The Final Assignment!!! Day 23: The Garage

Well, this is it.  The Spring Cleaning Challenge if finally officially coming to a close. 

(enter sigh of relief here)

Those of you who have participated are probably so OVER THIS project...just like me.  Those who didn't join the bandwagon are likely very ready for me to get back to my regularly scheduled programming.  Who misses pictures of the kids? Money saving tips?  Recipes?  Random rambling about who-knows-what? 

For the few stragglers who are still hanging with me for today's challenge, it's time to tackle the garage.  I left this for the last day because, well, it might take all weekend to finish. 

If the weather in your area is nice enough, begin this project by pulling everything out of the garage and piling it high on the driveway.  Sweep the rarely-seen garage floor and take a look around.  What do you want to see in your garage once the assignment is complete?  A few holiday boxes?  Rakes and shovels hanging on the wall?  VEHICLES parked in their designated spots instead of in the driveway???  (oh yes, you know who you are)

Sort through the items on the driveway and make three giant piles in your yard: keep, sell/donate, and trash.  Further divide the keep pile into tools, sports equipment, holiday decor, etc.  From there, designate "zones" for each category in your garage.  Keep like things together so that you (and your spouse) will be able to find them. 

A couple of years ago, I bought some very inexpensive wall hooks to keep the kids' bikes, scooters and helmets from cluttering my parking space.  In the nicer months, a few stay on the ground, but during the summer, everything hangs nicely along the wall. The adult bikes are even hanging from studs in the ceiling.

On Mike's side of the garage, we have the shelves and cabinet that we used in our last house.  They hold all of his car/bug spray/paint/household tools and stuff. When we reorganized and purged this section, he was all but giddy at the possibility of finding everything he needs at a moment's notice.

We also have wire bins to hold the kids' roller blades, knee pads and all of the gear that goes with them.  Most of the drawers are empty, but I'm sure we'll fill them soon enough! (stacking wire baskets and drawer frame are from IKEA) I was going to label each drawer, but I decided that I kind of don't care what goes where. And the kids can easily see inside, so as long as the little items are contained, it really doesn't matter if things are perfect.

I also recently invested in a wire basket to hold baseball bats, balls, kites and Ryan's golf clubs that were rolling all over the place. Best $20 I've spent in months. (The Container Store)


I keep as much off the garage floor as possible, so we also hang ladders, yard tools, even umbrellas on hooks and nails in the wall.  Everything has it's place.

  

  



If you have boxes lining your walls that are practically toppling over, consider saving up for a built-in wall unit.  We found a local company who charged around $400 to install ours, which was a deal, considering many are upwards of $1000.

I tend to label most of my bins so I know what's in them.  Plus, all of the bins are clear, except Christmas items which are all in green and red containers.



Have a chat with the family and get everyone involved in helping with this project.  Then look at the calendar and plan to have a yard sale to earn a little money for those garage cabinets!  Or a weekend getaway for you and your spouse.  Or just you. After this huge Spring Cleaning project, you deserve a vacation!

I hope you have enjoyed this little challenge...all 10 of you who participated!  Thanks for humoring me all month. I promised a fun prize for one lucky person who worked through the cleaning schedule with me and the only person who linked up was Tracey, so congratulations!  I'll be in touch about your prize - thanks for your willingness to broadcast your before and after pictures to the world.

I have much to share the rest of this week: Jason's first steps, our grown up vacation to San Francisco, pictures and ideas galore...stay tuned!

Day 22: The Basement

Once again, I'm taking today off.  The assignment for our little Spring Cleaning Challenge is mute for us here in Phoenix.  Although I desperately wish we had the storage that a basement provides (not even necessarily for boxes, but for excess furniture and extra kitchen chairs) - basements are rare out here.  Apparently builders don't think they're necessary in you don't live in "tornado ally."  Whatever.

And in our last house, we had a great hand-built attic above the garage, but again...with a two story house, the attic is harder to get to, so we just don't bother.

If you do have a basement or attic, and have the luxury of using it for storage, beware of allowing your stuff to expand to the amount of available storage space you have!  Because we have to keep all of our holiday decorations and childhood memorabilia in the garage with our vehicles, we tend to keep much less "stuff" than those with adequate space to store such items. 

So today's spring cleaning task might be a tough assignment that requires help from your spouse and may span over several days.  But don't be discouraged!  Still give it a shot...go through a few random boxes (ahem...college textbooks and spare scraps of wood, yard, etc. that you're keeping for a craft project "just in case") and get rid of items.  Be brutal.  Think about what you genuinely love and use and keep only those things.  Limit your personal memorabilia to one or two boxes MAX and part with the rest.  If you have to take pictures of items to show your kids someday, so be it.  But remember: you already have pictures of yourself in your high school cap and gown. And the lei they gave you as you stepped off the plane on your honeymoon in Hawaii. And your mom probably has plenty of pictures of you with your childhood teddy bear and blanket.  And...and...and. 

Just sayin'.  Happy cleaning!

Day 21: The Guest Room

Today is a great day - this is the first assignment of the Spring Cleaning Challenge that I don't have to participate in!  So no before or after pictures for me today.  In our last house, before we had kids, our guest bedroom was a dumping ground.  If we had friends over and I didn't know where to put something, it went into the guest room or the closet.  When guests came to town, I pulled everything out temporarily, then dumped it all back in there. 

For some reason, our number of out of town visitors drastically decreased after we had kids.  What does that say about us...???  :)

If you've done a major overhaul on your guest bedroom, please link up below!

Day 20: Non-Bedroom Closets

I clearly didn't look at my calendar when I planned my Spring Cleaning schedule, because we've been out of town since Friday!  I think I hoped I would have been done with all of the assignments before we left, but alas, I am not...

Thank goodness I just tackled our downstairs closets in December, because our upstairs "linen closet" will be a doozy.  It tends to be my dumping ground for all things overflow.  This closet holds our birthday gift stash, candles, over-sized serving pieces and when I stock up on diapers and Kleenex during huge sales, they go in this closet.

The last time I cleaned out our linen closet, it took a full day and required two trips to Good Will.  (pictures and details here)  Before and after pictures will have to come at a later date because I'm simply not done yet.

Here are the before and after pictures of our back hall closets a few months ago.  This totally counts for today's challenge.  Right?

This was the "during" picture - such a disaster!

Before - top of the back hall closet

Before - bottom of the back hall closet

After - I transferred serving pieces and bakeware to this closet and utilized one shelf as my purse/coupon/paperwork drop zone.

After - Jason's toy buckets - I put them on the floor of the above pictured closet. Throughout the day, I rotate the buckets into the family room when he needs something fresh to entertain him.

Before - top of the old kitchen overflow closet

After - top of the new kids closet

Before - bottom of the old kitchen overflow closet - most of the dishes were moved into my china cabinet.

After - bottom of the new kids closet

A closer look at the kids craft supplies drawer

If you participated in today's challenge, please link up below!

Day 19: The Kitchen - Coupons & Paperwork

I learned one thing from today's assignment for the Spring Cleaning Challenge: I need to go through my stacks of paperwork more often!  Somehow, I need to work it into my weekly routine.  Maybe on Sundays - ???  I don't know...I'll have to decide...

I thought I had my paperwork pretty organized.  I guess it is, it's just that there's a lot of it and it needs to be sorted regularly.

The top bin (in the picture below) is stuff that needs to be cleared from the counter when it's time to cook dinner, entertain, etc.  The 2nd bin is for clipped coupons that need to be put away, the third bin is kids papers and the bottom is for magazines (to grab on the way to the gym).  The yellow accordion file is my coupons.

Before - My kitchen paperwork in the back hall closet.

After - Most of the paperwork is safely in the recycle bin.  I vow to myself to start sorting these piles of papers on a weekly basis!!

Before - Non-grocery coupons have been separated in envelopes marked Dinners, Products, Services and Snacks/Desserts since...probably my entire 11 year marriage.

After - I repurposed my old receipts organizer and now keep all non-grocery coupons filed in their little categories in one place.  I added a few new sections, such as Car, Clothing, Entertainment and Bed Bath & Beyond (because they need their own pocket!). I LOVE this new system!!!

If you need tips on how to handle your paperwork, SimpleMom.net recently had some great tips about how to deal with the influx to keep it organized. Aby at Creative Organizing also explains her household reference binder in this post.  Both have excellent tips and even downloads!

If you participated in today's challenge, please link up below!

Day 18: The Kitchen - Junk Drawer/Junk Counter

Everyone has a junk drawer.  If not for the junk drawer, where would you keep all of your pens, paper and loose change? 

When I moved into my house, the drawer under the phone outlet was the only drawer near the oven.  So, for me, it made the most sense to keep my oven mitts there.  It's a pretty big drawer, which my mom suggested that I make into a whole "baking station," pointing out the useless drawer in the laundry room around the corner for the junk drawer. 

And so it was.  My junk drawer has been in my laundry room ever since.

Before - The junk drawer.

After - I rotated the junk-organizer 90 degrees so we could access everything easier.

The problem with this amazing idea is that the phone counter ended up naturally collecting clutter.  I tried organizing it for years, but it was constantly a family dumping zone. 

Then last fall, I resolved to spend less time on the computer, which resulted in creating a space in the kitchen for our laptop. (so I could have easy access to recipes at mealtime without going up to the office and getting lost in my emails for an hour)

For the most part, this counter stays clean, but sometimes, it looks like this...

Before - The command center/old junk counter - it's not supposed to collect clutter anymore!

And I need to take a few minutes to make it look like this again...(sorry for the shadows)

After - Ahhh, much better.  This is how it should look.

One of the biggest reasons it stays neater now is that my purse has a new home in the back hall coat closet.  After five years of living in this house, I finally like this system the best!!!

The dumping station in our back closet. (picture taken in December, hence the Christmas cards...)

So go get started on today's assignment for the "31 Days to Clean" Spring Cleaning Challenge.  If you take before or after pictures and post them on your blog, be sure to link up below!

Day 17: The Kitchen - Cabinets & Drawers

Today's assignment is just not happening.  I tried to get to a few cabinets to show before and after pictures, but I've resolved to the fact that I'm not going to stress myself out about it.  I'll get to it later, and when I do, I will post pictures.  Deal?

What I'd really like to do is empty each cabinet completely, wipe down the shelves, and replace everything in an order that makes the most sense.  I did this with Jason's old "baby" cabinet, but it's not really completely done, so that after picture will come later.

For those who need some direction and inspiration, I'll offer this advice: I believe that cabinets should be filled!  If you don't use an item or appliance 3-4 times a week, put it away!  It shouldn't be taking up valuable real estate space on your counter. If you drink coffee daily, sure...keep it accessible on the counter top, but unless you use your bread machine or crock pot every other day, hide them.  It's big, it's bulky and it will get in your way.

Be brutal when going through serving platters, cups and dishes.  Do you really NEED 25 coffee mugs?  What about those free kid cups that come with meals at restaurants?  I say: toss 'em!

This is the one cabinet I completed.  Not much, but it's done.  Only 7 more cabinets and 6 more drawers to go!!!

Before - Cabinet holding vitamin, coffee/tea, paper products, etc.

After - I consolidated and rearranged a bunch of stuff.  It feels cleaner for sure!

If you want more before and after pictures of my kitchen cabinets, check out the post where I spent all day on my kitchen in 2009: here.

For anyone who actually participated in today's overwhelming Spring Cleaning Challenge, please feel free to link up below. 

Day 16: The Kitchen - Fridge/Freezer

Today's assignment for the "31 Days to Clean" Spring Cleaning Challenge didn't take long, considering I'm only eating from my food stash through March.  My shelves are getting pretty empty!  I just cleared off each shelf or drawer, one at a time, and cleaned them with soap and water in the sink.  The fridge is so sparkly clean now...I love it!

Before - fridge side

After - not much different, but much cleaner!

Before - freezer side

After - again, not much difference, but a little more organized!

I tend to cook the same recipes over and over, so I like to keep a stock of certain things in my fridge and freezer.

What's always in my FRIDGE?
- organic milk (whole for Jason, skim for me and 1% for everyone else)
- bread
- eggs
- butter (both spreadable and sticks for baking)
- condiments (peanut butter, jelly, mayo, ketchup, mustard, relish, salad dressing, soy sauce, Worcestershire sauce, pesto, salsa)
- plain yogurt
- seasonal whole fruit (always apples, plus whatever we get at the co-op, and bananas are usually on the counter)
- washed and cut up fruit (for easy snacking)
- unsweetened applesauce
- deli turkey
- sliced cheese
- shredded cheese
- feta cheese
- shredded parmesan cheese
- garlic
- onions
- seasonal vegetables (zucchini, broccoli, celery, corn on the cob, etc.)
- salad ingredients (lettuce, tomatoes, cucumber, carrots, etc.)
- flax seeds (I grind them up and put in oatmeal and smoothies)
- usually a couple of containers of leftovers

(minced garlic from Trader Joe's)

What's always in my FREEZER?
- minced garlic, cilantro and basil cubes
- chopped onion
- chopped celery
- raw chicken breasts
- ground beef
- ground turkey
- salmon
- leftover grilled chicken, chopped
- cooked ground beef/turkey (sometimes a combo)
- cooked beans (black, white and kidney, stored separately)
- frozen vegetables (broccoli, green beans, corn and peas, plus leftovers from the co-op)
- frozen fruit for smoothies (strawberries, blueberries, pineapple, bananas)
- homemade chicken broth, portioned out
- homemade bread crumbs
- heels from bread in a zipper bag, waiting to be made into bread crumbs
- pureed vegetables to add to sauces and casseroles (things that my family doesn't normally eat: spinach, squash, sweet potatoes, cauliflower, kale, etc.)
- extra fresh items that I don't want to spoil (bread, butter, cheese, etc. - I freeze almost everything)

If you post about your progress today, feel free to link up below!