52 Week Organization, Week 3

Hello all!  Its week 3 of the 52 Week Organization...

Week #3 Organized Home Challenge Organize Pantry, Spices & Food

If you remember I already did this!  I actually started with my pantry before I decided to do this challenge!  So here is the link to my previous post about how I cleaned my pantry!

Here are my pretty pictures of my cleaned pantry and I am happy to say that it still looks like this!  I am proud of it!  I would show it to anyone now! 

Love it!  So clean and I can see everything.  It makes it so much easier to find what I have.  Go figure!  LOL!!!

So the second part of Week 3 is the spice area.  Well, if I would have read ahead I would have seen that I should have waited for the spice cabinet but I included it in week 2 since it was one of my cabinets...  Oh well!!!

So here is the link to my cleaning of my spice cabinet and here a a couple reminder pictures!  I love it!  I use this cabinet with much more ease now.  I can just grab.  I don't have to push things out of the way.  Everything is all right there for me.

Since I technically am done with week 3 I think I will go back and review week 2 items.  Cabinets.  I am going to work under my sink and the really long cabinet that things get lost in to the left of the sink.  They are pretty clean but they can always be better!!! 

Here is a link to week 1.
Here is a link to week 2 here and here.


Until tomorrow!  (I think I will have some yummy food for you to drool over!)

DIY Cork Board Frames

So I know I said yesterday I was going to talk about the 52 week organization.  I didn't have time last night to complete anything so I am going to talk about the DIY cork board frames I made as gifts for some friends for Christmas.  (We just did our celebration so I can now talk about it!)

So a while back when I first got turned on to Pinterest my friend Stephanie sent me this picture:

I really liked it.  I thought to myself I could totally make that!  Then I thought I want to make these for my friends for Christmas!  So my mind started to run with ideas...  How did I want to do this...  (excuse the misc pictures, this was before I got into taking pictures of my process on making things!)

So I'm not sure why (probably something else I saw on Pinterst) but I got the idea to make this project into a cork board.  Then it would double purpose with the board and the hooks...  So I went to hobby lobby and found the letters, cork board tiles (they come in a pack of 4), and the packages of hooks.  I got the frames and spray glue at Meijers because they are way cheaper there!

So these are examples of what I got:

So I started out by taking the glass out of the frames.  I took the glass and measured the size onto the cork board tiles.  Now you do not have to cut all the way through the cork.  Just score it a little.  It will break easily once it is scored! 

Now technically you could just leave it.  Obviously that wasn't what I was going for so based on my inspiration I was going to put letters on them.  I couldn't decide if I wanted to use the bow that came with the letters or not.  I did decide not to.  I couldn't get them exactly like I wanted.  So I took the spray adhesive and sprayed the back of the letters and positioned them on the cork boards and pressed them down.  That stuff will hold just about anything.  (Steph will atest to that with all the presentation boards we've had to make for work!)  So this is where we are:

Now I didn't want to just give them empty cork boards so I found these cute cork board clips.  Sometimes you need a clip instead of a pin.  I did put a few push pins in there too. 

"L", "J", and "G" for the 3 very best dance mom friends out there!

For some reason I don't have a picture of the finished board.  I swore I took one but I can't find it.  If I find one with the hooks on the bottom for keys and what not I will update this...  But basically Jake started small holes in the bottoms of the frames with the screw gun and then screwed the little hooks into the frames. 

Simple.  Easy.  Fast project.  Very useful too!

Until tomorrow!

Just an update!!!

My best friend Stephanie who I made one of these for sent me a picture of it up!  It looks great and what a wonderful way to use it! 



She hung it next to her stove.  She is hanging her measuring spoons from it and is going to use the clip to hang recipes from when she cooks!  Yay Steph!  It looks awesome!  Thanks for sharing the pictures with me!!!

The Pantry...

Since one of my New Years resolutions was to organize the house what a better way to spend the 1st day of the New Year but organizing and cleaning out the pantry! 

Since moving to the new house and never having a pantry before I was thrilled when Jake agreed the closet in the dining room over the stairs was the perfect place to put in a pantry!  Over the year when we needed to get rid of something fast it got stuffed in there.  Unfortunately, it usually didn't come back out!  So needless to say the pantry looked something like this:

As you can imagine...  I found nothing in there and didn't know exactly what I had.  I hate to say it but this also spilled into a couple of cabinets in the kitchen.  (I forgot to take before pictures of those...)

So I started with emptying out the entire pantry onto my dining room table.  I'll save you that picture.  Its not pretty!  Then I just started to separate and throw away outdated and opened items that were bad or stale.  I had a magnet board that I couldn't find a good place for.  I decided I'd put it inside the door.  I could put important stuff that I didn't want to lose on the board.  Then I found (cleaning) the scraps of cork board (from a different project) and decided to put them on the inside of the door too!  I also wanted a pad of paper somehow in there to have to writing down grocery items that we need as we think of them.  You know, for example, I'm looking for cream of chicken soup and I notice there isn't any or I'm taking the last one.  Instead of making a mental note (and forgetting it) I can write it down right away!  That also meant I needed something to store the pens in.  So organize organize organize and this is what I came up with:

The cork board is organizing my packets of seasoning.  I'm so happy with the way it turned out!  I hung them at the bottom of the cork board because I figured I could hang something above them one day but I don't have anything right now. 

One of my best finds by cleaning out the pantry:

Yes it is a dog food bowl.  Yes we still have a dog, but we do not use it anymore.  What could I use this for?  Well, Jake has been begging me to clean up the plastic bags on top of the refrigerator that keep falling on his head...  So my wheels started turning...  Can you guess? 

How awesome is this!!!  I am so happy with the way it turned out!  We can either pop the top off and stuff more bags in or push them in from the bottom.  Now whatever doesn't fit we will not keep anymore!  Nice and organized!

So without further ado, here is my finished pantry and couple of cabinets that had spill over from the messy pantry!

Clean and organized!  The top shelf has a box with wrapping paper, gift bags, and tissue paper in it for a quick grab!

The top shelf has plates that my mom gave us that we usually use on Thanksgiving.  The right side has Chrissy crafts that are only for adult supervision.  The left side has important papers and sewing things.

This cabinet isn't quite finished I'm guessing, but it had overflow from the pantry so it is clean now!

So today is a new day and something new to organize.  I'm taking advantage of my days off because I know once I go back to work the organization projects will get smaller.  I think today I will tackle the countertops and possibly the other side of that cupboard in the picture above! 

Until tomorrow!