Showing posts with label Organization. Show all posts

Sarah vs. The Command Strips

Posted by Anonymous on Sunday, June 30, 2013. Filed under:
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Today, I'm going to talk about that one time that I was nearly bested by some of the most simple technology known to man: what is essentially double sided tape.  That's right - I nearly lost a battle with the infamous Command Strips.  And friends, this would not have been the first battle with the foamy strips of awesomeness that I lost, nor the second, but in fact, the third time that I would have been beaten down by 3M.  I couldn't let that happen.


I'm a smart girl folks!  I've got a college degree and everything.  Yet these evil little strips, which many in the blogging world seem to adore, apparently bring out the stupid in me.

Case Study #1:  They remove with no damage!  Christmas of 2011, I used Command hooks to hang our Christmas stockings on the wall (yes, the dogs have Christmas stockings!).  January 1 rolls around, and I go to gently pull down on the little tab to remove the strip from the wall, and proceed to take a half-dollar coin sized piece of paint and wall texture with me (that I still haven't repainted to this day, I might add.)  Fail #1.

Case Study #2:  As we saw in my pantry, I hang reusable shopping bags on the back of the pantry door.  They are hung using the Command hooks.  Not 100% paying attention, when I went to hang the back piece of the hook, I accidentally stuck it to the door upside down.  Obviously my fault, I can't blame the strips for that.  When I went to pull down on the tab to pull the plastic piece off, the tab ripped off!  So now there is a plastic backing for an upside down Command hook perma-stuck to the back of my pantry door.  Which will come in handy if I ever decide to hang a wreath on that door...  Fail #2.

So, that brings us to the current date, and my current dilemma, which is this:


This is the view under my work desk in my home office.  I work from home in a customer service job, so I have the computer plugged in, along with my phone and amplifier, my lamp, and I also had my Silhouette plugged in over there at the time.  I like to stretch my legs out all the way under my desk which was causing me to kick the cords and unplug stuff from time to time.  While at my local Menard's, I happened to be in front of a display that had a pack of Command strips while thinking about the cord issue and I figured they would be a good solution to my dilemma.


So I picked them up, and my nemesis and I were face-to-face again.  My plan was to use the Command strips to stick the power strip to the underside of my desk, thus removing any cord clutter from around my feet.  Genius, no?  I was pretty proud of myself. 


I cut the strips in half since the power strip I use for my work stuff isn't that large or heavy.  Really, I just wanted to include this picture because I was really darn proud of myself for getting the scissors to balance like that all on their own while I snapped this photo.


I read the directions super carefully, and cleaned the power strip and the bottom of my desk and waited for them to dry before adhering the Command strips to the power strip, then attached everything to the bottom of my desk.  I laid under my desk and held it up there pretty tight for about 15 minutes.  When I let go, everything stuck - so I walked away feeling pretty proud of myself.  (I did unplug everything from the strip as well, so there was no excess weight pulling it down.)  Success, right?!?!

WRONG!!!

When I walked in the next morning, the power strip was back on the ground, where it started.  I may have possibly overreacted at this point, since my solution was to cut four more Command strips in half and stick them on to the back of the power strip then secure the whole thing on to the underside of my desk with clamps.  I then left the clamps there for about a week.

But...this all happened about 6 weeks ago, and this is what I've had ever since.

Sorry for the horribly blurry iPhone photo

Success tastes so sweet.  And now I can stretch my feet out without worrying about hanging up on people or disconnecting my entire computer system, which is always a good thing.

So, that's my saga with the Command strips.  Any one have any good tips for me so I can get along better with these foamy sticky strips?  Or is there a product that you constantly have to do battle with?  Am I all alone in that respect??







In the Pantry

Posted by Anonymous on Monday, May 27, 2013. Filed under: ,
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Over Memorial Day weekend, Friday - Sunday was dedicated to deep cleaning my house.  Weird way to spend a weekend for some, but to me it was fabulous.  Some of the tasks completed included deep cleaning the carpets, wiping out the fridge and freezer (for the first time in a very long time), finally putting away the stacks of stuff that seem to pile up out of nowhere, and overall just tackling all those little cleaning projects that I always seem to put off "until another day".  The house smells so clean and fresh now, it's wonderful.



One of the projects that I undertook over the weekend was organizing the pantry.  I feel like I do this every two months or so, but it only lasts for two to three weeks before it slowly descends back in to chaos.  This tells me that I just haven't yet found a good method of organizing everything that works.  So every time I re-do the pantry, I tweak things a little bit and I'll keep tweaking things until I find a method that works for me.  I didn't take any before pictures, but I'm pretty proud of the after.


I hate those wire shelves that the builder installed in our pantry.  I have plans to pull those shelves out and replace them with MDF shelves instead.  It's actually pretty high on my project list - I really hate those shelves.  I find them to be the most useless things ever!


I have an entire shelf dedicated to boxed dinners.


And a half of a shelf dedicated to boxed baking mixes.


And the bottom shelf is dedicated to snacks.  I swear I don't normally have that many bags of chips -  some family is coming over for Memorial Day so, like, three bags of chips are for that.  And I've been addicted to Rold Gold pretzels lately. The big plastic container stores Squirt and Duchess's food.  Squirt has a sensitive stomach, and Duchess has been told she needs to lose weight, so I buy 15# bags of limited ingredient dog food for sensitive stomachs and reduced calorie dog foods and mix them together.  Then I store them in this container.  I tried feeding each dog the food meant for her, but that was just a disaster. 


Any extra bottles and cans get stored on the floor of the pantry.  The 2-liter bottles aren't common - but I figured they'd be easier for Memorial Day.  I actually don't drink soda that often.  Juice tends to be the most common thing down here...but I've been on a caffeine kick lately.  It's bad.


I picked up this little blue box at Hobby Lobby and I use it to store all of our drink mixes.  Mio, Crystal Light, Kool-Aid - even the dry milk powder I use for baking all fit in there really well.  It fits perfectly on the shelf up by the breakfast items.


This divided box was another Hobby Lobby find, and it works great to corral all of our little snack items.  It shares space on the shelf with our baking mixes.  Has anyone ever tried those Hello Panda cookies?  They sell them in the Dollar Spot at Target, and I'm in love with them.  I used to eat cookies called Koala Yummies when I was a kid, and the Hello Pandas remind me of the Koala Yummies.  So good.


I use a Command Hook on the back of the pantry door to hang all of our reusable shopping bags.  Our local grocery store gives you a $0.05 per bag credit off of your grocery bill, which is pretty cool.  Now I just need to remember to grab them when I'm going to the grocery store...


Part of the reason that I hate the wire shelves is that they don't support the weight of canned goods very well without totally bowing the shelf.  As a result, I moved the canned goods to this cabinet to the right of our stove.  The canned goods are in isolation.  


Bakery goods are kept on the counter, because the wire shelving presses in to the bottoms of the loaves of bread and deforms them, and for some reason I don't like when my bread has funny lines in the bottom of it.  I've been toying with the idea of getting a cute bread box to put over here.  Two for one:  hides the bread and I can decorate it and make it a cute decor piece!  Maybe I'll have to start haunting the local Goodwill and keep an eye out...

One thing that really bothers me about the pantry is the amount of pre-mixed meals.  I know they're horribly bad for me, and they're filled with preservatives.  And I've read that I can also make many of the same mixes for cheaper, and that the homemade version tastes significantly better.  My goal is to go through these mixes, and either make and eat them or donate them to our local food pantry, and start making some of my own mixes.  

I love Hamburger Helper (the Italian Cheesy Shells are my fav) so that's going to be sad to give up, but it'll be worth it to eat healthier.  I know there's all sorts of websites filled with recipes for mixes and breads and the like...does anyone have any recipes that are personal favorites that they would be willing to share??












Project Life Organization

Posted by Anonymous on Wednesday, May 1, 2013. Filed under: ,
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Happy May everyone!  Spring has finally decided to make an appearance here in beautiful old Wisconsin.  It's sunny, about 80*, slightly breezy...couldn't ask for more!

After only a couple of weeks, I fell off of the Project Life bandwagon.  Not because I didn't love it, life just got away from me and I forgot to take pictures as I was going along.  But I figure the first of the month is a great time to wipe the slate clean and start fresh, so that's exactly what I'm going to do.  I'll forget my failure in documenting April (April wasn't that great anyway - the weather totally sucked!) and move forward.  I found some photo a day challenges via Instagram so that I always have some ideas of things to photograph on days that I'm feeling uninspired or stuck, and I realized that some of the projects I work on would also be good things to include in my album.

Since I'm recommitting myself to Project Life, I thought I'd take some time today to share with you all how I organize my materials for it.  I love how much less space this method takes up than normal scrapbooking does.  Seriously.  Are you ready to be astounded at how little space I need to store my scrapping materials? Check it out:


Are you impressed, amazed, and/or astounded?  I sure was.  I saw this metal drawer cabinet at Hobby Lobby weeks before I started Project Life, and I immediately knew I had to have it.  I had no clue what I was going to use this for, but it was so cute, and it was grey so I knew it would fit in to the color scheme of my office + craft room, and it was 50% off...so I bought it.  When I saw the sizes of the Project Life inserts, I whipped out my measuring tape and realized that all of the 3" x 4" inserts would fit perfectly.  So, after i took my cue from A Vegas Girl at Heart and cut up some 6" x 6" paper pads (Uncharted Waters by Glitz Design) to fit the 3" x 4" inserts, so that I could use these as filler cards.  With my awesome metal drawer unit, I have drawers where I can organize my filler cards by color, like so:


And like so:


My filler cards are separated by neutrals, pink + red, yellow + orange, blue + green, and multi, and I have one drawer for grid journaling cards and one drawer for lined journaling cards.  Then comes the fun stuff.  In the column of drawers to the far right, I have a drawer of washi tape that stays with all of my Project Life gear:


And two drawers of embellishments:


And right now there's actually - gasp! - one empty drawer that I have reserved for more embellishments :-)

Any embellishments I have that don't fit in the drawers (or that I haven't cut down to fit) slide nicely under the drawer unit, like so:


Since the 4" x 6" inserts don't fit in the drawers, I have a little plastic bin that I got from the Dollar Tree that fits perfectly on my desk shelf right next to the drawers where I can fit my 4" 6" cutouts that I use to make up week number card, and also holds larger scraps that I kept from trimming down the original 6" x 6" paper pads.  It's also home to some Recollections cards that I got from Michael's, that I'm debating between keeping or using as part of a giveaway for when I grow the blog a little more.


And that my friends is it!  Everything I need to complete a scrapbook layout, all stored on a 10" shelf that's 2' long.  Amazing, no?



Linking up...

@ Remodelaholic




Decorative Push Pins

Posted by Anonymous on Monday, April 8, 2013. Filed under: ,
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Once I made my pretty new decorative cork board, I knew I couldn't use boring metal pushpins (or worse, those ugly colored plastic ones) on the pretty damask print.  When I was at Hobby Lobby, I found these adorable glittery buttons in both silver and green.  They were cheap, and came in two sizes so I had a little bit of variety to work with.


So I grabbed my cute buttons, some thumb tacks I bought from Target, and some quick hold e6000.  I love E6000 glue, but the quick hold is even better in my mind because it adheres more quickly than normal E6000.  I spread out some wax paper on my kitchen table - because if there is even the slightest chance I can make a mess, I'll find a way to do it - and went to town.


I applied a dab of the E6000 to each thumb tack, then waited a few seconds for the glue to get a little tacky. Then I mushed the thumb tack on to the back of my buttons, and in no time at all I had a sea of button thumb tacks.


With some of my buttons, I glued the smaller sized button on to the larger size in the alternating color, but apparently I didn't take any photos of that step.

I let them dry for 24 hours, and that was it!  Pretty thumb tacks to match my pretty cork board.


I'm not sure what that line is right to the right of the thumb tack, but don't you love the polka dots?  That is actually my desk.  Post on that to come!




Decorative Cork Board

Posted by Anonymous on Sunday, March 31, 2013. Filed under: ,
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Now that I'm working from home, a lot of the projects I'm working on revolve around organization for the office so that I can get settled in to my office.  I love having a cork board that I can pin things to that I either need to remember long-term so I have it to refer to quickly, or for things that recently changed so that I have it posted in front of me as a constant flag of something that changed.

But with all of the work I've been putting in to my office, the last thing I wanted hanging on my wall was an ugly, plain, boring old brown cork board.  I was at Hobby Lobby and saw this grey and white damask print fabric and fell in love.  However, it was a little too busy for me to use in a large area.  Then it hit me.  Wouldn't it be cool if I could pin stuff to this awesome looking damask fabric.  Then the skies opened and rays of sun shone down on me and I heard angels singing.  Okay, it wasn't that dramatic, but I did get really excited by the idea. 

I bought a plain cork board that fit my wall space, then taped it off and painted the frame the same lime green that I've been using for an accent color over the entire room.  I'm sure you could get away with painting the frame without taping it off, but I'm messy and didn't want to chance any excess paint showing through my fabric so I took the extra step.


I did two coats of paint on the frame of the cork board.  To be honest, it probably could have used a third coat.  That frame really soaked up paint!  But I lost patience, and the two coats gave it a weathered look, so I stuck with it.  Side note - does anyone else love these foam brushes as much as I do?  They're great for small projects, and I personally hate cleaning brushes so I stock up with Michael's has them like 14/$1 or 20/$1 so I can just toss them when I'm done with them.  No cleaning required!

After the paint was dried, I ironed my fabric and made sure to lay it out perfectly flat.  You want to make sure there are no wrinkles!  I laid the cork board on top of the fabric with the edges of the cork board hanging off of the edges of the fabric.  Then I used my rotary cutter to cut along the sides of the cork board, so I ended up with a piece of fabric that was just slightly larger than the cork board's surface (not including the frame).


Once I had my fabric cut out, I brought everything up out of my basement, where it was cold and clearly has pretty poor lighting, and laid it out on the kitchen table.  I laid the fabric right side up on top of the cork, and grabbed a putty knife to slide the fabric into the space in between the cork and the frame.  I found a flexible metal putty knife to work perfectly for this step- it was slim enough to slide in the gap between cork and frame and flexible enough to catch the fabric and slide it in the gap.  This step is where you want to make sure you don't have a huge "seam allowance" on your fabric.  Too much fabric won't fit under the wooden frame, but be careful if you trim the edges to make sure that you're still leaving enough to cover the cork.  (I hope that makes sense!)  The corner of the putty knife is also perfect for getting small pieces of fabric under that frame, and works well in the corners.


I found what worked best for me was to pull the fabric tight and tuck it under the frame about six inches or so ahead of where I was working.  That way I knew the fabric would stay nice and tight and I didn't have to worry about it pulling or wrinkling, then I could go back after the preliminary "tucking" and use the edge of the knife to make sure all of the material was tucked under the frame.


Once I got in to a groove, I think it took me about 30 minutes to work my way around the entire board.  I used a tweezers to grab a couple of loose threads that were hanging out, and voila!  I had my pretty damask cork board.


Go ahead and grab some push pins and pin away!






Washi Tape Tab Dividers

Posted by Anonymous on Friday, March 15, 2013. Filed under: ,
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So, I'm not sure if I've mentioned it or not, but I'm a senior at UW-Milwaukee right now.  I'm double majoring in Communication and Organizational Administration.  I thought I was going to major in Sociology, but I apparently have some pretty bad ADD when it comes to my major.  The Com and the OA was the original major, and it's interesting and relevant so yeah.

Anyway, the Sociology class I'm taking this semester is divided in to units.  Because of my love of organization and pretty things, I wanted a way to nicely divide my binder for the class in to the units, but they didn't sell pre-made tabbed dividers in the quantity I needed.  Plus, they aren't pretty.

Enter everyone's new favorite craft embellishment: washi tape!  You can make anything pretty with washi tape.

So I gathered up my supplies:


A rotary cutter, manilla file folders, my labeler, a self-healing cutting mat, and a few different patterns of washi tape.  I also had my three-hole punch on hand, and a three-ring binder.

I cut the manilla file folders in half down the fold, and kept the side with the tab, then ran a line of washi tape down the right edge of the folder, like so.


Then I added a second strip of tape to the tab of the folder, then used my rotary trimmer to cut the tape to match the rounded edges of the tab.


Then I used my labeler to print out the unit names, attached the label to the middle of the tab, and three hole punched the left side of the divider.    See?


Since those file folders come with the tabs in three locations, I just alternated the tab locations for each unit.  It makes my Sociology binder look prettier than it would have otherwise, and I feel much more organized, and it will be easier to find the information I'm looking for while I'm taking an exam or writing a paper.


Washi tape makes the world a prettier place!!





My First Printable!

Posted by Anonymous on Saturday, March 2, 2013. Filed under: ,
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So earlier this week, I shared that one of my goals is to become more organized in 2013.  Knowing myself, I know that if I have things written down and organized in one convenient location it makes things much easier for me to recall.  I knew I wanted a planner, but I didn't want an "assignment notebook" type planner, even though schoolwork is one of the things I need to keep track of.  I wanted something that could keep track of homework, housework, doctor's appointments, work commitments, Husband's schedules, family obligations, the blog, my budget, household projects, and my Project Life goal.  I wanted a life planner.

After researching and blog stalking, I was introduced to the M by Staples Arc Discbound system.  Similar to creating your own notebook, but way better.  I loved how creative I could get with it and how pretty I could make things.

There are tons of printables online created by some amazingly talented women, and I looked through them to find the one that was best for me.  A lot of them are oriented around planning for families.  They have sections for menus, and the kids, and stuff that I just don't use.  Then I found the super-adorable Peek at the Week planner printable from Jen over at IHeart Organizing.  I loved the colors, the space for a shopping list, and the space for notes.  She has a spot for a menu, but it's pretty small so it doesn't waste a lot of space for me.  Most of all, I loved the layout she had.  I've been in to blues and yellows lately, so I decided to create my own weekly page based off of Jen's.  Then I thought, why not share it here?  This is the first time I've ever done a printable, so any feedback is totally welcome.


Click here to download "A Peek at This Week" in the Monday - Sunday format.


Click here to download "A Peek at This Week" in the Sunday-Saturday format.

Enjoy!

The Newly Organized Kitchen Cabinets

Posted by Anonymous on Wednesday, October 17, 2012. Filed under: ,
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Who's been holding their breath in suspense for the revel of my newly organized kitchen??

No one?

That's okay, I wasn't either.  But I'm still pretty proud of it, so I'm going to show it off anyway.  This post is going to be pretty photo-heavy and pretty text-lite.



I had to return that food processor - totally didn't work.  Still debating about getting a new one.

I made all new homemade cleaners too; I'll blog about that in a week or two.





The only thing that really changed about this cabinet was I threw away all of the tea since it was expired - oops.





For Christmas, I'm asking for spice racks that mount to the inside of the cabinet doors, so I'm hoping to combine this cabinet and the dry goods cabinet.  We'll see how well that works out in a couple of months.




And there you have my newly organized kitchen cabinets.  And let me tell you, after the time and personal injury that went in to this project (yeah, I fell off of the counter when I was cleaning the insides of the cabinets) these cabinets better stay this way for a good long while.  I still need to figure out how to better organize the drawers and the cabinet that has all of my serving dishes, but I have an idea for that which involved Craigslist, a sideboard/buffet, some sandpaper, and paint, so stay tuned. :-)

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