Organize: Fridge + Freebie

The coldest spot in my apartment just got a whole lot cooler!

I've needed to organize my fridge for forever, but let’s face it I like cleaning out my fridge about as much as I enjoy scrubbing toilets. Nothing can motivate me to clean more than a little organizational eye candy, in this case fridge coasters which are not only stylish but also keep your refrigerator cleaner for longer.

Organizing: Medications

I've always wished my medicine cabinet looked like the perfect ones I've seen in magazines and on other organizing blogs. If all OTC medications came in the same size & shaped bottles then maybe it would be an attainable goal.

Trying to organizing 60 different sized bottles is hard, so I stopped worrying about it looking perfect and focused instead on containing like medications together. I came across these great storage boxes with adhesive pocket labels and bought 6 of them, one for each category of medicine: Pain Relief, Cold & Sinus, Stomach, First Aid, My Meds and My Husband’s Meds.

Organizing Scented Wax Bars + Review

If there is one thing I love it is a great smelling home! Scented wax bars fill my apartment with delicious smells. My all time favorite ‘flavor’ is Cuccumber Lime from Scentsy. Yummy.

Digging through a drawer each time I want to refresh my homes fragrance is annoying, especially if I have unexpected guests on their way over and my apartment still smells like last night’s fish dinner. Yuck!

I cleared out a junk drawer filled with nothing but randomly flavored gum (I had coupons!) and cut up an old box to make drawer dividers. Oh no I couldn't stop there like a normal person would, I had to cover the cardboard dividers with pretty paper and label each section by season. Now they are easy to access and I can grab a scent quickly. Bring on the unexpected visitors!

Scandinavian-Inspired Mirror Redo

I hope you are all having an awesome Friday! I don't know what it is lately, but I'm developing a serious obsession with Scandinavian design - the white walls, white floors and small pops of color.  This project was inspired by the sweet simplicity of Scandinavian decor and I really love how it turned out. 

I desperately needed a place to store coats and scarves in my small entryway. So I moved a seldom used mirror from my bathroom to behind my front door.

It was a great storage solution, but it took up too much room visually. So I painted the dark wood veneer and hooks with crisp white paint. It’s amazing what a littlepaint can do!

Printable Room Design & Organizing Planner

Now that I'm back from vacation, I'm able to focus on sprucing up my apartment. I’m tired of feeling like I live in a cluttered fish bowl, so I’m taking control and overhauling my entire apartment one room at a time. Tackling a home organization project can be overwhelming; especially if you’re also redecorating at the same time, so I made a simple planner to help me in the process. I wanted it to be easy to use and include features that I seldom see in other planners, such as projects at a glance, room budget and furniture decisions. Happy organizing! 

{download here}

 Here is an example using my living room plan:

Upcycled Cookie Tin K-Cup Holder

Almost immediately after purchasing my Keurig brewing system I knew I had a storage mess on my hands. Between the 12-pack of K-cups that came with my brewer and the 48-packs that my husband enthusiastically bought, I had no counter space left! I looked into purchasing a K-cup carousel, but they don’t hold more than 35 at a time. So I made my own K-cup holder out of cookie tins, which can hold over 70 K-cups! I added chalkboard labels to help me organize my coffee by flavor and strength. Yay! No more ugly boxes stacked on my counter!

Supplies: 

Cookie tins in assorted sizes

Threaded metal rod, size depends on your cookie tins  

Wooden craft shape for the base

4-6 wooden craft rounds/balls for the feet

2 nuts and 1 washer for each cookie tin 

Drill bit slightly smaller than the metal rod

Wood glue or glue gun

Contact paper

Spray paint

How To: 

1) Measure to find the center of each cookie tin and drill a hole. Do the same with the wood base. You may need to sand down any rough areas. Make sure to wear gloves and be careful not to get metal splinters! 

2) Spray paint the tins, metal rod, wooden base and feet.

3) Once everything is dry, attach contact paper to the inside of each cookie tin. This will ensure that the tins are food safe.

4) Glue the round feet to the bottom of the base. Then place the wooden base on the end of the metal rod and fasten with a washer and nut. Next place the bottom cookie tin flush against the top of the wooden base and attach with a nut. Start placing the rest of the cookie tins onto the rod. Secure each tin with a nut on top and a washer and nut underneath. 

Total time: around 4 hours

Total cost: $12

DIY Hair Care Organizer & Headband Holder

My husband and I share a tiny bathroom, which leaves little room for my beloved hair products. My various products are the only thing keeping my curly hair from turning into one giant fuzzball. It’s so bad that in the morning I look like I could be the Bride of Frankenstein :) When you have little space in your bathroom for storage, it forces you to come up with creative solutions. I turned my husband’s leftover pegboard into a hair care organizer by adding baskets for my products, brushes and hair accessories. I also added hooks to hang my blow dryer and flat iron. It seems like I never have enough room for all of my headbands, so I decided to also add a DIY headband holder. By utilizing wall space I now have plenty of room for all of my hair care stuff plus a little more drawer space! My headband holder is covered in an old white towel, but if you wanted to make your own you could decorate yours with fabric, ribbons and embellishments. Have fun organizing!

Free Moving Kit

Moving can be nerve-racking whether you are moving down the street or across the country. I have moved from California to Oregon to Texas and back to Oregon, so I know firsthand that there are about a million things that can go wrong during a move.  A moving binder is a great way to keep all of your information in one place including moving estimates, receipts, box inventory lists and labels. The binder keeps everything organized, which makes for a smoother move. If a move is in your future, this moving kit has everything you need to keep organized! Each room or area of your home is given a color, which coordinates with the box labels.  I've included doorknob hangers to help quickly identify which room each box belongs in. Happy moving!

{download here} 

Free Grocery Shopping List

When I first started couponing I made the naive assumption that I could save loads by only buying  items that could be stacked with store and manufacturer coupons and “living” off my stockpile like they show on TV. Boy was I wrong!! You might be able to do that if you live in a big city with lots of grocery stores close by, but I live in a small Coastal community that only has 3 grocery stores so it’s near impossible for me to “live” solely on sale items. So in order for me to save on groceries I need to be aware of what I have on hand, what I need for this week’s meals and what I’m running low on. I rely on my shopping list to see what I need to buy this week regardless of being on sale and what I should keep an eye out for when it goes on sale. If an item isn't on sale that week I use a  manufacturer's coupon at the store I know has the lowest price for that item, but I always compare the after coupon price with the store brand price because that still tends to be the best deal. Happy saving :)

{download here}

FREE Printable Freezer Labels

A freezer inventory is little to no help if you can't identify what’s in your freezer bags. Without labeling each bag I would probably pull out pork sausage instead of ground beef for tomorrow night’s burgers lol. Freezer labels help me keep track of what’s in each bag. No more mystery meat!

{download here}

{download here}

* Print labels on sticker paper or full sheet label paper. I've never had the ink run much, but if you’re concerned about that happening you can always cover the labels with clear contact paper before cutting them out. 

Free Pantry & Freezer Inventory List

In my last post I talked about menu planning and a big part of that is tracking what you have on hand. I don’t know how many times I've started to make dinner only to realize that I was out of an ingredient. I've looked at expensive inventory tracking software, but these printables seem to be the simplest solution since my pantry and freezer are made up of items that I use frequently. Having a laminated inventory list; hanging on my freezer that I can quickly mark off with a wet-erase marker, makes planning my weekly menus a lot easier. 

                              

 {download here}

 {download here}

{download here}

Free Weekly & Monthly Menu Planner

What’s for dinner? This is a never ending question in my house. My main goal for 2012 is setting up a menu plan and saving a little money in the process. First things first, I had to figure out if I wanted a monthly, weekly or rotating menu. I personally really like the weekly menu, because I can plan based on store sales and coupon savings. I made theses menus to place on my fridge so I never again have to hear "honey what's for dinner?"

 {download here}

{download here}

Readers, how about you? Do you menu plan? If so, what's your plan like?

Free Fillable Cleaning Checklist

Anytime I can combine scrapbooking with organizing, I’m a happy girl! I recently finished my Household Binder Cover and I love how it turned out.  Now that the cover is complete it’s time to fill the binder with organizing goodies! First up is a cleaning checklist. I will admit I have been a little lax around here since the Holidays, but now it’s time to clean house! I made these checklists to help keep me on track and also stop me from accidently repeating certain chores and skipping over others. There are many more printables to come!

I like having options, so there are 3 versions of this cleaning checklist to choose from:

{download here}

{download here}

{download here}

*Every Household Binder printable includes corresponding symbols and colors that work with the home filing system. 

Weekend Project: $2 DIY Cash Envelope

One of my New Year’s Resolutions is to contribute even more to my emergency fund. I’ve read articles in the past explaining how easy it is to save if you skip your morning stop at your favorite coffee shop or if you automatically transfer $30 from each paycheck into your savings account. It’s frustrating because my husband and I live within a strict budget, so there are no frills to cut and no “extra” money to save.  We needed a way to save without going into the red each month, so two years ago my husband and I started using cash for the majority of our purchases; which has actually allowed us to save.  We still use our debit card occasionally for bills, but 90% of the time we pay with cash.  No more guessing how much money is left in our account and getting slapped with expensive overdraft fees. If we have extra cash at the end of the month, we have 3 options: add it to the next month's budget, put it toward paying off a debt or place it in a savings account. The bonus is all of the change you accumulate when paying with cash! I use the quarters for laundry and save the rest :)  I've tried just about every way to organize and keep track of my cash. This is by far the simplest way! I've had this adorable Mary Engelbreit bag for years so I just needed the expanding file, which I found at Goodwill for $1.99!

Supplies:                

Money bag or pencil bag

Check size expanding file (plastic)

Remove the expandable dividers from the expanding file.

Measure your bag and cut the expanding dividers to fit, making sure to keep one end intact which will help keep all of the dividers together.

 Label and start sorting your moolah! 

Free DVD/Blu-Ray Organizing Labels

My husband and I love movies, maybe a little too much. Our growing movie collection consists of over 300 titles! I have tried everything to keep our collection organized over the years. I first attempted to save space by taking every movie out of their case and placing them into an automatic disc retrieval system. Although it looked great, I had to virtually start over each time I wanted to add a new disc. Next I moved to a binder system, but I had the same issue whenever I expanded my collection. The other problem was getting my husband to put the disc back where it belonged, rather than stacking it on top of the Blu-ray player! Men! I ultimately gave up and put each movie back in its original case and placed them all on a shelf. I decided not to worry so much about alphabetizing all 300+ movies, but rather grouping them by genres. I made color coded labels to go around the bottom of each case, which makes putting movies away a breeze! I knew my year working for a movie rental chain would pay off someday :) Sometimes the simplest solutions are the best, at least for our family. There is one other option that I found while exploring my favorite organizing store, you can read all about it here. It looks easy to add on to, but that still leaves the problem of my husband not putting the discs away because he “doesn’t know where they belong”. Maybe if I color coded the disc sleeves he would actually put them away? lol  I may try this eventually when I have an extra $100 just laying around. 

{download here}

* Print on any self-adhesive full sheet label paper. If you don't want to cut each sticker out with scissors, simply grab your trusty X-ACTO knife and lightly go over each line, that way you can peel off each label quickly. I ran a strip of invisible tape over the top of each label to keep messy popcorn fingers from smudging them, but you can skip this step if you like. 

Free: Christmas Décor Inventory & Ornament Journal

This Christmas my husband and I finally replaced our old tree, which prompted us to also update our color scheme. Just what I needed, more ornaments to put away lol. I'm bound and determined to organize all of my Holiday decorations, so I came up with an inventory to help me keep track what's exactly in my 10 plus boxes. I've labeled my boxes from 1-10, but if you have an upward of 50 boxes you may want to label them by room. Example: if a box is filled with ornaments for your tree that's placed in the living room, you may want to label it LR-1. Happy organizing!

{download here}

{download here}