I’m still spring cleaning, even though it’s the dead of winter. Remember when I was last motivated and cleaned out my hair accessories? Wait until we get moved into the new house, these post will come in mobs!

Although I’ll be moving “my office” shortly, I figured my desk was way overdue for reorganization and a some scrubbing. Plus, I tackled this on New Year’s Day and it feels good to start the new year off with a clean work space.

Ta Da, my office in the corner of our living room:

We bought the desk (Ikea) and the office chair (Target) the summer of 2011 when we moved into this apartment. I wiped everything down and cleared off what little tabletop space this puny desk offers. You can roll your eyes if you want, but I also cleaned the keyboard keys (a hand-me-down from Hubs) with a qtip and now they sparkle! The griminess was making me itch.

The mousepad is from HIGH SCHOOL. You know I’m 33 years old, right? I’d like to update it with a more modern fabric but meh, that’s for another day (probably never).

Inside that one drawer was an utter disaster. I wish I had a before picture but I went nuts on it and couldn’t waste time with picture taking. Now, it’s so pretty!

I sorted, recycled and used all old basket I had lying around to corral pens, cords, sticky notes and a few other items that were floating around without a home. I’m still planning to send out “holiday cards” but I’m postponing that project until after I am moved and settled into the new place. I bound all of the Christmas cards we received so I can update my addresses when the time comes. Hopefully I get around to it?

In a perfect world, I’d like my monitor and mouse to be white to match my keyboard and laptop (that I plug in behind) but these are all hand-me-downs from Hubs office, so I have to work with what I’ve got. I plan to have an updated post once we get my new office set up, but we’ll see if it’s even worth the bandwidth, ok?

I also picked up this daily planner (from Target) to start the new year off right. It’s pretty dinky because I planned to carry it in my purse but now I really have to write small…

I hope it keeps me somewhat organized because I do best when I write things down. Also, I apologize because I know this post might be snore-inducing for some. I get all weird and giddy reading about other people organizing and I figured a few of you might feel the same. In fact, this blog is dedicated to organization deliciousness if you want inspiration and didn’t find it here.

Anyone else start off 2013 with cleaning/sorting/organizing?

Hooray, I’m still spring cleaning.  I’m so sorry if you were waiting for an interesting post to pop up on this blog because today is not the day.

I decided to tackle a super small but nagging Spring Cleaning To Do: organizing my hair accessories.  Mind you, I have hardly any so the fact I’ve slapped this into it’s own blog post shows just how boring my life is.

I have one of those plastic 3-drawer thingys from Target, that I bought a few years back.  I pulled out the drawers and took a gander at what I was storing in there.

It’s not much, but it was annoying me.  Especially this one, that housed all of my hair ties and such.

I dumped everything out and wiped out the drawers (eeewww, they were nasty).  Then, I grouped like items…(did you just doze off or was that just me?) and put them back.

I snagged the clear plastic bags from my button collection, since they always come in those and I’m too lazy to toss them.  The striped bag (which was a freebie from American Eagle years ago) now corrals my assortment of bobby pins. Finally,  I found a carabiner on an old set of keys and snapped together my massive collection of hair ties.

Side note: Last summer, I bought new hair ties with the rubber backing on the inside.  You should too, they are NICE.

Anyway, on to the next drawer:

Lame, I know.  I got rid of my soft headbands (since I haven’t worn them in years) and now this drawer only holds two headbands.  But, at least they are easy to find and harder to snap in half.

The last drawer is for my earring collection, which obviously doesn’t fall under hair accessories but oh well, I had to move on.  My collection is teeny tiny, I have 12 pair.  I like it that way.  I’ve gotten in the habit of saving the little cards the earrings come on so I can stash them more neatly.  And just in case you are wondering, no, the cards don’t match where the earrings are purchased from.  They are just the ones I remembered to hold onto and they rotate around.  My sterling silver hoops got plopped in another button bag with random earring backs that were rolling around in the drawer before.

ANOTHER side note: I’m planning to get a few more every day studs or hoops that are more sturdy than the cheapo ones from Forever21 (ie: the adorable anchor pairs, which turn my ears green after one shower!).  I’ve never been one to change out my earrings daily and with my coaching each afternoon, it’s most unlikely that I’ll wear anything dangly on a day to day basis.  So, I’m on the hunt for a few more pairs – I’m thinking Kohls would be good/cheap place for some?

A THIRD side note: If I were psycho, I would have considered making my own cute matching/coordinating cards with fun scrap paper and card stock.  I’m still thinking about it but haven’t done anything because I’m ridiculously lazy.

I stashed the drawers back in their home and called it a day.  I have a second little 3-drawer thingy that holds all of my bracelets and necklaces in an abhorrent tangled mess.  I’m avoiding it for now.

Cheers to progess, eh?  Any tips for organizing your goods?  For some reason, I’m insanely interested in how people stash their stuff, so please share.

Still spring cleaning.  The end for these types of posts is not near, hang in there with me.

We took a rowdy Saturday to tackle cleaning the car.  It looked like crap.  Literally, because hundreds of birds had shat on it this spring since we park outside.

I drove around for months with it looking like this.

We paid 7 bucks for a worthless car wash and had to rinse the sunbaked poo off ourselves when we got back to our apartment.  The inside wasn’t nearly as bad but it needed a thorough vacuuming and wipe down, as well as just cleaning out Stuff.  To my surprise, I found two bungie cords perfect for bundling up the massive tarp that I had been hauling everywhere for track meets.  I was *just* going to buy new ones from of our tiny budget so I am glad to have come across them!

Anyway, you can’t really tell but our car is actually clean again.

That sure feels good, man.

Pay no mind that it’s mid summer and I am still spring cleaning.  A few weeks ago, I tackled our pantries.  This past weekend was Operation Bathroom.  It was in *dire* need of some spring cleaning.  Just look at this fine display of disgusting:

My bathroom never quite recovered from my hasty flight home back from MN.  So, it’s been looking like this for a while.

I dragged EVERYTHING out.  Everything got wiped down, vacuumed out, scrubbed and sorted.  It took me forever!  But now I have order and it makes me feel so much better.

The lone drawer filled with products that I’m trying to use up before purchasing more:

Yay, I can see the counter again!

Also, I cleaned all of my makeup brushes using a water and vinegar recipe found on Pinterest and plopped them in a candle holder I got as a gift ages ago.

Underneath the sink got an overhaul too:

Hopefully I can stay on a cleaning schedule so this isn’t such a huge undertaking next time.  It feels good to take stock so I’m reminded of how much I have before I go wishing for more.

Anyone still spring cleaning or are you running around instead, enjoying the summer sunshine?

I started small with my Spring Cleaning efforts, but had secret high hopes I’d actually continue organizing bit by bit, making this some sort of series.  And about a week ago and a half ago, I tackled the pantry!

Actually, *two* pantries.  They are side by side.  I’m so sorry if this bores you.  You’ve been warned.

Although outdated, one of Emily Griffith’s fancy calendars hangs on the door.  Awww.

Anyway, back to the reorg.  This thing was a mess.

I had crammed those pantries full when we first moved in and after living with it awhile, we realized it was NOT working for us.  The tupperware was driving us mad, the kitchen linens were stacked in a precariously leaning tower, the extra dishes (that we use often) were waaaaaay too high, there was a weird assortment of food/baking items on one shelf and lastly, every time we opened the damn thing, a water bottle would come flying out like an escaped bat.

You know the story.  I pulled *everything* out and wiped down the shelves.

(Isn’t my hair abhorrent??)

Then I snooped around our house to find *free* storage to fix my problems.  I found a plastic shoe box to corral the tupperware lids and an old basket to house the linens.  It’s not perfect but it was FREE.

Now the dishes are much easier to grab and put away, the not-as-often-used items are on the top shelf (admittedly the waffle maker is used too often so I’m hoping the high shelf will act as some sort of deterrent) and I decided to put the food stuff in the other pantry.  Speaking of the other pantry…

For those of you wondering, the bottom laundry basket houses all of Hubs coffee roasted supplies.  This pantry may not be the worst but it was slyly out of control.  The napkins were tucked way too deep in the corners, the wire bin with our canned goods never made sense and our tea bin was chaos.

Random: both wire bins I found dumpster diving last August – see?

Like before, I pulled everything out and wiped down the shelves.  How do those things get so gross so fast?

I organized our tea bin and stacked the overflow on the side.  Normally we don’t have this much, but it was recently on sale, so Hubs stocked us up!

I used the other wire rack for small baking supplies, so I can just grab the whole thing out when I get the yearning for baked goods (which, btw, is continuously).

Our alphabetized spice rack.  *drool*

Certainly I wish I could buy all new jars – the cute ones from Ikea – so they’d all be uniform – but remember, this mission was intended to be free.  Pretty-fying it will have to come another time, maybe when I have a house again someday?  I am in love with all of the beautiful painted and wallpapered pantries on Pinterest!  One day.  Maybe.

Picture courtesy of House of Smiths.

Weird coincidence.  Sherry, over at Young House Love (one of my favorite blogs) declared a Spring Cleaning boot camp this week and she’s tackling an organizing project PER DAY. That encouraged me to at least get this post up (since I did this almost two weeks ago) and hopefully be inspired by her awesomeness to keep on keepin’ on with my spring cleaning efforts.

Here’s my big scary list:

• our outside storage closet
• clothes storage – also, swap out winter for summer wear
• Old CDs that I need to rip the music off & put in one place
• digital photos (TERRIFYING AMOUNT OF WORK)
• digital files (gah!)
• actual photos that I’d like to scan in as digital files (could take decades)
• craft bin (again!) because I have stuff everywhere
• our car! *shudder*
• file paperwork (the worst, even worse than yeast infections)
• laundry area
• under the sink drama in both bathrooms
• the office.
• my god, there’s so much more.  I’m tired already.

Anyone else caught the Spring Cleaning Bug?  Or did you fall into the Pinterest rabbit hole, never to be seen or heard from again?

This sunny spring weather has given me the urge to throw open the windows and CLEAN stuff.  Mind you, it’s only an urge.  But why not document what little I have accomplished on the internet for all of you even so?

I started off my Spring Cleaning with a purse purge (and later on, a swap).

I dumped out all of the contents which I sorted/filed/trashed, as well as organized the contents of my wallet and coupon book. Then I stuffed it all into my $13 Target score from a few years back.

The whole process took approximately 45 seconds, 10 of which I spent smearing on my newly found MAC Viva Glam VI lipstick that I splurged on last summer while Hubs was away at a conference.

Have you had the urge to think about spring cleaning like me, but not do much of anything except eat left over Easter candy?

When Hubs and I had our very romantic clean-out-the-fridge-and-freezer date before putting our house on the market, he came across something I had been hiding from him for a long time.  I had, literally, a very dark secret.

Look what he found:

Sheepishly, I had to confess to him my grand plans of opening a family operated Frozen Banana Stand this summer.  Now wouldn’t that be the perfect treat!?  But, without mercy or hesitation, he squashed those dreams right there on the spot (claiming unoriginality).  And, since our freezer is the size of my pressed powder case, these frosty smiles were taking up very precious real estate.  They, for real, have to go.

So, I’ll be busy making weekly batches of banana bread and pawning the loaves off on nice friends and neighbors until this blackened fruit mountain flattens out.  Pretend that I’m just being thoughtful when the time comes to accept your carb stipend because that’s the gracious thing to do.