those people who knows where things are even when they don't know where it is (does that make sense???) 

I haven't finished any major project this week. We picked up a few more containers at some really great prices which I'll be utilizing this week. I started organizing my current magazines but am stalled by the fact that the fabric to finish the magazine holders I've made is in the garage and there is about 8 billion feet of snow between me and that garage. 

It's been weeks upon weeks of -25 C (-13 F) and lower weather. With nearly constant snow. Ot's getting to me. 

On the bright side I've been on some sort of maniac scrapbooking kick. One of my 101 list items is to scrapbook all the pictures I have printed out. I would like to take a guess that I've done maybe 200 pages since Monday. I'm kind of excited to count them when its over and see. Granted I'm only putting the pictures on the page- no titles or journaling- but I still feel mega productive when I look at the pile of pages I've created. 

My "good enough" is currently just "better than it was before". However, the longer I do this challenge the more I'm finding my standards of "good enough" are changing. For the better of course. 

My parents came over this week and even though hubby and I feel that our house is a relative disaster zone we received a ton of compliments for how good it looked. My dad even used the word "organized" to describe our house!!! That was pretty great. They've lived through my years of tornado like messes (which I totally get from my dad!) so really any change seems much better. I definitely was lacking in the organizing/cleaning motivation this week but I'm really disliking the messy state my house gets in when I don't keep on top of it. 

I now make the bed every day which I can safely say that is a phenomenon that rarely occurred in my childhood bedroom, unless my mom did it for me. After seeing the made bed (we currently have no bedroom door) my mom said "You should have babies more often." 

When I manage to find my battery charger, or borrow my mothers, I'll show some progress pictures.

101 List Update #2

It's that time again! It has already been a month since I did an update on my 101 in 1001 list!
I wasn't super focused on the list in February but I still managed to make some progress.

19. Decorate the kitchen. 
36. Finish 30 sewing projects (2/30).

I made these curtains from some super cheap fabric I found at Ikea. Including the curtain rod it cost me $9 to make these babies. They aren't my dream curtains but they are so much better than the nasty brown velourish cat hair covered curtains that resided there before.

22. Cook one new recipe every month (5/33). 

I made peanut butter cookies, soft molasses cookies and Irish soda bread.



33. Scrapbook all printed out pictures. 

I put this aside for a while but last night did 13 pages and am going to continue doing more today. I almost gave up on doing these but when I looked at my previous scrapbooks I decided it would be worth it. I don't do elaborate pages. Right now its just the photos on the pages. I will add titles later and possibly some journaling but that's probably it.

61. Drink more water. 


I've somehow gotten into this amazing habit of at least four big glasses of ice water a day. I don't think that I will fall out of this as I really notice when I'm not drinking enough. We will probably invest in a countertop ice maker soon because it seems to be the only way either of us will drink water- with lots of ice!!!

88. Make bed every day. 


Again I've just gotten into this habit during February and now I can't imagine not making the bed every day. It just makes the room look so much better and since we are currently doorless (except for the bathroom) it also makes the whole house look neater!

92. Create and maintain a filing system for papers. 


I did this as part of my 52 Weeks of Organizing. See the post here.

I'm pretty proud of myself as I've managed to cross 3 more things off my list completely and continue on the progress with many more.

Items completed: 13/101 (12.8% complete)
Items in progress: 23/101

Check out Rockstar Mommy's Day Zero Project  to see another great "101 in 1001 list". She organizes her's a bit different than mine and has a whole separate blog to keep track of it! She's pretty awesome :)

Daily 5x7: #3

52 Weeks of Organizing- Week 8

Laura's Challenge this week was to keep flat surfaces clear. Guess what I did on Saturday night??? And in my case I decided that keeping them 90% clear was good enough. At least they are not just piles of stuff now, right?

Be sure to go check out all the other great progress people across the blog world are making in the 52 Week Challenge!

Daily 5x7: #2

I've been using the Nutmeg Paper Pack and Nutmeg Candy Candy from Cosmo Cricket found at Jessica Sprague to create the last two (and probably many more) of my "Daily 5 x 7s".

Daily 5x7: #1

I have officially become a fan of digital scrapbooking! Since I haven't really been documenting anything about my pregnancy I decided in the middle of the night last night to change that! I'm making a minibook of (hopefully) daily thoughts, pictures, milestones etc. of the last half of my pregnancy. I'll be printing them out at the 5 x 7 size, hole punching them and using binder rings to make a book.

I completed my first page tonight and it was so much simpler and motivating to do it digitally than doing it with paper. I like the instant gratification! It's not really that shocking to me that I enjoy digital scrapbooking as I've always been a bit of a computer geek haha.

Here's is the first page of my book. I'm considering creating a separate "baby blog" and if I do I'll be sure to leave the link here!

Please don't take what I've written the wrong way, I feel like a bad pregnant woman considering all the "I love my body and all the changes that are going on" and "pregnancy is the most wonderful, delightful experience ever" blogs I've read lately but my words are honest. 

Our baby was 100% planned and 100% wanted and desired but I've felt pretty awful for the last 18 weeks. I am so happy that at the end of all this there will be a lovely little one as a part of our family. I also feel so grateful that becoming pregnant was really easy for us. 

I'm hoping that by doing this book I will be able to see more of what I enjoy about being pregnant. It will also provide our child with adequate material for therapy when they are adults "My mom didn't like being pregnant with me...." Just kidding ;)

ps. I realized I have a massive typo that I thought I had fixed but apparently it didn't work quite right. The picture I get printed will be right though!

52 Weeks of Organizing- Week 7

I was able to complete two smaller projects this week.

The first one was the second of the 3 drawers in our kitchen. Yes only 3 drawers in the entire kitchen. Actually, the entire house as there are no drawers in our bathroom either. No junk drawers for this girl!!!
Except that this drawer became the "kitchen junk" drawer. Everything from Ziplocs to wooden spoons to oven mitts and fondue forks was just getting shoved in the drawer.

I also see a cheese grater, rolling pin, measuring cups, funnel, Kitchen Aid attachments. Oh my!

After a bit of purging, sorting and relocation of a few items my drawer now looks like this:

Ahhhh so much better. You can't see the over mitts tucked between the front of the drawer and the baskets or the rolling pin behind the basket of large utensils but they are there. 

The smaller basket in the front is for baking items including measuring cups/spoons and my cookie scoop. The smaller basket in the back is a mishmash of utensils and our extra can opener. We did have three due to moving and misplacing our good one twice but I got rid of that! 

Surprisingly, my husband did one of this week's organizing project without any suggestions or prompting from me! We have been meaning to put up our shoe rack by our backdoor for a while now (read: three months) but kept putting it off.

I came into the kitchen and saw he had pulled all the shoes out of the backdoor area, was vacuuming and had the shoe rack ready to be assembled. Of course I jumped in and helped him out!

It only took us about 15 minutes to complete this little project but the results have been wonderful. No more tripping over shoes every time we come in the door. No more snow ending up inside of shoes because they were piled up on each other. The backdoor area looks just that much better. It's not perfect and there is a lot more we want to do but it is one small step and better than it was.

We have more shoes. In a box somewhere in the garage!

 Since it's winter we really only need our boots right now. 

My new motto in this organizing journey --> "It doesn't have to be perfect, it just has to be better!"

Here's to a successful week 8!!!!