Organized kitchen cupboards, an organized fridge and spring cleaning fever

    This time of year always makes me feel the same way. That restlessness, that urgency, that urge to open all of the windows and let fresh air blow through the house. That urge to clean out, pack up winter stuff, and deep clean literally every inch of our house. That urge to organize, purge, donate and scrub all of the nooks and crannies that don't usually get touched. That urge to wipe down baseboards, shake out the throw rugs, scrub the boot trays, give all of our blinds a bath (click HERE to see how I did it at our last house), and wipe down every surface possible. 

Spring cleaning is in full swing around here. And I kinda love it. 

Not that our house is sparkling clean right now--not even close (we're in the middle of renovating our ensuite, so dust is just something that we're getting used to by now and piles of tools in our bedroom is just every day life by this point). But, still...a girl can dream of a sparkly clean house. 

So, here is a little tip if it all feels too overwhelming--if you're looking at your house (like I was looking at mine) and wondering "Where do I even start??"...just pick one little place. Everyone can clean or organize just one little place. A whole house feels impossible, but one little space is totally doable. 

Maybe it's your front hall closet. Maybe it's that part of the counter in your kitchen that collects all of your junk. Maybe it's a dresser drawer. Maybe it's the dining room table. Just do one little space at a time and all of a sudden by the end of a few weeks you'll have done an overhaul on your whole house. 

So I decided to start with the two little places that were bugging me the most. Our kitchen cupboards and our fridge. 

Remember a few years ago, when we were living in our old house, and I totally organized my kitchen cupboards? (click HERE to see what I did back then and how I actually organized it all, step by step). After posting my kitchen cupboards for the world to see, I can't even tell you how many emails I got from people telling me that they now had newly beautifully organized pantries and cupboards too. I'd get stopped in the hallway of my school by teachers showing me pictures on their phones of their pretty cupboards, buckets all labelled, shelves all having a purpose. It was pretty fantastic. But after moving into our new house, I instead shoved everything into my cupboards and decided future Erica would deal with it when it started bugging me enough. 

So now is finally the time. 

Because our kitchen cupboards once looked like THIS.   

No particular place for anything. No real order. Just a plain old mess. 

But now, after only a bit of work, we have beautiful organization. And my heart can beat steadily once again.

Because with just a few labels (which is the KEY to this whole process of actually helping everyone in your family actually KEEP it organized and beautiful) and a few white buckets from Dollarama, everything now has a very particular home. Just as I like it.

I also bought these long containers from Dollarama for our baking supplies...

but use what you already have on hand if you can--like these mason jars, huge pickle jar full of chocolate chips and pasta sauce jar for my baking soda. Not everything has to be bought brand new.

And our cereal? Well isn't is just so much better staring at these beauties than cardboard boxes?

From a mess, to complete order--I can now sleep at night.



Well, except for this little lady whose been wanting to snuggle and nurse all night long for the past few weeks---but, I digress...at least my cupboards are pretty, and she's super cute--so all is good.

So...once I was finished tackling the cupboards, I moved onto the fridge.
There isn't a lot to be said about a fridge clean out--it's not fun. It takes a long time.

But it's totally worth it.



But if you buy these amazing fridge sheets (from Walmart, in the kitchen hand towel section), you'll fall in love with how easy it is to actually clean out your fridge and keep it clean on a daily basis. These sheets can be thrown right in the laundry and with a push of a button they're clean and new again. AND, if/when milk spills (or juice or other liquids), these soft sheets soak it right up and you all of a sudden don't have milk dripping down into every inch of your fridge.

And they look funky.

So win/win.

Happy spring cleaning everyone. Tell me what you're doing over at your house so I can be a bit inspired to keep going.

Have a good rest of your weekend!
Erica xo

A bit of play and an organized linen closet

I've had a headache for two weeks straight now. I wake up each day aching for a Tylenol and I go to sleep each night hoping that it will be gone by the morning. But it never does. Stress headaches are tricky like that. It's like your body is just maliciously reminding you that you're stressed out, just in case you forgot for a moment.

They say that job loss is considered to be one of the top stressors in life (others including death of a loved one and divorce). I had no idea what that felt like until now. Yes...it's stressful. But it's not the end of the world, I keep telling myself. Just a bit of a big unexpected shift in our lives. 

We're feeling it though. We're living it. We're fighting it. 

I remember last summer I wrote a post about switching your thinking from I "have to" to "I GET to". Ironically, I used an example of having to get up for work every day. 

Months ago I wrote:

"For others, it might be that you get to wake up early, pack a lunch and get ready for work every day--can you imagine the amount of people who would literally do anything to have a job that they have to get up for each day?"

Damn it. We're living out my own words right now.

(Sorry mom and dad...damn it. I know. I know).

So, as Terry continues to spend hours each day diligently searching for and applying to jobs, I have been trying to keep life moving for us as well. You know what I do when I'm stressed out? Clean, organize and play. Not necessarily in that order. 

So we've been playing a lot. 

 A little fake baking is always a hit in this house. I just fill up some little bowls with flour, sugar, egg shells (and of course water, to make it feel like real baking) and she goes to town making her own little creation.

Stirring with a turkey baster?...Don't we all? 

And a little real baking too of course...

(Apparently her babies had some dry skin and needed a bit of moisturizer).

And a day trip to an indoor play gym with Jen and Jeff and all of the kids was a huge hit.

Along with a trip to the museum with some friends the other week...

(gotta love being a teacher and getting into these kinds of places for free!).

And a trip to the sugar bush with the whole gang was a blast.

And organizing? ..yes...it always makes me feel so much better.

I figure, if we have no say over Terry's job situation at the moment, at least we can have a say over what our linen closet looks like. Ridiculous, I know. But a clean house means a clear mind. And in this case, a clean linen closet simply thrills me.

It's the little things that make me so darn happy. 

So after working away at this little project, I finally finished it up this week. 

From the HUGE disaster that it once was...a major dumping ground (what is even IN there??!)...I can't believe I'm even showing you this--honestly, what a mess.

 But look! This is what it looks like now.

I used the same method as to how I organized our kitchen cupboards last year.
This is how I did it: 

I put Carter down for a nap, and Mya and I got to work making a huge mess. 

If there's one thing I've learned, it's that you have to make a big mess to get organized.

I organized all of our products into different piles on the floor (ie. hair products, body products, etc). I purged A LOT. Got rid of anything that we didn't use regularly and I donated a lot of our bedding and sheets. Each bed in our house now has only two sets of summer sheets and two sets of winter sheets.

Then I used baskets and bins that we already had in our house, made little labels, stuck them on with packing tape and placed each item back into the closet.

A little ribbon wrapped around facecloths keeps them all together and adds a bit of (completely necessary) sparkle...

And sheets folded and placed in pillow cases keeps all of your linens organized and neat (thank you for the idea Martha Stewart!)

In the midst of some instability right now, it's so darn calming. Thank you linen closet. Thank you.

  

  

Nesting..or something like that

   


   I feel like I'm nesting again. That feeling of complete urgency to get things done. That feeling that life might just be over if I don't get the kitchen painted this week. Yes, the kitchen painted. I'm not even sure why I want the kitchen to be painted, but I do. And I need it done now.

    I've been looking through every drawer in our house and feel desperate to get them cleaned out and organized. I want to purge everything. Get the stuff out of our house that is cluttering up our space.

      I want to spray paint our picture frames going up our staircase. Today. Yesterday, really. Why? I don't know. I all of a sudden think that having white frames would be softer, nicer to look at than the black frames that we currently have. I'll be buying spray paint this weekend..probably today actually. Cause yes...I want it done right now.

     I've already painted Carter's room...re-painted it actually. It was freshly painted by my wonderful parents when I was pregnant, but I ended up hating the colour that I chose. It was too dark for the size of the room. I'd sit in the rocking chair late at night, nursing my sweet little boy, while feeling like the walls were caving in on me. It needed to be changed.

     So we went for the exact opposite of what was once there: from dark gray to a soft cream colour. And I love it. It's calming. Warm. Soft. Unfortunately hard to see the true colour in these photos since I took the pics at night, but it's wonderfully calming and I love it.  

    I've organized our linen closet. Donated half of what was in there to Goodwill and feel so much better already (pics to come).

   I've been working on organizing Mya and Carter's toys and playroom downstairs and I have this urge to bake...a lot. I want to bake a million yummy treats. I have no idea why.

Mya doesn't mind this part at all.

Thanks for the adorable apron Kim, Jamie & Seb! 

We made up some delicious peanut butter balls the other day. We used this recipe if you wanted to give them a try. I just added more peanut butter and less butter to make them super creamy. They were to die for.

Didn't I just write about how I was enjoying how things were slowing down around here? Geeze.

At least my urge to bake comes in handy with Valentine's Day coming up next week. Someone else is getting excited about Valentine's Day as well.

   
     Isn't it strange though? All of a sudden to be feeling this way? I'm clearly not pregnant (although, that would be amazing). No big life changes are happening at the moment (ie. about to have a baby, or going back to work after having a baby) -which can sometimes (ok, all the time) lead me to turn into a crazy organizing/cleaning woman. It's just strange. Who knows. 

     Anyways, in my desperation to get things organized, I thought I'd pass along a super easy and free way to organize any drawer in your house. I saw this idea online and thought I'd give it a try in my mess of a makeup drawer. There are a lot of drawers that I'd like to tackle in our house, but I thought I'd pick the worst of the worst.

    Here was my original reality. A complete disaster.

    So with a few empty boxes, cut down to size and covered with scrapbook paper, you've got some cute little 'baskets' to store your stuff. And the best part? It cost me absolutely nothing (since I already had the paper on hand).

     It's as easy as this:

1) Dump everything in your drawer and go through it--getting rid of stuff you don't use. Then grab some boxes and line them up in your drawer.

2) Cut them to size and start wrapping them in scrapbook paper (I just used tape to keep everything together).

3) Once all wrapped, put your items in the new bins and you're done!

Side note: This is also a perfect activity to do with a girly 2yr old who loves playing with makeup. She spent a good 45mins taking things out of the bins and putting them back in..great sorting activity (says the kindergarten teacher in me!). Oh, and it's fun to smear lip gloss all over your face too. True story. 

Nice and neat.

Can you believe that it used to look like THIS??

Happy organizing!