Day 9...Toy Organization

Good afternoon, and welcome to day 9 of our 21 day challenge!

We are going through toys and our toy rooms today to clear out toys your kids just don't have a use for anymore.

This post is coming to you in the afternoon, since I wanted to give you a real taste of what my daughter can do to her play area in just a morning.
Here it is after "toynado Noel" has blown through and before I organized:

As you can see, she makes quite a mess.

A Bowl Full Of Lemons suggests you "containerize" everything...I do that, but for our stuffed animals, I choose to just throw them in one large bin.

Check out her page for toy organizing if you'd like to see how she did it!

Some other tips are:

 1) Donating toys your kids no longer play with/have out grown
2) Trash toys with missing or broken pieces.
3) WHAT I ALSO DO IS... get 3 tubs.
                                          label one January,April, July, October
                                        

label the other March, June, September, December

 
the toys that you leave out will be the batch that is labeled: February, May, August, November

Rotate the bin of toys each month to let your children have a variety and not so much clutter.

Here is my after picture

 After the toys were picked up, I made over the board games too...
                                                                          before:

                                                                           
                                                               

after:

How did organizing your toys go??

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Day 5: Organize Under Your Kitchen Sink

Great job to the participants so far!

It seems we have a few active participants who want to get organized, and I couldn't be happier. Remember, you want your living space more organized---you are tired of that clutter. Thank you for choosing to come here on our weekdays to collaborate with news about what getting organized is doing for you and your family!

Keep going...take it day by day, and we will soon be done!

Today we are organizing a pretty simple area: Under the kitchen sink!

You may have things under there you have forgotten, and things that are useless.

Let's get to it!

1) Get a large box and dump everything under your sink into it carefully!
2) Wipe down your shelves/doors and walls underneath. If you have contact paper (very inexpensive if you want to buy), put some of that down to help it stay more clean.
3) Go through the box and discard old/empty bottles. If you have multiples of things, try consolidating them if you can. Figure out what bottles/rags/etc that you are going to keep.
4) Find any organizing bins you can use and start sorting. Put rags all together, gloves together, cleaners together, etc.
5) Put them in a designated location under the sink, and sit back to admire your work!

Good job!
Did you find anything under there that you had forgotten you had?


I apologize for my horrible pictures...my kitchen doesn't have great natural light in the mornings ;)

 I realize I have a dish soap problem....sometimes cant resist free things I know I will use...

........I am working on this!

Hopefully, now your sink area will be more useful than hazardous ;)

I'd love to hear what your results were!

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In The Kitchen: Delicious Fruit Pizza

The Pioneer Woman has an endless amount of yummy recipes, it seems...and I finally decided to make one: Fruit Pizza!

This would be great for a brunch, baby shower treat, or (if you're like me) no reason at all.

I read it and knew instantly that it would be a "hit" in my house! We eat a lot of fruit around here...and cookies, well, I never say no to those.

Since this was going to just be a treat for my daughter to enjoy making and eating , I skimped and used store bought sugar cookie dough. In the end, I found this recipe to be just as delicious with the pre-made dough, so if you are ever in a time crunch, or short on some ingredients, that may be an option.

I do want to eventually try her homemade cookie recipe found at the bottom of this post.

We made this yummy treat super quick, and ate it pretty quickly too.

1) Roll out your dough ...use a rolling pin or side of a cup if you have to...then bake as one large cookie

2) While its cooking, cut up your fruit and create the frosting. We cut the frosting recipe in half and whipped just one tub of marshmallow cream and one package of cream cheese in the mixer

taste test!!

3) Sread out the whipped mixture on your cooled cookie

4) Top your pizza with your favorite fruit and eat up!

You can also use the top of a cup to cut your large cookie into uniform circles if you rather they be finger-food-sized "pizzas"...we just cut ours into square chunks...so yummy!

This recipe can be found here!

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Iced coffee

One of my new things to do almost everyday is drink an iced coffee! I don't know about you, but I have never been a coffee drinker, and hate hot coffee. I actually do have a coffee maker, but it is simply for making coffee that I purposly let get cold. ;)

This is also a great thing to do with extra coffee from the morning...don't throw it away!
Most people roll out of bed just longing for that hot cup in their hands, but I rather have the fresh smell of coffee in the morning, and the drinking it later in the day when I REALLY need it.
 Sometimes I am impatient and I use hot coffee for an iced drink, but keep in mind your drink may be a little more watery when the ice does melt.

Having 2 kids and a hardworking (aka. never home) husband, I really enjoy this little pick-me-up in the afternoons.

Here's what I do to make mine when I am patient enough to wait for it to get cold.

Make some coffee...any amount you think you will drink...

I like to use Cafe Mocha coffee since it doesn't need extra sweetening...otherwise, you might want to add a little sugar.

You can let it sit in the fridge/freezer to get cold for later..I put mine in the freezer and leave it there until it begins to get frozen...the surface is just hardening, but everything in the cup is still liquid.

Get a large cup, put some ice, and a little milk and pour your cold coffee in

Give a little stir and viola!

How do you make yours?

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Repurpose Cardboard Cereal Boxes

I don't know about your household, but in mine, my kids have 5 times the amount of stuff I do. For every shirt I own, they probably have 5, and their silverware follows the same trend. I recently discovered their cup lids and silverware have begun to take over the drawer and parts of my kitchen!

It.has.to.be.organized...I told myself today.

I decided to put an idea I recently saw in Real Simple magazine to use....repurposing the bottoms of cereal and cracker boxes.

Really this idea is perfect because its my 2 favorite things:

1) FREE
2) SIMPLE

All you need are some boxes you'd probably be recycling soon anyway, and a drawaer in need of organization.

You may discover many things in there that you don't even need anymore.
Within 5-10 minutes, you can get almost any drawer tidy.

Comment on this post and like my facebook page if you think this is a great idea and love Real Simple magazine.

One lucky commenter will win the next issue of Real Simple magazine, sent to them for FREE!
Tell and friend!

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