Home Organization Ideas

The kitchen table is covered with binders, and I currently have a pair of field hockey shin guards hanging from the knobs of my kitchen cabinets to dry.  But the cool weather is perking me up a bit, and has me thinking about de-cluttering as well as working on little systems in our home to make things a little less chaotic, especially in the kitchen, which is at the front of the house and is the way we enter and exit.

As I've done a few times before, I thought I'd share a few of the easy things we do in our house to stay organized, and I hope YOU WILL SHARE YOURS WITH ME.

P.S. As we are still contemplating a kitchen renovation, any awesome ideas that have helped you in your kitchen are especially welcome.

Here are a few things that work for us:

Kitchen: 

A clipboard inside a cabinet with the grocery list on it. Anyone can add items when they realize we are running low. If someone says, "Could you buy gummies?" Always answer with, "Is it on the THE LIST?"

Where you enter from the garage, two Command hooks hang inside a kitchen cabinet, one for my husband's keys, one for mine.

When the kids were little, we kept a basket of socks in the kitchen, all white, and unisex. Because the kids put on their shoes downstairs before leaving the house, I never bothered storing socks in their bedrooms.

We have one drawer where all non-refrigerated snacks are kept, so there's no reason to go rummaging through spaghetti sauce or canned goods to get a snack.

 I keep a "current" folder in the kitchen with info about this season's sports teams,  class schedules, etc. I've had limited success with this system because it gets messy and disorganized as the papers pile up. Gah.

On the fridge we keep a magnetized pad of paper with the weekly dinner menu on it.

Laundry:

The kids'  artwork is on display from floor to ceiling in the laundry room, along with family photos, so I can see something cheery while I do laundry.

We have three beds in the house, and each has white sheets. It's annoying trying to guess which ones are queen and which king, so I took a black sharpie and wrote a big Q or a K on the tag to help me know which ones I'm folding. Also, I keep the K sheets in our bedroom, not the linen closet, so they don't get mixed up with the queens when I'm changing sheets.

I buy smaller bottles of detergent that fit inside my cabinets in my laundry room rather than one giant one that sits on the counter and gets drippy.

Bathroom:

A lazy susan is my favorite way to corral beauty products on a small counter.

I like to keep a travel toiletry bag stocked with necessities including toothbrush and razor so all I have to do is add makeup before going on a trip.

Leave extra grocery bags at the bottom of your trash can so you'll be ready with a new one when you empty the trash.

Closet:

If there is space, add an extra shelf above your closet shelf for out of season clothes or keepsakes.

Keep a bag on the floor of your closet to put donations in as soon as your realize a garment isn't working for you anymore.

Around the House:

Window seat: Under our kitchen window we have a window seat with a hinged lid. This is excellent built-in seating and makes great storage for our dog food, canned drinks, cleaning products, and potatoes! Except for when we forget about the potatoes and let them rot...

There are a lot of junk drawers in the house, and things do not always end up back where they should. However, several key items have definite homes: the metal tape measure, scissors, nail clippers, and the thermometer (which sits in a plastic basket labeled THERMOMETER) because when you are looking all over the house for these items, it can get a little...stressful. If you have ever seen your husband have an apparent toenail emergency, you know what I'm talking about.

Hooks everywhere help us deal with towels, purses, backpacks, bathrobes, and coats.

Garage:

If storage is tight in the house, consider having cabinets hung or buying a utility cabinet to store party supplies, platters, vases, and small appliances that don't fit in the kitchen.

The garage is also where we store our mops, brooms, and aprons using hooks and a special broom  hanger. I can just lean out the door and grab them.

We bought this little guy at Ikea more than 10 years ago for $1. Do they still have them? Perfect for keeping grocery bags in the garage for dog poop cleanup!

Car:

Bed, Bath and Beyond coupons stay in the car.

Returns stay in the car.

As soon as I have a bag full of donations, it goes into the car.

I also try to leave a snack for myself as well as a book or magazine in the car for waiting in school pickup lines.


Change it up. 

If a system isn't working, get rid of it. I've shared some ideas with you on the blog that have turned out to be bombs. Cute vintage traveling cases on the stairs so the kids would carry their own things up? Fail. Dish tubs with their names on them for the same purpose? Fail. We are back to stuff piling up directly on the stairs until I can't take it anymore.

The cute bar cart I rescued from the trash heap? Well, it didn't take me long to realize I wasn't Don Draper and didn't really need a bar cart. Now it's in the corner of the dining room with my daughter's school supplies on it.

Hmmm....maybe that could be a home for the binders?

What tips do YOU have to share? Help!

Dream Weaver

A while ago Margaret and I were looking through one of the "junk drawers" in the kitchen. We found a yellow folder with page after page of Jack's handwriting from when he was 9 or 10 years old. The pages were a Dream Chart he kept for 70 days. The first page had a rating key with two components -- a color and a number-- with which he rated his dreams each morning.





Green=Funny
Blue= Happy
Red=Scary
Purple=Weird or Other

After the color, came an overall score:


1=Terrible
2=Bad
3=OK (not bad, medium)
4=Good
5=Great :)

The next 7 Pages, labeled "Jack 1" through "Jack 7" each listed 10 dreams and their ratings.

Examples include:


Scaffolding: "Red, 1" or Scary, Terrible

Mysterious Forest: "Blue, 4" or Happy, Good

Christmas: "Blue, 4" or Happy, Good

Reality: "Purple, 3" or Weird or Other, OK

Sponge Bob #1: "Green, 2" or Funny, Bad

Exhibit of Fun: "Blue, 5" or Happy, Great

Public School: "Red, 4" or Scary, Good

Kidnapped by Playdoh: "Purple, 5" or Weird or Other, Great


Some of his worst dreams centered around the demise of Margaret's (now departed) hermit crab, Smiley, which doesn't surprise me, given how worried Jack was about that crab back in the day.


For five nights his dreams were titled...
"Smiley's Destruction" and were rated: "Red, 1" or Scary, Terrible.

Tim has taken comfort in seeing these dreams listed:
Down the River: "Blue, 3" or Happy, OK
Bounding, Swirling and Slipping: "Green, 5" or Funny, Great
and
Water and Things: "Green, 4" or Funny, Good

I have laughed about the ones I was included in:

Mom Goes Mad: "Red, 3" or Scary, OK
and
Bee Mom: "Red, 1" or Scary, Terrible

Most leave me intrigued and wanting more details:
Freedom: "Purple, 1" or Weird or Other, Terrible
and
Cathead: "Red, 1" or Scary, Terrible

I like Jack's Dream Chart for so many reasons, mainly because it represents what I love about Jack.

First, it shows perseverance, as I can't think of very many things I've kept up with for 70 straight days (diets? journaling? exercise routines?). I don't have that kind of stick-to-it-ive-ness at age 42, let alone at age 10. Jack could focus on something for a long, long time. As I've written before, he had patience with people and with tasks.

The chart is also so darn quirky and creative, traits I will always admire about Jack. It didn't serve to accomplish anything by the world's standards, but I guess it fulfilled a desire of Jack's to track something fascinating and try to understand or make sense of it.

The quiet way Jack maintained this list each day while his dreams were still fresh, reminds me of the way he operated at home: quietly, methodically, always thinking. Whether he was building, doodling, or working his way through a logic puzzle book, Jack was quietly doing SOMETHING.

His humor and creativity, which we're learning was quite evident in school (although not always in the most appropriate manner!) shine through in the names Jack gave his dreams, just as they did in the many elaborate games he made up to play with Margaret and his friends.

I can't really sum up why I love this chart so much, but I do.

I'll just ask, what's not to love about someone who takes the time to record and remember a dream like this:

"Desert Neighborhood Parking Lot Mansion On Our Hill Theme Park Foreign Food Wars" ???

By the way, that one got a Green, 4 (Funny, Good)