The Organizing Bug--I've Caught It

I listened to a book called Real Life Organizing by Cassandra Aarssen, who teaches organizing, and I loved it.  It just clicked for me in a new way.  She talks about four ways you might lean towards organizing your stuff instead of putting everyone in the same box.  For example,  some people prefer  to see all of their items and some prefer them behind closed doors.

I am definitely in the  ladybug category.  I like hidden solutions and macro organizing.  I like to be able to put things away quickly.  (She advises no lids for easier clean up.  I love No Lids!)  As she talked, I visualized areas that were working for me in my home already, but it was so nice to hear the why!  And, now that I know what I lean towards, I can continue finding solutions for different spaces.  

Aubrey listened to several of Cass' podcasts while painting and enjoyed them.  (She is a cricket.  Hidden solutions with micro categories.)  We've done a lot of de-cluttering and organizing, and it's been a blast!

Painting Tanner's old room.  She volunteered to paint in order to earn some money.  She worked her tail off in between morning workouts and evening volleyball games.  She made $220 which she plans on using for more school clothes and extra fun money.

Aubrey did the spices.  BLESS HER!  We didn't get a full before picture of the entire cabinet, but here is one section.  And here are the after pictures.  It's so great not having to dig through each spice to find the right one.  Aub labeled the lids!  (You can kind of see that in the last picture.)

We went to Walmart, Target and At Home to find bins for the pantry.  I'm glad Aubrey spotted these white bins at At Home right when we were leaving.  I had given up.  I threw out two garbage bags of expired food.  So sad and wasteful.  I hope with everything having a place there will be less waste.

Isn't this pantry just beautiful?  One thing Cass says to do is use the SPACE acronym when tackling any area. 

S-sort (put things in 4 boxes/piles as you are going through a shelf or drawer: trash box, donate box, doesn't belong here box, stays in this space box)

P-purge (really important, de-clutter, get rid of stuff you don't need)

A-assign (decide were it will go)

C-contain (once the container is full...that's the limit, helps keep area clean, helps use vertical space)

E-evaluate (use the area for awhile and tweak as needed)

We have donated multiple trunk loads of nice things we weren't using.  I know others will be able to use and enjoy them, and we don't have to live with random stuff.  The items in this picture are from the room Tanner moved out of.  It was easier to go through because he and Park both moved out of that room and left all the stuff they didn't want.  We have also thrown out tons of stuff that just wasn't worth donating but has somehow been taking up space in our house for too long.

Here are a couple of pull out drawers in my bathroom.  I found long, narrow bins at the Dollar Tree and they are perfect.  The space is utilized much better.

Band-aid drawer before:

Band-aid drawer after:

Before:  Extra deodorant, toothpaste, toothbrush drawer.  I had this one clear bin.

After:  I split the toothbrushes from the toothpastes and added the deodorants to the pull out drawer with the soaps.

Beautifulness!  Two bins really in one little drawer really help divide the supplies and use the vertical space.

Aub was brave and took everything out of her closet.  She then put it all back together but more organized.  Here is mostly just the stuff she didn't want anymore.  With Parker just leaving, she was also happy there was an extra closet to move Brinley's stuff to.  Aub really hated how cluttered and messy that made her closet feel.  Sadly we didn't take before closet pictures, but here are her after pictures.  

All the the baskets and bins I found from the Dollar Tree and At Home have been out of stock since we cleaned them out.  I am really hoping they will get the same ones in so I can continue with the same bins.