The Simplicity of Organizing Crayons

Okay, so this is silliness but it has really helped my boys. We have taken the time to go through our crayons and sort them by color. Then, we bagged up the extras and gave them to our church for their "kids packs". Another idea is to take them to the local children's cancer center to allow them to use them in their lobby.

We sorted them by color and then put them in little cups by color inside of a $1 bin from Walmart.

Here is the finished product!

Boys room part 2

In this blog post I will outline the things that we have done in the last few days to get my boys room organized and ready for the holidays. If you're like us with six kids in our home we tend to see a lot of pieces of toys come and go in broken bits in shreds as the children will use them throughout the year. 

As we blended are two households we didn't have nearly enough storage for all of the items that the boys had to be easily stored away so that the room could be "clean" for the days activities. Now that my boys have transitioned into a homeschooling environment it became more important that we get things down on their level and organize things so they're easy to access and play with during the day but easy to put away.

So we bought two of the Expedit Units from IKEA and assembled them. 

There really easy to put together in this is a picture of them completely assembled in with the boys things on them.

Then we have the large organizing table in the middle of the room with the play table for cars the cars fit nicely in the two drawers on either side of the table and the boys can easily clean them up when they're done. See how happy they are???!!

I'm so thankful to have been gifted the large table in the middle of the room for the present this Christmas from a friend at church. Her attic is relieved of this item, and I am sure my boys will play with it for years to come!

Let me know what strategies have worked for you and organizing your kids rooms!?? I realize it's a constant struggle, but we are getting better about keeping the room picked up and now we have some useful tools in which to keep them organized!

Thanks for reading!

Have a great day friends!

J

Is paper clutter driving you MAD?

With six kids and my husband coming and going, we deal with this issue daily. It's like anything else, it takes discipline and is a daily item you have to keep tabs on. So here are some 'rules' to managing the paper clutter on a daily basis.

THE RULES...

1) Handle it when it comes in. No letting piles build up. 

Ask the kids daily if there is anything to sign / pay for / know that's going on at school. The younger kids' backpacks (and sometimes the older ones too) need to be gone through daily.

We have a "clip system" where we keep the kids papers that need to be signed/reviewed. We look at the "tray" nightly.

2) Keep bills that need to be paid in a "to be paid" basket next to the computer so you can pay them and let them go. Go to an online bill paying system when available. Pay bills once a week and shred them if they're available online.

3) Medical receipts. Still working on this one..... But..... We have to scan these in and send the to 'other parents', so I am going to be looking for a way for us to scan them into a folder on our shared household hard drive. Great investment by the way if you have a lot of data / pix / movies / videos so they can all be stored in one place.

4) Junk mail is junk mail. Throw it out. If it's a coupon, put it in the coupon binder and then it won't be sitting out cluttering up your life.

5) Other paper... Keep things by year, then just keep the last seven years. Permanent files are separate, and never go away. Life insurance policies, household documents, etc. Property files, keep for seven years after after sold.

This is a great info graphic from Clean Momma. Check her out on Pinterest. Information galore!

6) Binder System: the most important thing is that you have a system that works for you and that your family buys in to the system also. Otherwise it won't work! 

 Check out MyDomesticatedLife YouTube channel for a good home management binder tour.

Planner: YES, I still use a handwritten planner. I got into the habit of using a hand written planner and then got sold on Erin Condren planners a few years ago through my friend Tonya. I go through my digital calendar weekly and as I add appts and add them to the planner. Planner is where I plan menus, to do lists, etc, so it's more than just appointment setting for me.

My husband and I also still use a Gmail Calendar to keep our appointments merged on our iPhones. It seems a little redundant, but it works for us, and he buys into the gmail system so... We will keep doing it.

Check out HappilyaHousewife's YouTube channel for an unboxing of an Erin Condren planner. They're like 50 bucks but it's good for a year and a half, so to us it was worth it.

7) Art / Keepsakes: we have a file for each kid. Art is filed and then during the first few weeks of the summer or the spring semester (depending on the time of year) each kids' file is gone through and trash is trash, art and keepsakes are either dated and kept in their "memory box" (which is just a large plastic bin) with their name on it or photographed for an "art book" that I will make on shutterfly for a graduation gift.

8) Magazines: get digital copies where available. Don't keep issues more than a year. Go through the issue and tear out and scan in the articles you want to read and put them in a "reading file" digitally or in hard copy for later viewing.

9) Family Meeting: Everyone in the house needs to respect and know the system. If it's just YOU organizing everyone it will never work! 

Remember: Give a man a fish, he will eat for a day, teach a man to fish and he will eat for a lifetime. -Chinese Proverb

10) Status update: on a weekly basis ask everyone how it's going with any new systems that have been implemented. Ask for honest & constructive feedback. I can't stress the importance of a FAMILY INVESTMENT in the system. Try a few things, let me know how it goes!

Thanks, J

An organized office space...

Boy With six kids and a wonderful husband, I often struggle with staying on top of housework. Yesterday it occurred to me: Do the housework first before you get to do something 'fun' in the day. So, I hijacked the wi-fi router from the teen/preteens- right in the middle of a show they were watching on Netflix for the 100th time. They laughed, and then got started washing dishes and clearing out their rooms. To my surprise this worked well! They completed the chores they had to do in under 30 minutes! That's what I call motivation!

So with some of the time they saved me this week, I decided it was time to organize the home office. Below are the before and after shots. I now know where everything is and can stay better organized because I now have a SYSTEM! Please bear in mind that this is merely a home office located in our master bedroom that is simply a corner of the room that I have repurposed into a little office space so I can work out of the house. 

I bought dollar store bins... I labeled them with the following labels 

1) incoming 

2) outgoing

3) filing 

4) processing

(Thanks to www.alejandra.tv for the recommendation!)

Right now since I was so far behind my "processing" file is rather empty and my "filing" bin is very full I'm sure this will change in the next day or so as I'm get through some of this filing.

I bought and installed some cheap shelving. Lowe's and/or you and a friend can cut and hang them in about an hour.

Once I decide what color I'm going to paint everything I will let you know! Obviously they're unfinished for now.

So, here is the before picture: (scary!)

And here, my friends, is the after photo!

This is by no means a finished product, as I am sure every system is not without its flaws, but what I do know is it's a start!

And the fabric on the bulletin board to the right in the picture is just fabric that I found at Hobby Lobby on sale for 40% off and I recovered an old bulletin board. The sign above it says "faith" and it was also purchased at Hobby Lobby. 

The old gray filing cabinet is in dire need of some refinishing I intend on purchasing some metal spray paint or something like that to painted in the near future. It was recycled from an old company back in the 90's that was selling off some of its assets and I was able to pick it up.

And the been on the far right beside the file cabinet is simply an old Girl Scout cookie crate box that I cut the lid off of and and recovered. The other little black paisley patterned box next to the upright sorter is a shoebox base that I recovered with some fabric that was left over from our wedding. I will put out a tutorial blog post about how to recover boxes and use them for organizing to avoid the expense of buying a bunch of generic looking bins. I just thought the ones from the dollar store were kind of cute with their polkadots.

Please leave me feedback and let me know what you like and what you Might recommend as changes to the layout.

Have a great day friends! Please leave your feedback. :)

Jodi

On today's agenda... Steak dinner and a dining room spruce-up!

Today I tackled two large projects before 11am!

First, I started a meal for the family in the crock pot. But far, the most used appliance in the house. We have six kids, so we have two. Today's meal is a crock pot ribeye steak, with a wine reduction. A new recipe, so we'll see how it is, but sounds DELISH! I took the recipe from allrecipes and mixed it up and made it my own.

 First, you fire up the crock pot. I set mine to cook for 10 hours. Then, we found steaks on sale at the local grocery store so I bought SIX earlier this week. They were pretty nice looking steaks, which I seasoned with salt, garlic and Montreal Steak Seasoning. 

To the bottom of the crock pot I added a cup of cheap red wine (Cabernet works well). 

Just a cup... 

Then, I added the beef bullion cubes (three) and dissolved them in two cups of water. Stir them good, mash them up... See? Simple...

Then, pup the steaks in the crock pot, just layer then in... Then pour the dissolved bullion mixture. If you don't like bullion you can use beef stock. 

Then I layered baby carrots on the top.

The finished product..... Coming soon!!!

The SECOND major project was a dining room spruce-up! We ARE having a ninja themed birthday party on Saturday, so I went for simple and uncluttered. I took the Home Organization 101: A bowl full of lemons challenge!

Here is the before.... The messy reality of having six kids... 

And here is the AFTER!

In the back there, that's a bookshelf with our art / homework center. We have school supplies for all the kiddos and crayons, markers and paints.

I hope you enjoyed the dining room redo! 

Talk to you soon friends!

J

The Pantry

With six kiddos and a never ending school and extra-curricular schedule I came to the realization tonight that I needed a system to get my pantry organized. Quick! It was in such bad shape...

So, I started at the local grocery store and picked up mainly canned goods and pantry staples.

Then, I went to Target and found these cute storage bins with red lids.

After that, we headed to Michaels and I found some cute chevron labels and used a sharpie to write the contents of each bin. 

Then it was just a matter of cleaning and organizing. 

I almost forgot to mention, I picked up two cute steel containers at Lowe's. One for Onions and the other for chips.

So after weeks of working and hunting for the right tools, I'm finally DONE! Praying that the family will keep it that way! :)

Here's the after...

Kind of an ah-ha moment if I say so myself! 

Happy Organizing!

J

The closet...

Well... my half, anyways. We spent ALL weekend dealing with the Garage Sale, and the end result is a well organized closet FREE of clutter and $500 cash!!! I got rid of over HALF my wardrobe and I couldn't be happier! It takes a fraction of the time it used to in order to get ready in the mornings now. Happy Momma!

Before....

Sad....

After...

Sigh.......

That is all...

J