Kitchen Set Equipment

I have a weird weakness for makeup organization.  Sitting down to put on a little makeup is one of the first things I do each day, so having it organized really just brightens my mornings right off the bat.  Megan of Honey We're Home blog feels the same way, and she is here today to give us all a glance at her personal system, and inspire us to start the day off with a little organized glam as well.




"My name is Megan and I am a lawyer by day, design and decor lover by night, and Mama to the sweetest 2-year old boy you've ever seen. I'm passionate about fitness (and chocolate!) and could not live without my relationships, girl talk, and my morning coffee. I've been blogging for two years over at Honey We're Home, sharing my love of keeping things organized and beautiful at our house. My efforts to live in the moment and cook more are an adventure in progress."

Although I continue to age and grow older each day, I still remain a kid at heart.  I love heading to the park to play kickball with the boys, to sit down and create Lego cities and to build forts for playroom camp-outs.  And of all of the rooms within our home, our playroom still is one of my favorites.

There is something about a place to create and play and imagine that emotes so much happiness.  And maybe it is the kid in me, but today's reader space left me with all sorts of warm fuzzies, I just had to share it with you!


I have shared many examples of the power of paint over the years, and Brit's playroom update is yet another.  Paint had the ability to transform a dark and lifeless basement into a bright and exciting place for imaginations to run wild.  Well, paint paired with some thoughtful organization that is!

Brit blogs over at House Updated, where she shares many amazing home improvement projects that are sure to leave you inspired and ready to pull out a sledge hammer.  But there was no sledge hammer necessary for today's space.  Just some creativity, a little paint and a few great storage pieces and boom!  Playroom awesomeness.



What is the main function of this space?

"The main purpose of this space is to give our kids an area all their own to be creative, have fun, and really let loose with all their toys.  We want to make every square inch of our house work hard for our family and that includes adults and kids alike.  So we decided to use this corner of our basement as our kids' playroom."



Any superstar tips for keeping it organized?

"A couple of things that make it really easy to keep this space organized.  Both hidden storage to hide all those big, bright kid toys and large storage bins so we can just toss in the toys and go.  Also helpful are the shallow drawers for art and craft supplies and the tabletop storage for our markers and pencils - no more digging through deep drawers to find what we are looking for.  Using labels and organization really helps our kids do all the pickup - great for busy parents!"



What items did you find were essential when organizing the space, and why?

"Essential to organizing this space are the two separate storage areas - one for big things like toys and dolls and another area for smaller storage like art supplies.  Even more helpful to both of those spaces were labels for everything.  We love the chalkboard labels on the large bins which can be updated as our storage needs change and also our metal bookplate labels for the art drawers - who doesn't like to look at organized, pretty things?"





What did you do to go the extra mile and "Make it Pretty"?

"We are working on updating our whole house and didn't want to leave the basement as the only spot that we didn't 'prettify'.  We also wanted to have an area that our kids could be proud of and enjoy using.   Next to the playroom area is our movie watching spot, so it is especially nice for our family and our friends to see a pretty space when chillaxing with some popcorn and bevs."



What items did you DIY to stay on a budget?

"We did a lot of DIY projects in this space, including two Ikea hacks - one for the large storage unit with toy bins and the other for our art table.  Going the DIY route saved us quite a bit so we could splurge on things like a new rug and new kid sized chairs.  I also made the various chalkboards in the room from ConTact chalkboard paper and the kids use those all the time - much cheaper than store bought!"


How has this space impacted your life for the better?

"Our whole family has felt the positive impact of having a new playroom.  It is so great having a dedicated area for our kids' toys and our kids play in their playroom all the time.  Now that they can find their art supplies easily, they spend lots more time letting their inner artists shine.  Our whole family really enjoys spending time in a space that looks so fun and cheerful and stays clean and organized!  Also, all the use of color in this space has made me more excited to bring more color into other spots of our home.  Score one for color!" 




And to make this feature a little sweeter, here is the before and after we all love.



So charming right?  Look at the difference just painting that dated paneling made in the space!  From there, hacking the IKEA Expedit to create storage for toys big and small was quite a genius move.  And how about that craft station?  Organized and labeled drawers, easy to access supplies, a mini table and chairs.... instant crafting and creativity at a moment's notice.  Although the play area is open to an adjoining movie room, the rug grounds the entire space and creates a room within a room while also providing a soft place to play.

Fellow lovers of labels, are your drooling with me?  Bookplates work great on the craft cart while chalkboard allows for flexibility with the toys bins.  And can we talk about that adorable artwork display?  It not only adds whimsy to the space, but it encourages the little ones to reach for markers and paint.

Brit really did a great job seeing something in that previously dark nook of her home.  Her ability to tap into her inner kid and get creative allowed her to give her children a playful retreat to enjoy for years to come.

A warm thank you to Brit for sharing her space with us today!  If you are looking for more details, you can find her reveal on her blog here.


ATTENTION!!  Want to be featured in a Reader Space edition?  Have an awesome organizing story to share?  I am looking for projects that have made a positive impact to your life, big or small.  They can be anything from an organized drawer or cabinet to an entire room.  Please submit your story and photos to iheartreaderspace@gmail.com, and I would heart to feature them right here on the blog!!  Photos should be high resolution and unedited.  Please include a description of the project, including any costs, inspiration, and how it has changed your life and routine for the better!  Oh, and no worries my friends, we will NEVER judge "before" pictures because that just wouldn't be nice!  Only love goes on at this blog!

A clean home and an organized home typically go hand in hand.  And while you know that we love a good DIY around here, which even includes our household cleaning products, I know that homemade cleaners are not for everyone.  So for those looking to clean a little greener while leaving your home smelling fresh and invigorating at the same time, I am giving away something good.  Something real good!


The Good Home Co. not only takes great care to create unique home care and laundry products that work great and smell exceptional, but they are also committed to using cleaning surfactants that are biodegradable, vegetable based and phosphate free. 

The Good Home Co. believes that scent has the power to enrich our lives, and they use high quality fragrances and essential oils within their cleaning products.  Now, your home will not only smell naturally amazing, it will be amazingly clean!  This week, I am so lucky that I get to spoil one lucky IHeart Organizing reader with the following:

Floor Soap:  Good Home Beach Days Floor Soap is a sulfate-free floor soap that will gently clean & scent your floors.  Directions: Add two tablespoons per gallon of warm water and apply with a clean mop or sponge.  Safe for use on wood and tile flooring.  Can be used as a gentle all- purpose cleaner on cabinets and paneling.

Glass & Surface Cleaner:  Good Home Glass and Surface Cleaner can be used on almost any type of surface - including glass. It is made from all natural, biodegradable, vegetable based surfactants which are extremely gentle to use in your home, but also very good at cleaning. As you spray you will enjoy our light pleasing fragrance and no chemical smells.

Vacuum Beads:  Good Home proprietary Vacuum Beads® make vacuuming a pleasure.  Simply place 25 beads (about a small handful) in the vacuum bag or canister and vacuum away.  Not only will you be cleaning your home, but you will be releasing a fabulous fragrance in the air as well.  Will not harm carpets or leave behind dust residue like vacuum powders. Beads are strongly scented and will last until your bag or canister is full.

Dish Soap:  Good Home Beach Days Dish Soap is made from all natural, biodegradable, vegetable based surfactants. Not only is it gentle on the hands, but works hard at cleaning dishes.



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One of the glorious aspects of blogging, is connecting with people that you may never have been able to connect with otherwise.  I was recently virtually introduced to Emily of So Damn Domestic, and I realized that we fit together like peanut butter and jelly.  We both love finding ways to make our homes happier; and for us that usually involves simplifying, streamlining, organizing and finding cleaning shortcuts.  Emily shares her straight forward decluttering, organizing and cleaning advice on her blog, and I find her approach refreshing and exciting.  I invited her here today to share her top tips for simplifying now, which will save precious time everyday moving forward.



If you’ve been meaning to declutter and simplify, or if you’re on that path now, it’s probably because you’ve realized that excess is not just taking up space in your home.  Far from it.  It also sucks up any extra time you might have.  (And who really has “extra” time?  Not me.)

When you spend time washing extra things, moving things around to get to other items you need more, and organizing and reorganizing stuff you never have time to actually use, there’s not much time for anything else.

And I know you want that time back.

You don’t just want it back.  You need it back.  Because that’s the time you’re supposed to be using to make wonderful memories with your family, to pursue your dreams, to take care of yourself, and to engage in your favorite down-time activities.

So it’s time to pare down a bit.  Here are some things you can simplify NOW (whether it’s a block of time this weekend, or a little bit each day) so that you’ll be able to stop wasting time and have a few more hours for what’s really important in life.


Simplify NOW: Anything You Have to Launder

The Problem:  When we have more clothes, towels, sheets, cloth napkins, and anything else that needs laundering, it’s far easier to get behind on laundry.  And when that happens, it feels like we have piles of dirty clothes scolding us for not washing them, baskets of clean clothes guilting us for not folding them, and the machines beeping at us constantly.

The Solution: When we “edit” our collection to include only our favorite things and the essentials, we are forced to keep up with the laundry schedule.  And because our loads of laundry will be more frequent and smaller, they’ll be much easier and faster to fold and put away, too.

What to do NOW:  Go through your dresser and closet (and your kids’ clothes too) and toss the just-in-case stuff into a box for donation.  You know the stuff I mean.  This is the clothing you never really want to wear, given other choices, but you end up wearing now and then when you’re behind on laundry.  Don’t give yourself the opportunity to get behind.  Toss the insurance clothes.


Simplify NOW: Any Kitchen Excess

The Problem:  When we go into the kitchen to make a meal or even just to get a drink of water, any time we have to move extra junk to get to what we need, we are wasting our time.  And when we have too many of something (like drinking glasses), we tend to use more than we really need to.  Which means we have more dishes to wash.

The Solution:  If there’s another tool we have that can do the job, we can get rid of the unnecessary duplicates (I recently got rid of my trivets when I realized I always use kitchen towels for that purpose anyway).  We can keep track of our glasses and mugs instead of getting a new one for every sip, and if we need to wash them right away to use them for a different beverage, it only takes a minute.  If something is rarely or never used, we won’t miss it when we declutter it.  But we will love how simple it is to operate in the kitchen each day.

What to do NOW:  Start with your cooking utensils.  How many whisks do you really need?  How many spatulas?  Wooden spoons?  Et cetera.  Keep only a couple of each, and get rid of your least favorites.


Simplify NOW: Downtime Stuff

The Problem:  We think of ourselves as readers, as crafters, as woodworkers, or as photographers.  And before we know it, we find we’re surrounded by the stuff of those hobbies.  Cases full of books, drawers and bins of craft supplies and works-in-progress, wood scraps that have no plan or intended future, photography props and rolls of seasonal backdrops.  But when we let ourselves acquire so many things, we are forced to spend time maintaining those things.  Cleaning them, organizing them, storing them and cleaning the storage containers, and so on.  And before we know it, we have very few hours to actually use for those hobbies we supposedly value.

The Solution:  We just need to focus on one thing at a time.  We can borrow a book from the library and read it until we’re finished with it, then borrow a new one.  If we’re working on a painting, it should be our main project until it’s complete and hanging on the wall.  If we’re knitting a sweater, we don’t need to buy yarn for future projects yet.  If we build a piece of furniture, we can let go of the scraps afterward, knowing that we’ll buy the exact materials we need for the next project, when it’s time to focus on another one.  And we can simplify our photography props by keeping the 20% of them we use 80% of the time anyway, and letting the rest go.

When we spend less time maintaining extra hobby items, and focus on one project at a time versus juggling (and finding places to store) multiple unfinished ones, we’ll have more time to actually do those projects we always say we prioritize in our lives.

What to do NOW:  Gather all of your scraps for donation to your local school’s art class or a similar group that will actually use them.  Bits of wood, partial skeins of yarn, small pieces of fabric, leftover scrapbooking paper, and so on.  Also collect neglected DVDs, CDs, video games, and books to give to your library, a local children’s home, or another nonprofit where they’ll be used and enjoyed.

 
What now?

Reading about simplifying is well and good, but it won’t change your life unless you actually get up, throw open your closets, cabinets, and storage bins (not all at one time though), and make it happen.

I know you’re busy.  But the thing is, if you want some of your time back so that you can be less busy soon, you have to find time to simplify NOW.

Are you ready to take that first step?



Emily Chapelle is an expert homemaker, having set up six different houses in seven years of military moves.  She’s also the mother of two adorable curly-haired kids, wife to a Navy fighter pilot, and a former teacher, childcare provider, and nanny.  Now she works from home to spread encouragement and inspiration to other homemakers with a no-nonsense attitude and lots of tough love.  She blogs at So Damn Domestic.  Get her free eBook, Finding the Awesome: 3 Steps to Doing More & Stressing Less for more inspiration and guided, broken-down exercises to find your Awesome.

I have been thinking about creating a craft cabinet in our living room for awhile now.  I don't typically love messes, but one mess that always makes me happy is a crafty mess.  So, to encourage on-the-spot crafting I have added little buckets of markers and crayons around our home.  The remainder of our crafts were being stored in a storage container inside of a storage ottoman in our guest bedroom.  Unfortunately, being so tucked away was not encouraging enough painting and gluing and creating with the boys. 


In fact, I knew I was on to something earlier this week when I pulled those storage ottomans out into the living room to begin the craft cabinet transition.  It didn't take long for the boys to dig right in.


Inside of the ottomans, items were stacked and even snagging a simple piece of construction paper for a a school project was far more work than necessary.

Creating the cabinet wasn't rocket science by any means.  I sifted through all of their supplies, purged anything broken and dried out and put things where they would be easy for the boys to maintain.


When it comes to kids, they consistently remind me that the easier the system, the more likely they are to maintain it.  So, organizing for them means being flexible and relaxed and making sure everything is simple to access, and more importantly, simple to return.

A few containers with specific purposes like our sand bin and our play-doh bin as well as a caddy filled with glues, scissors, paints, brushes, colored pencils and markers all grace the shelves.   Everything is durable and portable and kid friendly.



The rest of their supplies like googly eyes and pipe cleaners and even some flashy sequins, are all tossed within a decorative box on the lower shelf.

The cabinet was working well, but after it was all set-up, strangely enough I started feeling a little... crafty!

So, I did what I love to do and added a little extra organizational fun.

The wooden crate you see there on the shelves, previously held a few random supplies and then sat empty {originally found at our local craft store}.  The boys and I thought it would be a good place to store their loom bands, but first it needed a little love.


So, I gave it two coats of stain, the stain was leftover from our bookcase update we did a few weeks back.


Once the stain was dry, I added in colored patterned paper at the bottom of each slot.


The colors correlated with the loom bands, which we all started dividing out as a family.


A few things received some washi tape lovin', like the lid of a mason jar holding beads.


And the fronts of a few magazine holders, which now hold construction paper and projects that the boys currently have in the works.



No organizing project would be complete without some good labels, so I turned to my trusty Silhouette die cutting machine.


I designed the labels in Silhouette Studio and printed them with my printer and then ran them through my Silhouette to cut them out of sticker paper.


Instant awesomeness.




We had an abundance of crayons so they were tossed into the old bead bucket once those were transferred to a mason jar.  The bead bucket label couldn't be removed, so I just covered it with more decorative paper.


All those quick and simple touches made the cabinet much more playful and colorful; much more "us".


Oh yeah!  And those new beautiful and shiny doors!  Well, they keep all of this crafty clutter nice and concealed.  The only thing about this project that is not concealed, is my smile.  Cheesy, I know.


Fingers crossed that this new setup will keep the creative juices flowing around here; especially with summer break right around the corner.

Good news for you fellow label-aholics!  Silhouette has a promotion going on with both of their machines and their special label making materials.  Just head here and enter ORGANIZING at checkout.

• 1 Printable Cotton Canvas
• 1 Vellum
• 1 Adhesive Washi Sheets
• 1 Printable Adhesive Kraft Paper
• 1 Stencil Material