As part of my New Year's resolutions, I resolved to finally get my house organized, and to keep it that way. I have good days and bad when I comes to cleaning. As S enters toddlerhood, it seems to be more difficult to keep things in their place, as he figures out how to push furniture around and climb to get to things. We have installed child locks on our drawers and cabinets, but there is still plenty for him to get into since my house seems to be in a constant state of remodel. My big goal this year is to convert our unused dining room into my office and crafting studio. But until then I have 6 or 7 boxes of craft supplies, semi-organized, spread around the floor of the room. It makes crafting a bit difficult, since when I am ready to craft I have to search the boxes looking for the right stuff, and then said stuff ends up everywhere, in the kitchen, living room, not put away in the correct boxes in the end, creating more mess for me. I have piles of stuff in more places than I would like.
Today I tackled one area that was particularly bad, the message center of my kitchen counter. It is an area that stuff collects on, mostly because of its convenience. In about a 2 by 2 1/2 square foot of counter is not only our message center but where I store my dish-drying rack. I didn't take a before picture, mostly because I was embarrassed with how bad it had gotten, but I placed everything on my kitchen table that was piled on about a 1 by 2 square foot space (And maybe because my dish-drying rack was full) to show you.
A lot of what was there had to go somewhere else. Why I needed two mason jars full of pens, I do not know. And the vase full of bottle caps-I plan on making some cool coasters for upcoming birthdays. Same with the tub of wine corks and empty spice bottles. They will be used in future crafts, they just had to get put with the craft supplies in the other room. Same goes with the glue gun, crayons, and stickers. The A&D ointment, that went back upstairs in the changing table. The recipe print-outs went to my computer desk, to eventually get digitized. The extra pens, tape, staples and Tupperware of paperclips also went to my desk for now, as did my black journal, which I had used previously to record my toddler's eating habits.
So what did that leave to put back onto the message station? I tried to leave only the necessities: the chargers for the phone and iPad, 1 mason jar of pens, pencils and scissors, a small stack of post-its for taking messages, 1 roll of tape and the stapler-for convenience, plus a small jar for rubber bands and a spice jar full of paperclips. I also keep the corkscrews/bottle openers here. Tucked behind the pens is a calculator and the extra memo pad for writing shopping lists and to-dos. Recently, I have had to push the telephone farther away from the edge, as S is really into playing phone, and I don't want him to make any actual calls.
I still have a long way to go to fully organize my kitchen how I want, but starting small is the way to go, especially when you are chasing a toddler all the way. Hopefully along the way the leftover bits of home improvement will get done. For next time: I'll show you my herb garden that I keep in my kitchen window, and maybe even share a recipe. Stay tuned!
