Spring Organization - Friday Focus

 Hello Friends,

I hope you are doing well. This week I bought an under the sink organizer to hold more of those miscellaneous things that don't really have a home under the kitchen and powder room sinks. Today I put together the small storage unit I bought from Amazon and the brand is Simple Houseware. Millie was supervising me put it together.

It was easy to put together and then gave us more storage and organization under the downstairs bathroom sink. It was too wide for our upstairs bathroom so I will be buying a narrower one. We need the organization upstairs as well. 

The instructions are easy to follow and in the photo below all of these three pieces just snapped together.

Then the only thing you have to screw together is the top piece of the storage unit. Which was very easy and quick.

Millie liked this as is and didn't want the drawers to be added. It made a nice little house for her. 

I put it downstairs under our sink in our powder room to hold cleaning products in the bottom two drawers and then extra personal care products in the top drawer for now.

So far I am impressed by the quality and it is sturdy. I think this will come in handy for us to keep things more organized. I will probably by buying another one by the same brand if possible but narrower for the upstairs bathroom. This weekend I will be doing more Spring cleaning and organizing. It feels good to start cleaning up and throwing out things that we don't use and then organizing things we do use in a better way.

Have a great day!

KonMari Method for Tidying Papers, and Other Updates

Hello Friends,

I hope you are doing well.  I went through my papers this weekend which is the third stage of the Konmari method to tidying up. I was happy to have today off work for the Victoria Day holiday I used it to finish this process and get ready for the week. There were quite a bit of papers, notebooks, binders, and folders to go through. As Marie Kondo suggests to do, I dumped all of the papers and things onto my living room floor to sort through. I really think this method works so well because you have to put all the papers in one spot to go through and tackle all of them at once instead of tidying each room then having to confront them more than once.

I went from a large pile of papers, notebooks, binders and folders, to a much more manageable pile. I know exactly what I have now. I really like the tip Marie suggests in her book the life-changing magic of tidying up, to only keep papers "currently in use, needed for a limited period of time, or must be kept indefinitely". This made me really question whether or not I really wanted to keep something or if it would just keep on only being clutter and not being useful. I was able to be tougher on myself to get rid of things I no longer need.

Before:

A big pile of unknown papers and notebooks with no proper storage...

Before

To...

After:

Small neat piles of important documents, papers and notebooks that spark joy and everything has a place on a shelf neatly tucked away.

After

I am so happy that I can now fit all of my papers and notebooks onto half of a shelf instead of being crammed into a bin, a big bag, and scattered around. I feel so much lighter already by having only what I need. There are so many documents I tossed that in the past I thought I needed to keep, and now I realize that I do not need them.

One thing I am excited about is that I came up with a storage solution today for my planner stickers. I used the pink folder in the photo above to organize my planner stickers and used clear pocket sheet inserts to place inside. I pulled each sheet of stickers out of the packages and divided the stickers into categories, so it will be easier to find the type of stickers I am looking for. Some categories are: to do, reminder, small stickers, big stickers, holidays and more. It will be much easier to find the stickers I need now.

Next up in the KonMari method to tidying up is the category of Komono/miscellaneous items, which is a very large category. I am excited to throw out or give away more of my stuff. It is amazing once you begin this process how you do start to feel more empowered to throw things away. I might have to go through some yarn or organize it better and maybe give some away I will not use.

Speaking of yarn, I did buy some yarn to start a shawl while at Michaels one day, then found a pattern I liked on Ravelry afterwards and realized I did not have the right needles to start. So I will be getting the needles, then will share my progress soon. Sorry for not posting on knitting in quit awhile, I will be back to knitting shortly! I really miss it.

I finished reading Quiet by Susan Cain. It was such a good book and I really like how she touched on so many topics and areas regarding introverts and spoke of the strengths we have and also difficulties as well. I think it is a great reference for parents who have children who are introverted as well to better understand them and to nurture their strengths. I am still reading A Spark of Light by Jodi Picoult and will be focusing my attention on finishing this book now that I will be reading only one. I also just borrowed the audio book What the Most Successful People do on the Weekend by Laura Vanderkam from the library to listen to this week.

Hope you have a great week!