little projects

Here are a couple of very simple things I have been working on, but make me happy that they are done. I tend to be an insanely disorganized person, especially in our old apt it was horrendous. I vowed that when we actually had a house I would make sure I kept it flowing smoothly and could gladly invite friends in when they knocked on my door and not deeply dread the drop-in.
So a couple of easy organizing tips (hopefully many more to come)-
You know all those instruction manuals and warranties and receipts for the big ticket items you want to hold on to, but can never find if you need them. Well I rounded them all up, put them in plastic covers, and stuck them in an old binder. The binder is now sitting in a kitchen drawer and we don't have to worry about losing them or wasting time hunting. Simple, yet oh so efficient. (I'm a little slow coming around to this organizing thing so forgive me if this is an obvious one.)

Next simple tip I have been wanting to do forever, but could never figure out a way that made sense when we were using the laundromat. I'd always try to sort stuff out, but then inevitably it would just end up back in the laundry basket to be washed 5 more times before it finally ended up where it needed to be.
So I stuck several containers up on my laundry room shelf to put the items I most often need to sort out of the main laundry. Instead of wasting time running around to different rooms I use the containers here and then put the clothes where they need to go once the bins fill up. The labels, which you can't actually read, say
-gentle cycle
-donations (stuff that's out of the hand-me-down cycle)
-tub for Lucia (I have tubs for every age in between S & L since there's a 4 yr gap. What R grows out of goes straight into S's closet.)
-solo socks
-Leah! (Out of the 4 cousins that are younger than L only one is a girl, so she's been designated the lucky hand-me-down recipient. Keep in mind the clothes/shoes may have already gone through 3 kids, so she might not be that lucky!)

Lastly, still working on some decorating ideas to get moving on things around here. And look my design dilemma was featured on a blog today. My sister-in-law, Traci, referred me to this blogger who offers free design consultations/suggestions so I sent her an email a while back and today she responded on her blog.