My Office Must-Haves

This post is not sponsored.

Oh my. Wedding season kicked off in mid-May and I have been so busy that I've been abandoning this little ol' blog. Between doctor appointments, meetings, soccer practice, and just life in general, I could use a few more hours in my day!

Since I've been spending SO much time in my office, I thought I'd share 3 of my favorite Office "Must Haves" with you all on this Friday afternoon. I love me some office supplies, but, these 3 I could never live without!

Clipfolio: I found this little gem at Target a few weeks ago. It's a clipboard/notepad/note holder all in one. I clip a weekly "to do" list on the front at the beginning of each week. It has business and personal things listed and is easily accessible to me to see at all times. Once the included notepad runs out, you can just replace it with any 8 1/2 x 11 notepad. This thing has a permanent spot on my desk!

Seagate Slim Portable External Hard drive: This super slim external hard drive is my lifeline these days! I love that it's so small and can fit virtually anywhere- I just keep it in my desk drawer and pull it out when I need it. It holds a ton (1 TB) and is perfect for backing up pictures or other documents. It was super easy to set up, too!

Erin Condren Life Planner: I've gushed about my love for EC many times over on this blog, but really guys, I couldn't function without my LP. This thing literally holds my life- weddings, consults, soccer practice, birthdays, editing schedules, engagement session dates, bill due dates... it's all in here!

What are your office "must haves"? I wanna know so I can go out and buy some more fun things for the office. I mean, after all, you can never have enough pretty and functional office supplies.

Kitchen Patrol: Dirty to Clean in 10 Minutes

The summer after my Freshman year in college, I worked at a summer camp as a "kitchie". KP duty for a whole month. While it wasn't the most glamorous job- it taught me a lot. The kitchen was huge and had to be kept very clean and very organized. We ran a tight ship and meals and clean up were always really efficient. I loved that everything had its place and that there was a process and procedure for everything. It fit well with my Type-A tendencies.

I'm far from my college days but a few lessons from that summer have stuck with me.

Despite my best intentions, my kitchen now goes from nice and neat to chaos in the blink of an eye. With 4 people in and out all day it doesn't take long before my kitchen looks like this:
**Warning: It's about to get real!

This is what breakfast, lunch, and baking a snack looks like in my world!

This would logically be a major cause of stress. However, I have a few tricks that help me turn that mess into a clean kitchen in 10 minutes. Here's how:

First, I unload the dishwasher. This is made easier by the Pampered Chef Tool Turn-About. I don't have to sort cooking utensils or shove them into drawers. They quickly slip into one of the compartments and I'm done.

My cast iron skillet lives on my stove. I cook with it almost every day. There's no sense in burying it in a cabinet. Speaking of cabinets, I make sure my kitchen cabinets are organized efficiently.

After I unload the dishwasher, I re-load it. Shocking, I know. The important note here is that I only un-load and re-load once a day. Yep, that's right. I don't like to do this chore, so I do it daily and I let the dirty dishes pile up on one side of the sink. Sometimes not everything fits, so the "extra dishes" stay on the right side of the sink waiting their turn. I realize that this won't work for everyone but it's one of my sanity saving tricks.

Loading the dishwasher typically clears 1/2 of my counter space. The other 1/2 is cleared by putting things in their place and throwing away trash. I'm not sure how so much trash ends up on the counter- mere feet from the trash can. It's one of life's mysteries.

I save time putting things away because I keep my most used stuff on the counter. My tool turn-about, my canisters, knife block, etc. This eliminates the step of having to pick them up and put them away- it's more efficient. Now I don't take this too far. There are a lot of things that are still out of sight, what you see are the things I use daily and they are pretty :-)

Once everything has found its home and the dishwasher is running, I take the last 45 seconds to wipe the counters down with Clorox Wipes. Man, are these things amazing! They make quick work of stuck on food, crumbs, and spills. I love how they go from counter to sink to stove. This is the real secret to how fast I can clean my kitchen- they just make it so easy!

So there you have it. 10 minutes, once a day, clean kitchen tips and tricks. Once a week I clean the floors and sink to stay on top of things. But I love having a clean kitchen every evening!

What's your secret to a cleaner, more efficient kitchen? I'd love to know!

February Favorites

What a lovely month February has been.

Here's a few of our most loved February moments:

Who loves a good treadmill workout? We do!

Wouldn't you love to eat this healthy spinach egg white omelette, like, right now?

I'm still loving my junk counter organization. It's made my life a little calmer.

March is going to be so Springy and green. We are excited to celebrate our blogiversary NEXT WEEK! If that's not reason enough to be excited about March then I don't know what is.

Happy Friday, friends!

My 5 Year Old's Room: Organized!

I've been trying to figure out the best way to keep my 5 year old's room clean. He's old enough to pick up his toys, but his room was still out of control. We needed something more...

Up until this point I have had a pretty good system, but he's old enough that I can't get away with that anymore. I decided this weekend, after I realized that there was no floor space left because he had drug out ALL of his toys, that the time had come to buy something that would be easy for him to manage.

The shelving unit I found at Target.

The 2 neutral colored cubes are from Target, too.

The metal baskets are from Hobby Lobby.

The wicker basket on top is from Pottery Barn Kids.

I left 2 cubes empty for larger things.

There is plenty of space on top for pirate ships or legos or anything else he wants to "display".

The best part is that he cleaned up himself. He used the shelf and baskets to pick up his toys, finding homes for all of them, all by himself. They might not be sorted the way I would have done it, but I'm not going to push it :-)

Mom victory.

Junk Counter Organization: Before and After

Confession: I have a junk counter. Yep. I sacrifice counter space in my kitchen so that we have a pace to stash mail, kids art work, random pens and tiny things we find and think we may need to use again someday. Oy.

I have learned to just tune out this counter. I am pretty good at ignoring it, I'll clean it off a couple times a month when I'm looking for something. Otherwise, there it sits in all it's junky-ness.

The past two weekends I've been painting our main living area. We have an open floor plan so the living room, dining room, and kitchen are getting a fresh coat of paint. In preparation, I started cleaning everything and organizing as I went along. The junk counter was my favorite project because it didn't take me much time and it made a huge difference!

The method I used for organizing it is the same method I use everywhere- in my car, the kids closets, my closet, etc.

First, I remove everything and sort as I go. Here you can see my piles on the kitchen table. I had a pile for receipts & bills, kids art work, pens & pencils, important papers (like the school snack calendar), things to go to other parts of the house, and a pile for trash.

Next, I started putting things back, but in a proper place.

I have never had boxes or baskets on the counter before so I got a couple of "in-boxes" at Target (one for my stuff and one for KC). To the right side of this picture (below) you can also see the small cups I used to gather pens/writing utensils and the random things I find that I know need a home- I just might not know where that particular screw or stopper came from.

I also got a wooden tray that is large enough to keep the kids' art work in. I will eventually photograph this for a kids art book, but this keeps it corralled until I have time for that. I also plugged in our phone chargers so that those chords weren't tangled anymore.

When papers come in backpacks or in the mail we are able to sort them and when the pile grows too large, we sort through. The important thing about organizing is that it works for you. This is working for us.

Here are the before and after shots again. Can you feel the chaos leaving the space? I can! :)

Before

After

Craft Cabinet Organization!

My craft cabinet has become a little cramped.

I keep my crafty supplies in the utility room above my washer and dryer. It was the only cabinet space I had open so the spray paint and Modge Podge just landed there.

Before I knew it there was burlap, and ribbon, and bandanas- oh my. 

Here's the craft space before:

I could never find anything! Being crafty is made much more difficult when you can't find anything.

To solve my problem, I reorganized! And it feels so good. The laundry detergent and beach towels in this cabinet were moved, this was before:

So I took everything out, sorted like items, threw away old or broken items and then put it all away. 

A few things I kept in mind:

1. Larger items in back. Simple.

2. Use containers! I put several metal tins and a turning pencil/pen holder to work to sort small things and pens, pencils, paint brushes, or anything else that couldn't lay flat. All my notecards are in a small container so they are easy to access. My glue gun and glue sticks are also in a small container so I can easily take them out without having to disrupt anything. 

3. Arrange things logically, for you. Things I don't use as often are on the top shelf, stuff I use a lot is in a more handy spot. Make the organization make sense for you. Otherwise, it will be all disheveled in no time. 

Here are the "after" pics:

See how I could have saved this space so much sooner? Look at how much more efficient this set up is:

Have a great weekend- reorganize something!