20 Organizing Tips!

In this post I will be sharing 20 organizing tips for organizing everything from your kids crayons to Christmas ornaments!  I love learning new organizational tips and tricks and many of these I had never thought of!  Enjoy!

For you on-the-go moms use an empty baby wipe container to store crayons, art supplies and even snack while traveling with your little ones in tow!!

I used this method of shower curtain hooks for hanging my scarves but for all of you moms that have boys this is a great method to store all of their baseball caps!

I loved this idea of using wire hangers to fold into hanger hooks for all of your flip flops!

For all of you that have cute, bright laundry rooms I love this idea of hanging your ironing board on this wall mount.  You can store it right behind the door so that it is out of the way when you aren't using it.

Magnetic strips are great to hang inside of your medicine cabinet to store your tweezers, nail clippers and metal hair clips.

I love these hanging door storage pockets.  They come in all sizes and there are endless ways to use them as storage.  This one is hung inside of the laundry closet and stores all of the cleaning products.

I love using glass jelly jars to store office supplies.  I love this idea of storing colored pencils in rainbow order (swoon) and placing the jars in a large wooden tray.

I use this method at our house for battery storage.  This is a plastic tool box and it has separators that can be adjusted depending on the size batteries you need to store.

I discovered this idea while reading Real Simple magazine!  Use large marshmallows in your brown sugar container to prevent the sugar from hardening.  Brilliant!

Use a mesh laundry bag attached to the inside of the dryer door to store your sneakers while drying.  This was genius!  I cannot stand the clanging and banging of sneakers in a dryer!  Perfect solution!

Use a thick rubber-band and wrap it around the can of paint as a drip catcher.  This will prevent all that mess on the outside of the can.

No picture hooks?  No problem!  Use a coke tab to hang a picture without fear of scratching up your walls.

I rarely send cut up apples in my son's lunch because they brown and he will not eat them.  This is a great idea to slice it and then wrap it up with a rubber-band so it will stay fresh!

I loved this idea and I wished I had known about it when my guy was still in a high chair.  A simple Command hook placed on the back of the highchair to hang all of your little one's bibs!

There have been so many times when our electricity goes off and we are fumbling around for a flash light.  Velcro a flashlight right to the side of your electric fuse box for easy access!

Use egg cartons to store all of your Christmas tree bulbs!  Genius!

Use shower hooks and a towel rod to store your necklaces.  There are so many pretty shower hooks and towel rods that this display would look good on a wall in your room or bathroom!

Couldn't get through this post without some wine!!  Use frozen grapes on warm days to chill your wine.  As a wife of a Wine Consultant ice cubes are not allowed so this is a great alternative!  

Last but not least, I love this idea of storing each set of sheets in it's own pillowcase!  How have I never thought of this?


Thanks for stopping by the blog!  I hope you got some great ideas for organizing your home while you were visiting!

Happy Organizing!

Sara

Emergency Pouch for Your Car

In this post I outline another mini-organization challenge~Emergency Pouch for Your Car.  This pouch contains everything I usually need but most of the time never have in my car.  So I decided to bite the bullet and put this kit together and I am so glad that I did!  It has been great and I find myself needing at least one of the items daily as I am running around to and from work, to carpool and running errands.  

I decided that most, if not all the items that I need for this challenge could be purchased at Target (darn, another reason to go to Target;)  I love the Orla Keily line of pouches, makeup bags and travel bags and I got super lucky and found this cute travel case with a car fabric!  It is the perfect size for all of the items that I will need to store in the pouch.  You can use any pouch you have on hand for this challenge.  It can be as big or as small as you like depending on what you will store in the pouch.  I really liked the size of this pouch because it fits perfectly in the console of my car.

This is what the pouch looks like with everything in it.  It is stuffed to the gills!!

I purchased most of these items in the mini-travel supply section of Target while some of the items I already had at home.  The list below is all of the items I purchased and the cost of each item.

1. Orla Kiely Travel Case, $9.99
2. Lint Roller,  $.99
3. Kleenex, $.49
4. Band-aids, $.49
5. Vasaline Mini lip balm, $1.29
6. The Honest Company Hand Spray Sanitizer, $1.99
7. Tylenol, $1.99
8. Hair bands, had at home
9. Ricola Throat drops, had at home
10. Children size scissors, had at home

The cost of this project for me was $17.23.  If I would have used a pouch that I already had at home it would have only been $7.24!!  I had pouches to use at home but I just couldn't resist the Orla Kiely Car pouch!  I keep the pouch stored in the console of my car for easy access.  I hope that this post inspires you to put together an Emergency Pouch for your car. 

Happy Organizing!

Sara 

Coat Closet Organization

 
The coat closet tends to be a dumping ground in our house for coats, hats, shoes, scarves and gloves as we come in and out of the house.  This closet has always been a challenge for our family.  Our coat closet is small so when I decided to re-organize the closet I knew that I had to only store things that we use for the particular season we are in.  I will store off-season items in bins that will be stored in our basement.  We are between seasons here, still cold enough most days for coats in the morning with hats and gloves.  The pictures below is the closet before the redo.  We were just storing all of our scarves, hats and gloves on the top shelf which was a big pile of mess!  I had miss-matched hangers and my son's things never quite make it on a hanger, all the items on the floor are his.

 The first thing I did was to remove everything from the closet.  I vacuumed the floor and baseboards and wiped down the top shelve with a dry cloth and multipurpose cleaner.  I then found 2 baskets that I had that fit perfectly side by side on the top shelf of the closet.  I decided to store hats in one basket and gloves in the other.

I then found wooden hangers that I already had and hung all of our current coats leaving a few empty hangers so that we will be able to hang the coats of any guests that visit.

I found this cute over the door 10 hook piece at Big Lots for $3.50!  I love it and it fits perfectly inside the door.

I can store all of our scarves on these hooks in the colder months and during the warmer months we can store baseball caps, umbrellas and even flip flops on the hooks.

 Sorry for the awkward angle, we have tight hallways so this was as good of a picture that I could get.  The floor is clear except for a folding step ladder.

 I really think baskets and over the door hooks are great organizing items for closets.  They allow you to separate and store like items and allow you to utilize as much space as possible which is important since most hallway and coat closets are on the smaller side.  This project only cost me $3.50 for the over the door hooks.  I used what I had as far as the baskets and the hangers.  Often times small organizational projects like this are very low cost because you can use items that you already have in your home.  I hope this simple organizing project shows readers how easy and budget friendly organizing can be.

Happy Organizing!!

Sara

The Tangled Scarf Abyss!

We have yet another snow day today so I am home waiting patiently (not really) for Spring to come!!!  While I am waiting I am doing little organizational and cleaning projects each week to try to get my house clean and organized so that when Spring does show her tiny head the house will be clean, organized and ready for Spring!  Today I tamed my unruly scarf collection!  For years I have just been throwing my scarves around a hanger and it is always a tangled mess not to mention the fact that it usually takes me forever to find the scarf that I want because it is lost in the abyss of scarf tangles!  I have seen all the "scarf organizers" that companies are now making but I really wanted to find something more budget friendly so I decided to use shower curtain rings that I purchased for $1 and a wooden hanger that I already had in my closet.  

Here is the tangled disaster of scarves that I yanked off the hangers and threw on the floor in disgust!

To do this project all you need is a set of shower rings and a sturdy hanger.  If you have a ton of scarves you may need more hangers and more rings!  Put the rings on the hanger and make sure the clasps are closed.

Loop the scarves one at a time through each ring.  My hanger holds 12 rings easily.  I keep my scarf hanger hanging on a door hook right inside my closet door so that I can just open it and see all my scarves easily and grab the one I need for the day!

I hope that you have enjoyed this scarf organization project!  Total cost was $1 and it took about 15 minutes!!  I love the way this little project turned out and I hope it motivates you to tackle your unruly scarf collection soon!!

Happy Organizing!

Sara

Roasted Sausage with Red Wine and Fennel

This post is a bit late but I wanted to share a recipe with you that we made last Sunday for our Oscar Night Dinner.  Every year on the Sunday of the Oscar's my husband and I plan to cook a nice meal to enjoy before we settle in to watch the Academy Awards for the night.  I came across this lovely book as I was perusing our local library last Saturday called A Kitchen in France, A Year of Cooking in My Farmhouse written by Mimi Thorisson.  It is a beautiful book filled with gorgeous photos that her husband took of the French Countryside, food, life and wine.  My husband picked out a recipe for Roasted Sausages with Red Wine and Fennel.  I love the book because all of the recipes have simple, fresh ingredients.  I didn't have to go to the grocery and get 20 things like a lot of recipes out there.  The basic ingredients were mostly things that I already had in my kitchen. 

Roasted Sausage with Red Wine and Fennel

• 2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
• 1 tablespoon Dijon mustard
• 12 good quality pork sausages
• 1 large fennel bulb, trimmed and sliced
• 1 large onion sliced
• a few Sprig s of fresh thyme
• coarse sea salt and freshly ground pepper
• 1 cup of dry red wine
• 2 tablespoons of unsalted butter

I had everything in my pantry or refrigerator except the fennel which is pretty amazing and it just shows you how simple her recipes are.  I had never cooked with fennel before so I was excited to try something new.  

Fennel

We used a Chateau St. Didier-Parnac Cahors dry red wine that my husband and I had been wanting to try.  Since it's a French wine this was the perfect choice for this recipe.  I used a cup for the recipe and we drank the rest with dinner!

PREHEAT THE OVEN TO 350

In a small bowl, mix together the olive oil and mustard.  Put the sausages in a baking dish and drizzle with mustard mixture, and turn to coat.

Roast for 20 minutes.

Add the fennel, onion and thyme, and season with salt and pepper.  Coat all the ingredients in the oil/mustard mixture.

Bake another 25 minutes or until the sausages are cooked through, stirring halfway through the cooking process.

Add the red wine and butter and roast until the wine has reduced and the sauce has become slightly thicker, about 10 minutes.

***Since it was just the two of us I cut the recipe in half.

The kitchen smelled so good and when it came out of the oven it look rustic and very French!!

We served the sausages over a bed of garlic mashed potatoes and drizzled the top with the wine drippings from the bottom of the roasting pan.

We poured our glasses of French wine and sat down and had a nice slow meal together.  I highly recommend Mimi's book, not only does it have fantastic recipes, it also is so pleasing to look at.  The photographs that her husband took are breathtaking and the stories she tells are wonderful.

Happy Cooking!!

Sara

Bathroom Drawer Mini-Organization Project

I woke up this morning and felt like organizing but didn't have a bunch of time to tackle a large project so I decided to do a mini challenge and work on 2 drawers in my bathroom.  I am super excited to share this project because the entire project only cost me $10!! 

 So the  first thing I did was to take all of the item out of the drawers and sort them.  I threw away things that I did not use anymore which wasn't much because I am pretty good about only keeping what I need and use.  Here are the 2 drawers before.  The top drawer stores my make-up and the second drawer stores our oral care.  

The next step was cleaning the drawers.  I used my Method all-purpose cleaner and a dry cloth.  I realized that some of the make-up wasn't coming off so I decided that I better line the drawers with contact paper.

Here are the products that I purchased for this organizing challenge.  The two trays I purchased on clearance at Marshall's for $4.50 a piece and I found this adorable contact paper for $1 a roll at Big Lots!  I was so excited because both of these products are gray and white!!  The trays are very durable and when they get dirty I can just throw them in the dishwasher to be cleaned.

Here are the trays after filling them with all the make-up and oral care supplies.  I used my Brother P-touch label maker to make labels with our names so that we are sure to use the right section.  I spaced the sections leaving a spot in between for hygienic reasons (no one wants their toothbrush touching anyone else's!!).

After I organized the trays I lined both drawers with the cute contact paper.  This step took me less then 10 minutes.  Both of the drawers turned out great and they look fresh and clean!

The trays fit perfectly inside each drawer with a bit of room in the front and back if needed for extra storage.  I keep my make-up bag in the back of the first drawer during the weekends for easy access.

And there you have it!!!!  A quick and affordable mini organizational challenge completed.  From start to finish this project took me about 30 minutes and again, the cost was $10!!!  I hope you enjoyed this post and I hope that it motivates you to do a mini organizational challenge of your own this weekend!!

Happy Organizing!!

Sara