Organization

Storage Solutions for Small Bathrooms

August 28, 2012 by Erin 6 Comments

If you are at all faint of heart, I’m going to suggest that you look away now. I’m about to show you the scariest thing I’ve ever shared on this blog….unedited pictures of my bathroom.

THE HORROR!

I have the worldest smallest bathroom that in recent years has been overrun by bath toys, potty chairs, a stool and other clutter that was starting to drive me batty. So I headed out in search of a few cheap and easy storage solutions that would make the bathroom a little more liveable.

First, I grab a 2-pack of hooks from IKEA. I placed these at the far end of the tub (opposite the shower) for hanging wet towels on. No more towels draped over every surface in the bathroom.

Next, I needed a way to tackle the bath toys. I mounted a shower bar along the back of the shower to hold these great baskets I found at Fred Meyer ($1.50/each). The baskets are have wide openings so all the water drains out and the toys aren’t sitting in stale, yucky water. I used open shower curtain hooks to hang the baskets from the bar, which makes it easy to take them down at bathtime. I also added an extra hook for my sponge.

Lastly, I got a over the door hook from the dollar store and hooked it over the cupboard handle to hold my son’s potty seat.

All told, I probably spent about $15 on these easy solutions. Now I feel like everything in the bathroom has a place and most of the time, things even end up where they are suppose to.

What other tips do you have for dealing with a tiny bathroom?

Need more ideas? Check out this book over on Amazon.

Filed Under: Organization Tagged With: organization

Guest Post: Meal Planning

August 2, 2012 by Erin Leave a Comment

Since becoming a mom, I am constantly on the lookout for ways to save money and the best change I made was to start planning our week’s meals before I shop and then only buying what I need for those meals. Obviously there are always staple goods that I purchase every week (bread, milk, etc) but otherwise I stick to my list.

1. I check what food we have in the house. It sounds simple, but I used to really frustrate myself when I’d lug home a huge packet of spaghetti, only to find I already had three!

2. I look at our family commitments for the week. My husband works away sometimes, so on those days I cook something simple for myself as I know I’ll be tired after putting the children to bed by myself.

3. I check the coupons I have, to ensure that I’m making best use of them before they expire.

4. The menu planning begins. A normal week might look like this (I shop on a Thursday so that’s when my menu starts!):

Thursday: Chicken Caesar salad. Buying the ingredients separately is much cheaper than buying the pre-prepared packs. Also, I make sure to have these sorts of meals as soon as possible after the supermarket trip so that the items are still fresh.

Friday: Fajitas. You can make these as simple or as fancy as you like, depending on your budget, plus it’s also a good way to use up any chicken that didn’t get eaten the day before.

Saturday: Stir fry with rice. This is a meal that feels special but that can be achieved quite cheaply. Use up any leftovers from the fajitas and add some more vegetables and soy sauce. Rice is very cheap, particularly when bought in bulk, but noodles can be substituted here as another budget alternative.

Sunday: Roast beef with potatoes and vegetables. I know that meat isn’t the cheapest of options, but the leftovers can be used for sandwiches as well as further meals. Buying frozen meat instead of fresh reduces the cost too (just make sure you leave enough time for defrosting!).

Monday: Easy beef stroganoff. Using up the leftover beef from yesterday, add some mushrooms and a couple cans of condensed mushroom soup. Serve with rice for an easy, delicious meal.

Tuesday: Vegetable soup. This is a great way to use up the rest of the vegetables, but anything goes with this recipe, just pop in whatever you have to hand, add some vegetable stock and let it simmer for an hour.

Wednesday: Store cupboard or freezer food. I like to batch bake (make large quantities of meals) and store it in the freezer, but if there’s nothing like that to hand I’ll check the cupboards and pull out something like tuna, pasta, garlic and chopped tomatoes for a tuna pasta bake (topped off with some grated cheese).

I hope that this proves as useful to you as it was for me, enjoy!

By Agnese Geka, who is mom, blogger and online marketing consultant for www.SurveyCompare.net – one of the largest work from home communities providing you with latest paid surveys and advice on home homeworking.

Simply Organized: Front Entryway

October 17, 2011 by Erin 3 Comments

I wish I could say that I staged this before picture of my front entryway.

I didn’t. This is actually what my front entryway looks like most of the time. Right when you walk in the front door you are greeted with piles of shoes and bags and anything else that gets dropped there.

I try to keep it straightened up, but lining up the shoes every night wasn’t cutting it for me anymore. So I headed to Target to find a solution.

Now that’s better!

The Closetmaid shoe organizer was on sale last week at Target for $24 and then I picked up a package of Command peel and stick hooks for $6. I decided to flip the shoe organizer on it’s side so I would have room to hang my son’s coat and my purse on it.

It’s not the perfect solution. The bags are still on the floor, but at least I feel like they are contained if I can keep them on one side of the shoe organizer.

All in all, I’m pretty happy with this solution. My son already loves getting to put his shoes in the cubby….now I just need to get my husband to remember that it where shoes go!

Filed Under: Organization

I {love} organizing: Scarf Organizer

October 11, 2011 by Erin 2 Comments

Fall has arrived or as I like to call it….scarf season. I own a lot of scarves and they are my go-to work outfit for the fall and winter. I can wear the same pants and top every day and change it up with a scarf for a whole new look.. Not that I’m lazy enough to actually do that. Or am I?

I realized that my current scarf storage system was not working anymore. Observe:

Sagging hangers. Scarf over scarf so I couldn’t find anything. Just sad.

So I did what every obsessive organizer does…I headed to Pinterest for a solution. I found a couple interesting ideas that involved shower curtain rings, so I headed to the dollar store to see what I could find. I ended up with a 2-pack of “magic hangers” and a 12-pack of shower curtain rings for a grand total of $2. And voila:

I fit the rings into the holes for the hangers and then looped a scarf onto each. Once they are all hung, you collapse the hangers down (hence the “magic” part).

Now I can see all my scarves and they are easily accessible. All for just $2!

Do you have any organizational challenges that you need help with? Leave a comment with your problem areas and I’ll see what I can come up with and feature it in a future post.

Filed Under: Organization

Repost: How I Spent My Summer Vacation

May 18, 2011 by Erin 1 Comment

I posted this last week, but it appears to have been deleted during all the issues Blogger was having. I apologize if you have already read this one.

I’ve shared before that part of what makes couponing such a good hobby for me is my obsessive love of organization. After 4 months of couponing, I realized that my current system wasn’t working for me anymore. You can see my post here about how I was organizing my coupons. I liked this system for how easy it is to maintain. But I was frustrated when I would get to the store and find a great sale or clearance on an item I didn’t pre-clip the coupon for.

So I decided to change my system so I can have all my coupons with me when I shop. And I knew the 7 hour car ride to our vacation destination would be a great chance to clip all my coupons. After I had all my coupons clipped, I sorted them into categories.

Choose categories that make sense to you. You can organize by product type, product name, or insert date. I chose to organize by product type and chose categories that I would remember. Someone might wonder why I file canned fruit under “Produce” and not “Canned Goods” or why dishwasher detergent goes under “Household” and not “Cleaning Supplies”. But it works for me and I know where to find everything.

I got this box at Target for $4.99 and the cute flags for $3.49. You could do this without the cute flags but what fun would that be. The envelopes were 5×7 leftovers from our wedding invitations.

The envelopes that are tagged on the left are the products and the tags on the right are for particular stores. I cut open one side of the envelopes so the longer coupons would fit.

A thing of beauty….if I may say so.

Filed Under: Couponing Tips, Organization

My Growing Stockpile

April 16, 2011 by Erin 1 Comment

A couple months ago, I shared with you some pictures of my storage area and stockpile. My stockpile has been growing over the past few months, so I thought it was time to share some updated pictures.

As I mentioned before, I can only store canned goods and toiletries in my main storage area so that I don’t attract any “visitors”. My boxed goods are stored in the pantry (converted closet) in the kitchen. Here’s a couple of (pretty bad) pictures of that area.

My goal with my stockpile is not to outgrown the space that I have. My family of three doesn’t need an entire garage or room(s) dedicated to my stockpile. By focusing on the things we use and being realistic about how much of an item I need to keep on hand, I think I will be able to keep my stockpile under control.

How about you? Have you started a stockpile? How do you organize it?

Filed Under: Organization

Organizing My Stockpile

February 6, 2011 by Erin Leave a Comment

I am lucky to have a storage room with lots of additional space to store my growing stockpile. This area also houses our laundry room and an extra refrigerator/freezer. I haven’t done a good cleaning/organizing out there since summer and it was out of control. I finally had a chance to get it organized this weekend and it looks great. I meant to take some before pictures, but honestly it was really embarrassing. Just imagine everything you see piled on the floor. That should give you an idea of what it looked it before.

View from the house. The fridge is off to the left. Off to the right is a door out to the greenhouse (aka yard crap room).

Toiletries on the top shelf. Then two shelves of canned goods and beverages.

Paper goods. Hope there is a good sale on toilet paper soon.

Same shelf. Different view.

Across from the shelving are old kitchen cabinets. My cleaning supplies are stored in one cupboard. The rest have a variety of tools, camping gear, and enough serving platters to start a catering company.

I love having this area cleaned up. It is so nice to be able to see what I have and know at a glance what I need to start looking for deals on. The only downside of this storage area is that we sometimes get little “visitors”. So this a canned good only storage area. Anything that the “visitors” could get into has to be stored in the pantry in the house. I’ll take some exciting pictures of my pantry for an upcoming post.

Filed Under: Organization

Organizing Your Coupons

February 2, 2011 by Erin Leave a Comment

I think one of the main reasons that couponing is such a good hobby for me is that it is all about organization. And I love organizing things. A lot. This is how I keep my coupons organized. The best advice I can give you is to find a system that works for you and go with it.

This is my file box for storing all the weekly coupon inserts. I go through the ads when I get them and occasionally cut out a coupon or two that I know I will need soon. But for the most part I leave the inserts in tack and clip the coupons when I need them.

I staple the insert together to try and keep all the coupons together. Then, I write the date of the insert on the front. As I am putting together my shopping lists from other blogs, I am able to quickly find the coupons that I need. For example, I posted this recent Target match-up:

Kraft Fat Free or Lite Salad Dressing 16 oz Bottle
$1/2 Kraft Select Products
$1/2 Kraft Dressing (1/23 SmartSource Insert)

I was able to go to the 1/23 SmartSource Insert, clip that coupon, and add it to my purse coupon file.

I carry this coupon file with me all the time. In the front (the yellow dividers), I organize coupons by product type. The blue dividers are for coupons specific to a particular store (store coupons, catalinas, etc.). When I make my shopping list, I clip or pull the coupons I need and put them behind the stores name.

When I print coupons, I tend to clip them right away and store them in my purse coupon file. It can be hard to keep track of printable coupons and this way I don’t forget what I have.

Twice a month, I go through and pull the coupons expiring in the next two weeks. For example, today I pulled all the coupons from my purse file that expired by 2/15. I keep these in the front of the file just a reminder of deals to watch for.

A lot of people have asked me about how to organize coupons, so if you have specific questions that I didn’t cover, please leave a comment and I’ll do my best to answer your questions.