Livable living room

We successfully completed all of our goals for January!

January
Living room
Dining room
Hall closet

Our living room wound up being a place for things that didn't get put away or didn't have a designated spot to be put away...yikes!

Here's the embarrassing before picture.

Here's how we tackled the living room. I started off by grabbing the fleece blankets (ours and the kittys') and throwing them in the wash. Next, I put away the easy to put away items that already had a place to go. I moved the photo albums from under the coffee table to the top of my closet so that our baby doesn't mess them up once he starts crawling. I also put the few books that were under there on the bookshelves. I gathered up all the magazines too... I have a plan for them.

With the coffee table cleared off, I thought about what made sense to store under it. I decided to put all the blankets on the left side, rolled up. Blankets are one of the things that never had a designated spot before! Then the race track toy fit perfectly on the right side so it's not in the middle of the floor when it's not being played with. To the side of the coffee table we have a bin of baby toys and and a couple of larger toys. It will be so nice when he has his own room someday and his toys can go in there.

I also dusted the bookshelves and put away some smaller items that were sitting in front of the books. A part and tools to fix my husband's guitar got put in the guitar case, extra Lego pieces and small toy cars got put into a metal Cars lunch box. Various other items got moved to places that made more sense.

To finish off this room, I gave the futon the makeover explained in my previous post. Here's the completed room. I would still like to change up what is stored on top of the bookshelves, but for now I'm calling this one finished! Can you tell my husband likes books? All of the ones on these shelves are his except for my four college yearbooks.

All we will have to do to baby proof this room now is add L brackets to the bookshelves, add a couple of outlet covers, and put up the sword leaning in the corner. Once he's actually moving around we might rethink what is on the bottom shelves too. We can't have him ripping up all of my husband's car magazines!

Now it's time to keep the momentum going! February is almost here which means it's time to tackle our master bedroom and closet!

How do you store toys? I can't believe how many can be accumulated in just 6 months!

Futon makeover

When we got married, my husband contributed this futon, which was great since I didn't have a couch... only I never liked the way it looked. I've thought about buying a cover and pillows for it many times, but always abandoned the idea thinking I'd rather replace it than spend any money on it. But as we were fixing up the living room this month, I decided to go ahead and do something about it! New couch isn't exactly at the top of our want list so we will probably still have this futon for a while.


I started off by covering it with a black sheet we already had. Then I went to Hobby Lobby to pick out some fabrics for new pillows. The large dots were on clearance and the gray fabric was 30% off, score! After texting several options to my husband, these came out as the winners. He doesn't necessarily love them, but was okay with them. And I think they look pretty cute. I love that they are neutral so they will probably still work with whatever couch we end up with someday if we want to still use them.


The next step was deciding what size to make them and cutting out the squares. I decided on 15" square pillows, so I cut out 15.5" squares so that after I sewed them they would end up the size I wanted. I was especially careful when cutting out the large polka dot one to make sure the dots were straight and mostly centered. I actually traced out the squares using a ruler, triangle, and light colored thin sharpie. Then it was time to break out the sewing machine! I absolutely love this thing! It was from my grandpa's sewing machine store he had years ago. Old things really are better made than they are these days. So, I put the squares right sides together and sewed most of the way around, leaving an opening for stuffing.


Then I flipped them right-side out and stuffed them with Poly-Fil.


After stuffing them, I pinned them and sewed up the openings by hand. I bought new thread colors that closely matched the fabrics since these tiny stitches are on the outside.


Here are a couple of the finished pillows!


And here they all are on the made-over futon! I's not perfect looking, but I think it looks so much better and will hold us over until we get a pretty manly stylish couch! I also love that the removable sheet will make it easier to clean off cat hair. We have a small cat blanket that we usually leave on there that helps too. We can just pick that up when company comes over (or I when I want to take pretty blog pictures.)


Here's the project breakdown.
Supplies needed: sewing machine, fabric (about 2 yards for four pillows), thread, poly-fil stuffing, pins, scissors, ruler, sharpie or pen
Total cost: $26 for four pillows since I already a flat sheet, sewing machine and basic sewing supplies
Time spent: approx. 4 hours (1 hour at Hobby Lobby picking out fabric, 3 hours making the pillows)

Have you done any sewing projects or furniture makeovers lately to spruce up your home?

Organizey apps

While I finish up with the living room this week, I thought I'd share my favorite apps that help me stay organized! I have all of these on my iPhone. I'm not sure if any of them are available on other smart phones, but it is definitely worth looking in to.

First off, I will share the only two apps I have ever paid for... Toodledo and Baby Connect. They were worth all 798 pennies! I also use a couple of free ones... Grocery iQ and Road Trip.

1. Toodledo ($2.99)- this is the ultimate to do list! It has changed my life for the better. I used to write lists on paper all the time. But then I would lose them or run out of room. Or I'd want to change the order to be by priority so I could just see the most urgent things (buy cat food) without looking through long term goals (finish scrapbook). This app is so great because it lets me prioritize and move things around all I want. You can even set it to have reoccurring events, so I use it for reminders to pay bills or get my car inspected. You can add due dates and star items too. I absolutely love it!


2. Baby Connect ($4.99)- If you have a baby, this helps a lot, especially when you are sleep deprived and can't function, let alone figure out why your baby is crying. It tracks everything from diapers (when, pee or poop, color, consistency, leaks) to sleep (when, how long). If you are nursing you can track which side you last nursed on. There is a section where you can keep track of medical information such as weight, height, temp., and vaccines. It even lets you track activities and moods, but I decided that was a bit excessive. One of the best things about it is that you can have multiple users! So if I come home from work and my husband is on his way out the door, he doesn't have to give me a play-by-play. I can just check the app to see how long it has been since our baby's last diaper change, bottle, and nap. I also like the charts and graphs that let you compare days and notice any major changes in your baby's behavior/schedule.

3. Grocery iQ (free)- This app helps you make your grocery list. My favorite features are that you can customize it based on where you shop and what order the aisles are in, save your favorites, and share a list with someone else (by email or synching it to their phone). It makes it so easy for me to make a list and let my awesome husband do the shopping!

4. Road trip (Free)- This app is great for tracking your gas mileage, maintenance, and car-related expenses. It also can remind you to do things like get an oil change.


Do you use apps to stay organized? What are your favorites?

Corralling greeting cards

I'm so excited about how I organized my greeting cards that I'm starting with an after photo! I used to save every single greeting card anyone ever gave me. My collection of cards from the past five or six years took up two photo boxes and outgrew them after Caleb was born, so there were just piles of cards on top of the boxes. I had re-read them a total of zero times, so I decided it was time for most of them to go.

I went through them all and made several piles

• Keep for sentimental reasons
  
• Keep to use parts of the design for scrapbooking
• Keep for design inspiration
• Keep because I might frame and use as art
• Trash

I was good and got rid of a lot! I think I kept 1/5 or less. Most of the sentimental ones will stay in one of the photo boxes... more what will happen to the rest in a minute. The ones I might use for scrapbooking will go with my scrapbooking supplies. The design idea ones will go with the rest of my design samples. And the ones I might frame will go with the art file I plan on creating. Not sure how it will look yet, but I need a way to store flat things that aren't currently framed and on my walls. I want to keep all of my wedding cards and baby shower/new baby cards and thought it would be helpful to group them together. So, I made them in to books! Now they are all bound together into cute little keepsakes.


I was originally going to punch holes in the corner and add a binder ring, but once I stacked the cards up I realized there were way too many! So, I just tied a ribbon around them and added tags to label them. Then they went back in a photo box, all pretty and organized.


I am also going to do this with the Christmas cards we get, starting with this year. I hadn't put this year's cards away yet, so they went straight from my card display to into a book. I did use a hole punch and binder ring for these. I also included an envelope in the back for letters and photos we received. Then I tied them up with some pretty ribbon I had lying around and a tag I cut out of cardstock. They got packed away with Christmas decorations. This way, every year as we are decorating fro Christmas we can look through all the cards we received in years past.

Now it will be so much easier to enjoy special cards and memories without digging through giant stacks.

If you are wondering how I display my Christmas cards, I use the Umbra photofalls desktop. I decided I didn't like using it for photos because it gets so dusty when left out year round and the clips dent photos. But it works perfect when I get it out once a year to hang cards on it!

Here's the project breakdown.
Supplies needed: cards, ribbon, cardstock, binder rings, pen or marker, and hole punch
Total cost: $0 for me since I already had everything (approx. $6 if you need to buy supplies)
Time spent: approx. 3.5 hours (2 hours going through cards and 1.5 hours making the books)

Are you a saver or do you throw cards away? Do you have any creative uses for old cards?

Dining room... check!

Another item was crossed off our de-cluttering list!

January
Living room
Dining room
Hall closet

That's right, the dining room is finished! To complete this room, I did the following:

• Put the boxes of Christmas decorations back in the guest bedroom closet and storage unit (they have been down for a couple of weeks, just not put away)
• Took the high chair out of the box and set it up on the chair (we opted for one that isn't free standing and so far we love it! It saves space and the tray can go in the dishwasher!)
  
• Wash the windows on the sliding door, inside and out
• Dust the flowers on the center of the table
• Clean the glass table tops
• Remove a few random items that didn't belong in the dining room
• Clean the dust off the baseboards
• Dust the mantle and arrange a few of my favorite decorative items
• Vacuum (my husband actually ran in the room after I started to ask if he could finish... he likes vacuuming even more than I realized!)

Here are the pretty after pictures! I forgot to take before pictures before I dove in. This first one is the view from the living room.


Here's the fireplace. The items on the mantle are a candle from my mom, a Willow tree figurine of a couple with a baby that our good friends gave us right after we found out our son was being transferred to the NICU at another hospital and had something wrong with his heart, a love sign from my mom, and a picture of us in a frame we got as a wedding gift.


Usually kitty toys are all over the floor, but when I vacuum or company is coming over I throw them in this basket. I found it at the Dollar Spot at Target a few years ago.


Here's a close up of the centerpiece on our dining table. I used compressed air to get the dust out of the flowers and a damp paper towel to dust the leaves. The vase is sitting on a platter we received as a wedding gift.


Here's our cross collection! I think that grouping like items looks a lot less cluttered than scattering them throughout a room or home.


And here's Sketch enjoying the cleaned up space. At least he still has one place to perch.


This is definitely my current favorite room in our apartment! I just want to sit in it smiling. The next step is to keep it this clean and organized! No clutter allowed!

Once Mr. Baby is mobile, all we have to do to baby proof this room is move 1 picture frame to a higher shelf, add a couple of outlet covers and put away the kitty toys. I will need to find some bigger, non-choking hazard toys for the kitties so they don't get too bored.

Now, on to the living room to complete our January goals! I can't wait for the whole apartment to look this good!

I think one of the reasons I'm so excited about organizing and de-cluttering is that it will allow me to spend more time focused on my family and friends because I won't be spending so much time dealing with "stuff."

Do you have any tips for keeping rooms clean? Do you put things away every day or wait until it gets crazy messy?

Decluttering and dinner

On Saturday we tackled the pile in the corner of our dining room. Several items that didn't have a place to go got stacked there "temporarily." Two boxes, the tool box, and a small suitcase. The kitties enjoyed using this stack of stuff as a jungle gym, as iMac is demonstrating in the photo below. But I did not enjoy looking at it so it was time for it to go!


The boxes had been there long enough that we couldn't even remember what was in the big gray tub. We started off with the cardboard box of VHS tapes. We don't even have a working VCR any more. So, it was time to get rid of most of them. Here are our stacks after we sorted them.


Pile 1: Movie my husband borrowed from friends years ago. He's going to call them and see if they even want it back.

Pile 2: Movies we have on DVD too, will buy on DVD, or don't want anymore.

Pile 3: Trash! These are tapes from back in the day when we recorded shows off of TV to watch later. It seems like forever ago, but it was as recent as three years ago. Now we love our DVR!

Pile 4: The keep pile. These are home movies or other sentimental videos.

So, we went from 40 VHS tapes to only 10! They fit on some shelves in our guest bedroom for now. They will probably move again once we tackle that room.

Next, we opened up the tub. It was full of books that we already for planning on selling to Half Price Books. I guess they never made it there!

The toolbox and suitcase will hopefully fit in a closet or the storage unit once we clean them out. They were temporarily (I mean it this time!) relocated to the guest bedroom.

We decided to make a trip to Half Price Books right away to get the books, VHS tapes, and DVD from our sort last week out of the house. We made a total of $16.60! It was enough to pay for our dinner at Chipotle with some change left over!


So we cleared out the corner of our dining room and made money! This might be my favorite project so far!

Time spent: 1 hour and 5 minutes (45 min. clearing out the corner, 20 minutes driving to and from Half Price Books)
Total cost: -$16.60! This was a money maker.

Do you have old books and movies lying around? I highly recommend showing them the door. You might even make some extra cash in the process.

Free Kindle Book: Organized Simplicity

I just came across this book that is currently free for your Kindle, iPad, or smart phone! If it is still free, the price will say $0.00. Here's the link to download Organized Simplicity. I'm hoping it will have some good tips and encouragement for my organization journey!

Also, you might have noticed that Organizey Dreams has a new design! I had grabbed the previous design from The Cutest Blog on the Block to get my blog started, but being a graphic designer I wanted to design it myself! I hope you like it!

Unconventional storage

My baby was in the NICU for several weeks after he was born. While he was there, he ate from disposable bottles. When he finally was able to come home and were were getting ready to leave, I realized we hadn't washed our bottles at home yet! And, I was concerned that he might not eat well from them since he was used to a different kind. So, I asked if we could bring home some of the disposable ones to hold us over and wound up with tons of these!


When you take the nipple off, you are left with a cute little container that has a lid that snaps shut. Once we were finished using them as bottles, I realized they would be GREAT storage containers for small things! So, I went in search of things to put in them, and found my craft box. It had all kinds of little baggies with things spilling out of them. Now they are contained in neat, labeled containers.


I also included some empty containers with blank labels in the box to make it easy to add things. I love that now I can open the box and instantly see what is inside instead of taking everything out.


I still have more containers, so I'll keep you posted if I find anything else to store in them during our organization quest.

Another idea I have been thinking about is covering cardboard boxes with fabric, wrapping paper, or even brown craft paper to use for storage on top of our bookshelves in the living room. I have been looking for baskets, but haven't found any that are quite right. I haven't measured yet, but I think that diaper boxes or printer paper boxes would work.

Here are a few creative storage ideas I have found on Pinterest. I would love to try some of these. They definitely inspired me to think outside of the box when it comes to organization.

Using a magazine/paper organizer for saran wrap, foil, etc. — this would be easy to slip in a pantry and free up drawer space

(Image originally from Chica and Jo)

Using CD packages for spools of ribbon — genius!

(Image originally from Grosgain)

Using a rake for necklaces — pretty and functional!

(image originally from Twig Home)

Bins for kitties — kidding with this last one, but since I have three cats this was too funny to not share

(image originally from The Ellen DeGeneres Show)

Have you used any unusual containers for storage in your home?

Unrelated side note: I am very supportive of breastfeeding and wanted to very badly. I worked with an amazing lactation consultant who is now a friend and tried EVERYTHING. Sadly, I was not able to produce enough to nurse my baby exclusively, hence the need for bottles.

A to Z DVDs

Off to the side of our dining room we have a nook with a bookshelf, two DVD shelves, and more DVDs than what fit on those two shelves! My husband loves movies.

Technically, it's a TV nook and it used to be our living room, but my black kitty, iMac, started chewing on cords so our TV was moved to the guest bedroom. Then we got a new dining room table and our furniture fit better when we switched our living room with our dining room. It's pretty much one big open space with the kitchen, so it doesn't look weird. Plus, I love having the table by the large windows now.

Back to the shelves... we removed a Kroger receipt from April 2011 (no idea how that got there), old The Far Side calendars (we have the two book set of every comic so they were redundant), and Dear John on DVD (lets just say there's a reason why we received it as a white elephant gift). Here are the shelves before. Notice the messy stacks on top? We also found some DVDs on the desk in our guest bedroom.


And here is the after! We put our TV show DVDs across the top of the bookshelf to make room for the movies on the DVD shelves. I was hoping to fit some DVDs on the top shelf, but they were just slightly too tall. Since there was room, I also added some of our baby's books that didn't have a place go go to the top shelf of the bookshelf. The Far Side books that were there previously got relocated to the bottom of the end table that used to hold our games. Now the DVDs are in alphabetical order with the exception of kids movies, car movies, and what my husband calls his Epic movies. It may not make the biggest difference in the room, but it definitely looks neater and will make it easier to find our movies!


We also have plans to make a list of all our movies to save as a note on our iPhones so that when we are out and about and see a movie we want to buy we can remember if we have it or not. My husband also plans to watch all of our movies in alphabetical order to decide if he wants to get rid of any (but I'm thinking more just for fun, ha ha). It will definitely make for some free date nights!

Do you have lots of movies? Do you sort them alphabetically, by genre, or not at all?

No more homeless papers

Thanks to simplify 101, I finally figured out what do do with all those papers that didn't have a home. You know, those papers that are on your fridge, kitchen counter, and desk because it doesn't make sense to file them away, but you can never find them when you need them. It's what the folks at simplify 101 call a Command Central Binder.

I was able to put mine together using supplies I already had lying around. I grabbed a binder, dividers, page protectors, post-it notes, a pen, and all some homeless papers from around my apartment. Types of papers that found a home in my binder include business cards, doctor appointment reminder cards, prescription information, medical information, rabies certificates, and apartment information. I would like to get some of the page protectors with little slots for business cards to add to it, but before I spend any money I want to make sure this solution works for me.


As a side note, I got really excited that I had such a cute binder and dividers that I wasn't using for anything else! I love office supplies. And having cute things makes organizing so much more fun! Well, at least it does for me. The last time we tried to get organized, we started off by getting excited and spending lots of money on stuff at Office Depot but we didn't end up doing much organizing. Did we really need a pretty, pastel rubber band ball?! Oops. Hopefully doing things the other way around this time will work much better! There's nothing like a recession and a new baby to make you count your pennies!

To start it off I made sections for each family member, as well as sections for pets, the apartment and resources. I made post it labels for now instead of writing on the tabs because I want to see what makes sense as I continue to gather and add things.


I also decided to use this basket I already had to corral our binder and newly organized coupons. It will live on our kitchen counter. Hopefully we can keep it updated and organized! If we do, it will keep our counter clear and save us the time we currently spend searching for things!


Here's the project breakdown.
Total cost: $0 for me! (approx. $10 if you need to buy supplies)
Time spent: 45 min.

For more information on how to make your very own binder and what kinds of papers you can keep in it, be sure to visit simplify 101.

Where do you keep your important reference papers? Do you share my love of cute office supplies?

Utilizing closet space

I can cross an item off my de-cluttering list!

January
Living room
Dining room
Hall closet

First, here's a before picture of the hall closet. It's not bad, but I knew it could be better.


I was actually able to add more than what I removed due to just making better use of the space!

First, I took almost everything out. I got rid of a broken umbrella, extra hangers, a coat I haven't worn in over five years, and on old jacket that is too small. I also realized I still have a black pea coat that I thought I had given away and recently was wishing I still had... and it still fits! You've gotta love that new clothes feeling without spending a penny!

I was hoping to fit these games in the closet instead of having them out in the open under an end table since we don't use them very often and they aren't exactly decorative. Plus, before we know it Mr. Baby will be exploring them and putting dice in his mouth if they stay there.


I knew extra shelves would really help. Then I realized I had some in the top of our bedroom closet! I had used them in our old apartment, but there isn't enough vertical hanging space in our current master closet. So they were just lying around, waiting to be used!


Don't worry about my kitty, Sketch, in the above pic, we don't keep him in the closet! He just really dislikes closed doors and wanted to check out the closet while he had the chance. I think he approves.

The shelves fit perfectly next to our coats and jackets and were key to organizing the space. I used one shelf for my scarves, gloves etc., one for my husband's gloves, etc., three for games, and one for miscellaneous items. The umbrella fit perfectly in a side pocket of the shelves. By adding the shelves, I was not only able to add the games, but a cooler and folding chair fit too! I was amazed by how much more fit in what looked like a full closet and how quickly this project went!


Here's the project breakdown.
Total cost: $0 for me (I think the hanging shelves were originally around $15 at Bed Bath & Beyond)
Time spent: 25 minutes

Are you closets neat and organized or stuffed to the brim? Do organized closets matter to you or do you just shut the door?

Coupons: crazy to collected

Before I dive into this month's decluttering zone, I had a couple of paper clutter solutions I wanted to implement. First up... organizing coupons! I used to keep them in my purse, but after adding baby, car-seat, and diaper bag to my list of things to cart around, I treated myself to a new, smaller purse, but it doesn't have room for all my coupons. Plus, my husband is the main grocery shopper now so it doesn't do us any good to have the coupons in my purse. As a result, coupons started to take over my kitchen counter!

I decided it was time to reclaim my precious counter space and organize my coupons so that finding and using them will be quick and easy. I started off with a visit to the Dollar Spot at a Target. They usually have these great little envelopes with divider tabs for just $1! I chose a black one because it looked so much nicer and more husband friendly.

The first step was gathering all the coupons.

Next I grabbed my new coupon organizer and wrote categories on the labels that came with it. I chose grocery, restaurant, baby, pet, clothes, and other. I put the extra labels in the back of the last section in case I decide to change any of them in the future.

After my organizer was ready to go, it was time to sort the coupons into the categories. I also made sure I got rid of any expired ones. Once I sorted the coupons into categories, I also sorted them by date with the ones expiring the soonest in the front.

Here is my completed organizer, all ready to go. One of the best parts is that using just one or two coupons will pay for this project. Now when one of us is planning a trip to the store, locating coupons will be a snap! I plan on throwing away expired coupons each time I am looking through a section, which should be quick since they will all be up front.

Here's the project breakdown.

Total cost: $1.00

Time spent: 45 min.

Do you like to use coupons? How do you keep them organized?