Mini Week One : Organize

Poised to do some damage.

I started off my first mini week challenge to organize by making a list. I wanted a nice big list of all my ideas so I could pick the best ones (and in some cases, the easiest). Top of my list should have been our tupperware, but alas, that is Harper’s favorite play area. The organization would last about 10 minutes. So there are three items on this list that need the most organizing, no wait, make that four. Since I started on a Sunday and had more time I decided to tackle a big one. Our pantry. At one point (before us) our pantry was a bathroom that was attached to our second bedroom. It is now a little room accessible through our dining room. We discovered it was an old bathroom when we were tiling. Our whole house was carpeted when we bought it. That includes the dining room, most of the kitchen and the two bathrooms (well three if you count the pantry, which we don’t). It was lovely.

Mess on the left. Clean on the right.

Anyway, it turns out that old bathrooms make fantastic pantries. I’ve never lived in a house with a pantry before and now I’m smitten. I will always want one in any future house. We store all kinds of stuff in ours: food, of course, but also large seldom used pans and appliances, dog food. etc. The pantry is also a catch-all for crap.  For a while now it’s been on our weekend to-do lists, but it hasn’t happened. When I decided to organize for my first week of minis, my husband immediately jumped all over that.

“Oh, you should do our pantry. And since it’s YOUR challenge, not mine, I probably should just let you do it by yourself.” So, the minute Harper went down for her nap he scrambled into our basement to play a video game and I was left to the pantry by my lonesome. In all fairness though, he is right. It is my challenge this month, not his.

I tackled the pantry and it looked much much better afterward. I vowed not to wait another 1 1/2 years before the next time.

I decided to keep going and moved on to our fridge – a much smaller project.  Our fridge, inevitably, gets messy easily. But, it is a quick organizational and cleaning project that does not take much time. Two down, five to go.

Later that afternoon I decided to attempt one more organizational project, this one was quick and painless too, like the fridge. I organized 4 drawers in our kitchen – three used for utensils and our towel drawer. They looked much better after – all neat and organized.

I have only done the three items and it is Thursday already. I plan to do one tonight (our bookshelf), it shouldn’t be too bad. Then for the last BIG one I am going to do my closet on Saturday. OMG, that is going to take awhile. Last, but not least, I am going to go through our file cabinet drawer and organize that. I am really loving and hating this challenge. One thing I love is getting something out of the pantry. It is so sparkly clean in there!

How about you? Do you have anything that needs organizing?

I still need to get the details out about my ab workout for next week – coming soon!