How to Spend a Saturday – Cleaning the Garage

You may remember that I woke up Saturday morning very early (for me), raring to get going on cleaning out our garage.  Well, I actually DID go downstairs and start working on the garage.  Here’s what I saw Saturday morning:


 
Man, that is really embarrassing.  You can see that we were able to still fit a car in…barely.  The problem started last year when we cleaned out the garage.  We had a bunch of stuff left over that we needed to Craigslist, but we never got around to it.  That pile of stuff was right in the way, which meant we could never get in to put other things away, so those other things just added to the pile.  In the past several weeks, the problem had stepped up in a big way.

So, I got to work just putting away things that actually had a home.  Then I moved everything else out into the middle of the garage, so I could see what needed to be dealt with.

That actually looked much better, but felt even more daunting because now we had to decide what to do with these things.

By this time, it was late enough to go grab my husband and make him ask him very nicely to help me.  We spent most of the day Saturday working on this puppy and here’s what it looked like Saturday afternoon:



There’s still a Craigslist pile, but everything is actually listed and we’ve gotten rid of some of it already!

At some point on Saturday, I decided that the door to the house really needed some paint because it was all scuffed up and impossible to get clean.  For some reason, my husband had no problem with this and he helped me take it down Sunday in preparation for its makeover.  I even took off the hand rail and gave that some paint too!
I’ve got tons of pictures of this project that I’ll share tomorrow, but for now, I’ll just share the after:

 

How cool is that?  Of course, now something needs to be done about those big clunky stairs.  Hmmm…

I’m linking up to:

Cleaning Grand Plan – Misc. Recap

 
What a busy week!  I felt like I was hardly home and when I was home, I wanted to spend time working on my free Craigslist find and NOT on silly organizing.  I did make it through most of my list, though.  Here’s my status:

• Clean Goodwill pile off the dining room table and take it to Goodwill! [x]
• Put old toy shelf on Craigslist
• Put away decor items sitting on coffee table in living room [x]
• Clean out closet in play room [x]
• Find home for box of VHS tapes (preferably not in my home) [half done]
• Wipe down walls and baseboard in living room/dining room [x]

I didn’t put the toy shelf on Craigslist yet because I thought I might be able to use it when I cleaned out the play room closet, but I didn’t, so I’ll put that up next weekend.  And I still need to take care of the box of videos.  Though I did have my husband put all the VHS tapes in a bag for Goodwill, apparently there were even more DVDs underneath those!  Now I have to figure out what to do with them.

The big job this week, though, was the play room closet.  I spent several hours this morning taking everything out and putting only a portion back in.  It was a big task and I still have a headache from it!

You may remember what it looked like before:

Actually, this is after I removed a bunch of stuff because I couldn’t open the doors at first.

After loading up two large bags of recycling and one bag of garbage, with a bit to donate for the next Goodwill trip, this is what it looks like now:

Once again I had to curb my desire to head over to The Container Store and I just used what I had.

The tall multi-drawer shelf on the right was given over completely to the girls’ art supplies.  They now have easy access to yarn, googly eyes, clothes pins, and popsicle sticks.  This led to an afternoon of art making for them.
I’ve left the green and pink cubes empty for now so my sister will have somewhere to put her clothes when she visits next weekend.

I’ve seen many cute wrapping centers all over the blogosphere recently.  I don’t have one of those.  As much as I love them, I don’t really need a dedicated area.  You’ll see our wrapping paper bin to the left, behind the doors.  But the thing that made the biggest improvement in this closet is the gift bag organization.

Before, we were overrun with gift bags.  Every time we’d get another one, we’d just throw it in the closet.  In fact, they’re the reason we couldn’t open the door.  Now they’re all organized roughly by theme (baby shower, holiday, kids bags, adult bags) and hanging separately in the closet.  Tissue paper, bows, and clothing boxes also have their own bags.  I’m very pleased with it!

The cardboard box on top of the bins is empty and waiting for the various egg cartons, cereal boxes, and other garbage stuff that the girls will inevitably want to save for an art project.  It drives me nuts to see their stock piles of recyclables, so I figured I should be proactive and address the issue now!

I’m going to be taking a break from the organizing next week.  It’s another crazy, busy one; ending with me taking the Girl Scouts camping and my sister arriving mere hours after I get back.

I’m nearly done converting my Craigslist freebie and I’m so excited to share it with you tomorrow.  Here’s what it looked like a few days ago:

It’s taking on a new life now, though.  It’s a coffee table no more!

I'm linking this post up to:

Cleaning Grand Plan – Dining Room/Misc

I had planned on writing this post much earlier today, but was side-tracked by my keys going missing.  Normally this wouldn’t cause much upheaval, but they went missing at the same time that my neighbor came over to tell me about break-ins in our neighborhood, so when we couldn’t find them after several searches, we started worrying that they’d been stolen!

Luckily, after several more searches of the entire house (including the refrigerator!), they showed up: in the junk drawer.  Right where I should have looked in the first place.  Oh well, I did end up cleaning out another drawer while I was searching, so that’s a bonus.

It’s way past bedtime now, but I wanted to post my plans for this week to make sure I stay committed.  This week is an incredibly busy week for me, so I’m not going to pick an entire room, rather I’m going to clean up some messes around the house that have been allowed to fester for far too long.  So, without further ado:

• Clean Goodwill pile off the dining room table and take it to Goodwill!
• Put old toy shelf on Craigslist
• Put away decor items sitting on coffee table in living room
• Clean out closet in play room
• Find home for box of VHS tapes (preferably not in my home)
• Wipe down walls and baseboard in living room/dining room

That seems like enough for this busy week.  Especially since I have a couple of free items I got from garage sales and Craigslist this weekend that I want to work on.  My husband had an awesome idea for one of them that I really want to see if I can work out.  I’ll share more later this week!

Do you have any big organizing/cleaning plans for this week?

Cleaning Grand Plan – Kitchen Recap

Today was the last day of my first week of the Cleaning Grand Plan.  Last week, I chose to work on my kitchen.  I came up with a fairly aggressive list for the time I had and I didn’t quiiiite finish everything, but I was able to address several things that would have otherwise been left undone, so I feel pretty good!
Here’s where I ended up:

• Wipe down all cabinets [x]
• Wipe down chairs and barstools [x]
• Wipe down baseboards [x]
• Clean windows [x]
• Clean out fridge
• Clean stainless steel appliances [x]
• Organize pantry [x]
• Wash curtains [x]
• Clean out/organize upper cabinets [x - mostly]
• Clean oven [x]
• Seal backsplash grout
• Wash light fixtures [x]
• Try to get stains out of granite
• Clean microwave (added) [x]
• Clean stove top (added) [x]

I still have one cabinet to organize.  I skipped the fridge because it gets cleaned out fairly frequently and I just didn’t make it to the countertops and backsplash.  Those are still pretty important to me, so hopefully I’ll fit them in soon.
However, my pantry and several cabinets ARE freshly organized.  My stainless steel appliances are fingerprint free and all the cabinets, baseboards, and furniture are clean (for the moment)!

I am most happy with my oven, stove top, and microwave.  I think I must have missed class the day they taught that you are actually supposed to clean your oven on a semi-regular basis.  I understand it on a purely theoretical level, but I still haven’t internalized this particular lesson.  The beautiful, gleaming, shiny-ness of those appliances right now, though, just may be what I need to finally learn this lesson.
All in all, I’d say this week was a success and that my kitchen could probably use another week (man is there a lot to do to keep a kitchen clean!).  Tomorrow I’ll post the next room(s) that are going to get my attention. 
What room will you be working ?

Pantry Re-Org

As you may know, earlier this week, I made a commitment to concentrate on deep cleaning one area of my home for the next 13 weeks. *gulp*

This week, I’m working on my kitchen.  One of the major tasks on the list was cleaning out the pantry.  It’s generally fairly well-organized, but in the last few months, it’s gotten completely out-of-hand.  I must have been buying too many groceries or something because we just kept throwing new food on top of the old food. 

Of course, I forgot to take a picture right before I started, but here’s just after I removed a bunch of stuff from that top shelf.

Unfortunately, it just doesn’t look as bad in these pictures as it really was.  But, try to imaging ALL of that stuff that’s sitting on the table, crammed into the top shelf that’s only half empty in these pictures.  Maybe that will get you closer to the actual horror.

My plan was to try to do one shelf at a time, but in the end, I had pulled everything out of the pantry and put it all over the rest of the kitchen.  

When I started putting everything back, I tried to be very careful and make sure that I only put back things that made sense and that we would actually eat.  About 3/4 of the way through, though, I became a little more lax and allowed some of the non-food items (like the coffee pot that exists solely for my mom’s visits) to make it back in because that’s where we’re used to keeping them and it makes sense to us now!

Here’s the after.  Still fairly full, but much more organized.  and we even have a few empty spots just waiting to be filled in!

 

The bottom right shelf is the kids’ snack shelf.  I can’t ever see what’s down there, but it’s just their height and they can easily get to what they need.

As I was pulling everything out, I had fantasies of going to The Container Store and buying a whole pantry worth of cute containers, but it was not to be.  I actually had the containers that are in there already and I think I’m a genius because I used a bunch of Costco cashew/peanut jars and apple sauce jars to store snacks and such. (Each time I filled one of them, I laughed to myself as I imagined the half-hidden eye roll from my husband whenever he pulled one of these jars out of the dish washer…Now my freakish ways have been validated!)  And you can’t beat the simple, stylish beauty of a cat litter box turned into a cat food bin.

Can you?

Kitchen Cleaning Progress

When I left you last, I had made a rather hopeful list of all the kitchen cleaning tasks I planned to get done this week.  It’s been a few days, so I thought I’d check in with my progress.

Here’s my updated list:

Wipe down all cabinets [x]

Wipe down chairs and barstools [x]

Wipe down baseboards [x]

Clean windows [x]

Clean out fridge

Clean stainless steel appliances [x]

Organize pantry [x]

Wash curtains [x]

Clean out/organize upper cabinets

Clean oven

Seal backsplash grout

Wash light fixtures [x]

Try to get stains out of granite

Clean microwave (added) [x]

Clean stove top (added) [x]

Wow, that’s actually pretty good progress.  I hadn’t expected to look so accomplished!  In the name of full disclosure, I had already cleaned the windows and washed the light fixtures…

But! I did add one gigantic project that is making me sooo happy!  We have a gas stovetop with concave ceramic burner plates with large, heavy grates.  When we first moved in, I tried to keep the plates so clean.  (Well, all except for the one that was already fairly encrusted.)  But, over the past year or so, the encrusting got ahead of me and I never caught up and then I just stopped caring.

Except, I didn’t actually stop caring.  It just bothered me a little bit every day that there was junk on the burners that I couldn’t get off.  This is how I felt:

So, the other day, I decided to try an idea that had been in the back of my mind: oven cleaner.  I sprayed oven cleaner all over the top of my stove and let it sit.  The directions said to wait for 8 hours, but I am impatient and so I started wiping it up after 4 hours.  The difference was amazing!  I was so excited that I sprayed even more oven cleaner on and let it sit all last night and all day today.

When I got home from work tonight, I went to work with a toothbrush (don’t worry, it was my husband’s).  When I finished, the clouds parted and I’d swear I heard angels singing!  That thing is so shiny!  I keep walking through the kitchen just so I can look at it and pet it.

I was thinking about trying to get a picture of it, but I knew I could never do it justice, so you’ll just have to use your imagination…

(When I started this post, I was actually going to write about my pantry clean-up, but I got sidetracked and now I have to go stare at my shiny stovetop, so maybe I’ll share that some other time.)

The Cleaning Grand Plan: Kitchen

 

A few posts ago, I mentioned one of my favorite Web sites: The Organized Home.  One of my favorite things about it is “The Cleaning Grand Plan” (or at least, I love the idea of it: I’ve never actually completed one).

I haven’t thought about it in at least a year, but as I was tornado-ing through the house today - cleaning up the mess that appeared during camping-prep - I started thinking again about The Grand Plan. 

I think the scuffs on my baseboards are what really set me off and made me consider trying this Plan one more time.  I also started thinking that this blog would be a great way to keep me going, since if I tell you all about it, I might actually be guilted into keeping motivated to keep it up!

So, here’s my Grand Plan…  They usually start one at the beginning of the year.  I’ve clearly missed that, so I’m going to start now and re-order (read: cherry-pick) the weeks to hit the areas I think are most important to get done sooner. (My sister is visiting at the beginning of June, so I’d like my main living areas to be presentable).  Each week, on Sunday, I’ll post the area I’m going to be concentrating on for the week and the specific tasks I’d like to get done.  At the end of the week, I’ll let you know my progress.  And, if anyone wants to do this with me, feel free to add your comments!

So, it’s not Sunday, but it’s definitely time to start.  This week’s focus area will be the Kitchen/Pantry.  I’ve been dying to clear out my pantry, so I’m thinking I’ll have motivation to get this done, which will hopefully keep me going into the next few weeks.

The specific tasks to be completed are:

• Wipe down all cabinets
• Wipe down chairs and barstools
• Wipe down baseboards
• Clean windows
• Clean out fridge
• Clean stainless steel appliances
• Organize pantry
• Wash curtains
• Clean out/organize upper cabinets
• Clean oven
• Seal backsplash grout
• Wash light fixtures
• Try to get stains out of granite

That seems like plenty.  I’ll let you know how I did later this week.  Wish me luck!