Organizing

Raise your hand if you’re happy today is Friday. We’ve got a birthday party planned for a certain little boys I know.

A whole hand. I can’t believe it. We’re both getting so old. Haha. Sara GB should be pretty happy, too, because she’s the winner of the Norwex giveaway!

And now for a little drawerganizing. Because this house needs so much. When my blog BFF Jen and her adorable family visited in August, she brought me some adorable labels. Chalkboard labels for my spice jars, in fact.

So I peeled those puppies off the sheets and stuck ’em to my spice jars. Then they sat that way while I tracked down a chalk pen. Well, tried. After stopping at four different stores, all rumored to have said chalk pens, I gave up. Instead, I bought dry erase crayons, hoping they’d work.

Luckily, they did. No smudging or easy wear off, but clean off with water.

And now we know what spice we’re looking for right away. If only my handwriting were better. Though I do have the best writing in the house. Which isn’t a challenge considering I live with men. Haha.

Another quick drawerganization started at the thrift store. I spotted a chrome silverware divider for a buck ninety-nine. When I see cheap organizers, I try to find a use for it. Then it hit me, organize the friggin’ bathroom! At home, I plopped our toiletries, vitamins, toothbrushes, and toothpaste in there and it made me smile. Sure, it’s nothing fancy or super pretty, but we can fin what we’re looking for. That’s all that matters, right?

We’re organized and ready to party. What do you have planned for the weekend?

As I recently showed, we did a little deep cleaning and organizing around the house. Of course, I couldn’t stop obsessing over the great pantry update I saw over at House of Smith’s. In true Amanda style, I really needed wanted our pantry to be pretty. In true Ben style, he thought I was crazy. Yep, that’s us; Amanda equals the desire for pretty, even in unseen places. Ben equals utilitarian. Well, I went ahead and spruced up our pantry anyway.

First, I removed everything and put it on the guest bed.

And the closet…

After turning our guest room into a make-shift pantry, I prepped the real pantry for paint. Here’s a sneak peek inside.

Yeah, not that bad, but not great, either. I don’t think the pantry has seen a paint brush since the house was built. I started by giving the shelves and supports two coats of Vermont Cream, the same paint we’ve used for all the trim in our house.

Now you can see just how ugly the color really was. I had forgotten how much of a pain it is to paint shelves. Yeah, it’s not just one side… I let everything dry, then taped the white portions off to prepare for my accent color.

Then, I brushed the same paint we used in the dining room and basement on the walls of the pantry. Two coats and we were in business. Right after applying the second coat, I removed the tape and paper. This is the trick to getting nice, crisp lines.

Voila! A pretty pantry. Now for the fun part, organizing. Because I had recently organized everything, I had an idea of where things would go. I didn’t, however, have pretty jars to store baking staples then. Remember this post? Well, I went back to Hobby Lobby and picked up six more of the tall guys.

Can you believe they were only $2.50 each?! I know!

Rather than keeping flour and such items in their bags, I filled the bad boys up. Don’t they look pretty in their new home? (The answer is yes).

Am I lame that they make me smile? (The answer is yes). I filled my canning jars with baking powder (blame Costco) and quick oats, getting rid of the ugly containers and freeing up valuable space. I had a cute storage box (see on the top?) lying around, so I filled it with our abundance of straws (blame Costco again).

After sorting the canned goods, I grouped liked items, making stacks out of the items we had more of so we can see what we have. Pasta and mac and cheese are in a little group, as well as the cereal and baby food. We also have mass quantity of Salted Nut Rolls (blame my brother-in-law), so they are in the treat jar.

My organization fixation doesn’t stop there, though. Shelley over at Wonderfully Wordy (and House of Smith’s) hooked me up with this awesome set of custom vinyl labels.

The labels are affordable and super easy to apply. And they are the icing on my cake. So, there you have it. A few days, $15.00, and 5 labels later, our pantry is finally pretty.

How about you? Have you ever had the itch to give a seldom seen place a make over?