21 Day Challenge Day 1... The Junk Drawer

So I did this project a while ago, but never posted because the challenge was over (sniff, sniff) But Christina over at Busy Little Ladybugs Started the challenge anyway, and I think I'll join her! You can see all 21 days of challenges here... 21 Day Challenge So if you want to join in too, come on!

Sooooo, her is my junk drawer BEFORE....

Wowie.... I went through, put away things that didn't belong in here, threw away the trash, took out the divider that wasn't serving it's purpose and clean everything! I put down some pretty scrapbook paper and some baskets I got for a steal at Goodwill, placed everything in nice and pretty and tada!

On to the silverware drawer... BEFORE....

Again, I took everything out, got rid of things that didn't work or I didn't use, cleaned, put down some pretty paper and ....

I really like the paper, it just makes it pop! Every time I open the drawer it makes me smile!

My Pitiful Laundry "Cubby"

So, I'm reaching out for some help here... I know I don't have too many followers to read this and put in their input, but I'm hoping to get some anyway! hehe. My laundry room is not working for me. I think an area that I spend so much time in, should be more organized and beautiful so it's not such a drag to be there. I need help!

I've thought about painting... but I just feel that it would be a waste of time since in about a year rooms are going to be moved around and I will have to repaint everything... What do you think? Would I be wasting my time and money, or is what's wasted worth a year of loving my space?

Well, here goes... My VERY humble laundry area....

Yes, that is baskets of produce in my laundry room haha. I had nowhere else to put them in my kitchen and my laundry area is right beside it.

So it's kinda boring, but not too bad, right? Wrong, you haven't seen the chaos behind those cabinet doors!

Ahhhh! Scary, hugh?! This is our "Utility Cabinet" It holds all of our screw drivers, hammers, the hubby's fishing stuff, misc construction things that can't go outside, the drimmel, and even some grilling stuff. I've tried to organize this space many, many times. I used plastic containers that I put labels. It never fails, though, within a couple of weeks it's back to this. The dangerous part is trying to find something. It's like playing Jenga! If you move the wrong thing it all comes tumbling down! I'm thinking of finding a way to hang what can be hung, like hammers and screwdrivers and such. I just can't figure out a way to do it!

Now for the other cabinets....

This side holds my gardening things, batteries, extra remotes and all of my laundry supplies. This side isn't too bad, I guess. Still kind of an eye sore though.

On the door I have baskets that keep frequently used laundry things off the top of the dryer.

I keep a cheap duster within easy reach to dust off the tops after cleaning the lint trap....

The Hubster made this for me to hang up my delicates, and I put a funny pic i found in Real Simple magazine. It's a woman surrounded by laundry hold her arms out to her little boy who is running towards her. I guess I should pick happy art instead of art that reminds me of how much I hate laundry lol.

On the shelf above the dryer I have a small trash can, and a basket that hold misc. laundry supplies...

And above the washer I have.... produce? Wait that doesn't belong there! haha

So you've toured my laundry area and listened to me whine... Any recommendations?!

$11.00 Boy's Closet Redo!

Ok, so I am so excited to share this! My two boys, age 5 and 2, share a small bedroom while we slllllllooooowly add on to our home. Clothing storage has always been an issue! They have a small closet in their small room which I used to home my 5 year olds clothes, the laundry hamper and extra sheets and blankets. It was always stuffed to the brim. Not to mention the out of season clothes, and the clothes my 5 year old has outgrown that I'm saving for my 2 year old wouldn't fit inside the closet, so they were stored under the crib. My 2 year old's clothes and both of their PJ's, socks and underwear were stored in a big, bulky dresser.


Then one day I was looking around on Blogger checking out the new posts everyone was posting and BOOM! I saw the most amazing use of space ever over at Iheartorganizing 2 of her kids also share a room... and a closet! The whole room looks amazing but I literally drooled over the closet!

So I spent the next few days begging my husband to help me pull something like this off in our boys' closet, and he finally caved! So here we go...

We started off with this...

Awful, right? Then my husband raised the top shelf and rod a few inches, added a second shelf and hanger, and then I went to town trying to make it "drool worthy" with what I already had...

Eh... Still not drool worthy. So I headed to my favorite place in the whole world! The Dollar Tree! I found Exactly what I needed!

These lil babies were, you guessed it, $1 each! They work perfectly for their socks and undies. I got 2 for each child, and they were even the colors I wanted! Then I got these....

Not the colors I was looking for but dang, you can't beat $1 for these big ole things! They are sooo much bigger than they look in the picture. I got 7 of them at $1 each, whoohoo!

So now for the happy after! I'm still not done, it's still not all the way drool worthy. I can tell you one thing though, it looks and functions soooo much better than before! Even better, I can get rid of the bulky dresser so they can have so much more room for activities! lol.

 I would still love to paint, but again, everything is going to be moved around as we finish our remodel. So there's not really much point to doing permanent things like paint. I have since taken out the yellow basket, they are now using just the basket on the floor that you can barely see in the picture hehe.

I was able to use the cloth bins on the top shelf for winter gear and clothes and extra sheets and blankets. My 5 year old's clothes are hanging on the top rod. On the lower shelf we have a cloth bin for each of them holding their PJ's. I'm working on a cute label for them. There is also the stackable bins for their socks and undies. My 2 year old's clothes are hanging on the 2nd rod. The gray container on the floor holds all of the clothes I'm saving for my youngest, and their laundry basket fits nicely on the floor!

All together this project only cost me $11! The shelf and rod we made from things we already had, so all I paid for were the bins from the Dollar Tree! WONDERFUL!

So what has everyone else been doing? Anyone else have a Dollar Tree makeover project?

Trashy To Classy - New Page!

I'm starting another page, because I think there are a few people who might find our home renovation interesting. It's not your typical renovation, but none the less exciting for us! Our goal is to complete everything with cash. We don't want to accumulate any debt. We are and have been debt free, and want to keep it that way! To follow along, click on the "Trashy to Classy" page link at the top. I would love to hear your thoughts on it!

When I first met my husband I was only seventeen, he was twenty-two and his parents had just bought a new home a few years before. The single wide mobile home they used to live in was offered to him. Of course as a young bachelor he took the opportunity to be on his own with little rent. So they split the piece of land they owned and signed over half to him. He spent about a year making the inside of the mobile home look new, and it did. New carpet, new paint, new kitchen and bath flooring. The outside, however, still looked pretty rough. For a bachelor pad, though, it was just what he needed.

Then along I came, haha. We moved pretty fast in our relationship. Within a month of dating, I had moved in. Within three months, we found out we were pregnant with our first son. A year later we were married, and then along came number two. Here we are happy as ever, but still living in the same mobile home! There is some reasoning behind it, however. 

My husband is the cheapest man alive. Sometimes it's a good thing, he can make something wonderful out of nothing. Sometimes it's just frustrating, like when trying to buy a house! After our first son started crawling, we realized quickly how small our home was. We started looking at houses and were just flabbergasted at how much we would have to pay a month! After all, once our son came along, his parents stopped charging us rent, so all we were paying was utilities, cable and internet. It just seemed outrageous to spend over one thousand dollars a month for a house, when we have one free! So then we started looking at double wide mobile homes. Not exactly what we were hoping for, but it could just be a starter home. What a rip off! We could buy a small older home for what they were charging for these double wides, and on top of that, they were built HORRIBLY!

So we gave up for a while, thinking we were just doomed to stay in our old beat up single wide forever. We looked into building our own home for a while, since my husband is kind of a "jack of all trades." We could afford it, but my husband worked full time, and wouldn't have enough time off to get it done. One day were talking about how much better our 1982 single was built than the doublewides, and an idea hit us! Why don't we just build on to our single wide! See, our mobile home has plywood floors. So even though it's almost thirty years old, there isn't one spot that is weak or squeaky. The new double wides and even the new houses put OSB, which bubbles and deforms when it gets wet. Why in the world would you use it on ANYTHING that could possibly be exposed to water, much less a floor! Think about how much water your kids spash onto the bathroom floor everytime they take a bath, all the drinks that are spilled. Unless you spend the extra money to have some kind of water tight flooring like tile, it's going to seep into the OSB and bubble up. There were many other things, that I'm not going into right now that were better on our single wide than in the new double wides.

So, on we went to find out if we could even do this, and if so, what permits were needed. We got all of that squared away and started with a renovation permit for the mobile home itself and got started! We've been working on it since December of 2009, so I'll give you a quick catchup. So here is the official before picture...

Pretty trashy, hugh? hehe. So we started by ripping off the roof. reinforcing it and putting some shingles on. Then we took off the horrible metal siding, replaced insulation, put up the OSB and then housewrapped everything. We moved the front door, replaced windows where we will need them. (rooms will later be moved around inside) and built a porch. The windows, by the way, are the awesome windows that fold in for easy cleaning! I loooove them sooo much hehe. The hubby got an awesome deal on them, and the beautiful front door on craigslist. He got all four windows for $220.00. The front door has the small windows on the side, we got that door plus another one just like it we will use as the back door for $250.00. We then painted the porch white and stained the deck and steps....

Then we put up some beautiful siding! ( I was very excited for this hehe)

And that's where we are now! I couldn't believe the difference! Our plans are to replace the insulation underneath, stucco around the bottom. (instead of skirting) Then we will start building the addition. The plans at the moment (they change so much) are to build an addition that will be our kitchen, dining room, laundry room/ pantry/ back entry, livingroom, and office. Once that is complete we will be pow wowing in the addition while we rearrange rooms in the mobile home hehe. The mobile home will be two bedrooms, and bathroom, a foyer leading to the addition and a master bedroom and a big ole master bathroom!

So keep checking back and I'll show you the fun progress as it happens! Thanks for reading!

Organizing 101

A friend of mine, who is also new to the blog world selling adorable custom tutu's, stopped by yesterday and mentioned she had referred someone to my blog for organizing tips. I was floored, except I haven't really posted any organizing tips yet hehe. I LOOOVE organizing, and over the years I think I've learned a few good things. It all began with my teeny tiny home, 966 square feet. I used to be so overwhelmed with everything in stacks and piles all over the place because nothing had a place. Cleaning was a real treat, it was mostly just moving piles and stacks from one place to another. Until one day I found the wonderful world of blogs, yay! I had no idea how much helpful organizing information was out there just waiting to be soaked into my scrambled brain and applied to my scrambled home!

The first and most important step to being organized is understanding what being organized really means. An organized home is a home where everything has a home and gets put back in that home when you're done using it. Most homes have so much stuff that there just isn't enough square footage to have a home for everything, that's where purging comes in. I know, it's hard to part with grandma's hand made quilt or Uncle Bob's favorite recliner that no one else wanted. It's hard decision making time. Stuff that serves no functional purpose is just that, stuff. Stuff clutters your home and clutters your mind. It makes you grumpy and your home impossible to clean and organize. So take a deep breath, remember how all this stuff is making your life harder and.... GET RID OF IT!

Once all of your stuff is gone and all that is left are the things that you need to make your home function, and a few things that just make you happy, it's on to the next step. Find a home for all those goodies! A home for something should make sense. Having your coffee filters in a hall closet doesn't make sense if you make coffee in the kitchen. If you drink coffee everyday, you want them not only in the kitchen, but within close reach of your coffee maker (preferably alongside the coffee hehe) Things like pens and scissors can have multiple homes because they are used in more than one place. I have a pen jar beside my computer and one by my paper controller file box (I tell you about later) in my kitchen. In each of those jars are also a pair of scissors along with by my sewing machine in my bedroom and in my silverware drawer for use in the kitchen.

While you're finding homes for everything, another thing to keep in mind is you can easily make storage where there was none before. Shelves, baskets, dollar store plastic shoe boxes, dollar store plastic baskets, cardboard boxes, tissue boxes, votive holders, and vases all make great storage and they look nice too! There are also an infinite number of DIY ideas for pretty much every storage problem imaginable! For instance, using toilet paper rolls to round up USB cables and game controller wires.Another thing to remember is that one thing can be used a million different ways. A shelf can be a shoe rack, an old votive holder can hold loose jewelry, a butter container can hold small art supplies. You can use them as is, or take time to make them pretty. . . Modge Podge and scrapbook paper can make a HUGE difference on so many different things! As I come across these projects on the web, or think of them I will share them with you! I hope this can be a place you can come to for inspiration and information to simplify your home!

My Recipe Binder

Over at I Heart Organizing they're showing off recipe binders, so I thought I would show off mine ;0) So, here it is!

I just used some scrap book paper and my printer to make the cover. I got the stand at the Dollar Tree for, you guessed it, $1.00! I like having it on the stand because it's easier to read while I'm cooking.

Inside, there is a pocket for recipes I want to try, and printed on pretty paper and hole punched are the tried and true, family favorites! Again I just glued scrapbook paper in to make it pretty.

And here's what it looks like opened up and ready for cooking!

Thrift Store Finds

Sooo, last weekend I was itching to spend some money that we didn't have, so I headed to my Goodwill. I LOOOVE Goodwill! I spent a whopping $5.48, and this is the treasure I brought home!

First, I got this cute shelf/ coat hook/ picture frame thing. The colors looked more like it was made for a nursery, but I wanted to use it in our master bathroom which has more of a beachy feel. I forgot to take a before picture. So here is a "during" picture, I had put one coat of paint on. You can see a little bit of the old colors. The knobs were a pastel yellow and one frame was baby blue and one a pastel green.

And the glorious after....

Don't mind the hideous paint on the walls, it was this way when I moved in and I haven't gotten around to changing it ;0)

Next up, I picked up this ugly thing...

Don't leave yet lol. I wasn't sure what I would use it for, but I always need shelves. I planned on finding a paint that would work on plastic and paint it white, but a light bulb went off before I could... The shelf under my sink broke recently, and so it's a complete mess under there! It fit perfectly!

No need to paint if it's hidden, right!? Well, I might paint it later, but for now it's serving it's purpose. Now my rags, foil and bags and puppy stuff is neatly under my sink.

Have you found any great thrift store finds lately?