Effective organising - part two

With the upcoming holidays there will definitely be a large amount of chores to do. Of course some of us are not happy with it, but the fact is that some things still need to be done. If you're able to make things easier in some way and not to create additional clutter, that can help a lot. Effective organization of space is one of the ways.

I've already written about more efficient organizing of drawers, whether with clothing, whether with jewelry, and I was also delighted by this great idea of storing balls.

How to avoid rolling lids

This time I want to share with you one, in my opinion brilliant, idea how to effectively store the lids.  

Before I tried this method, my lids were cluttering everywhere. I tried to stack them in pots, but then I could not put pots one in the other (result: lack of space for all the pots). I tried to lean them against the wall, which usually resulted in falling lids, or the fact that it was difficult to reach them. And then I stumbled upon this idea. And just as it is often said in the commercials, my life has changed for the better :) I remembered I have one horizontal CD rack that has never been used for that purpose, so I pulled it from the bottom of a (cluttered) drawer and just in a few minutes, all the lids sat in place. No more falling, hunting for the rolling lid, no more noise which could even wake up a child in a neighboring house, no stunts aimed at retrieving the lid from a remote corner of a cabinets or a shelf.

Depending on what kind of kitchen space you have, the lids can be organized in many different ways:

1) in a basket of old dishwasher (I still use my first dishwasher, so I've never been able to try it)

Source: inthiscrazylife-bethany.blogspot.com.au

2) on the towel bar attached to the inside of the cabinet doors or drawers





3) storing in special shallow drawers





Similar principles can be applied to storing frying pans, muffin tins or casserole dishes







Caught in desire to organize efficiently? Look here for more awesome ideas.

       

Cardboard boxes as a toy cupboard

We have had a little kitchen as my girl's favorite toy for some time now, and they have accumulated a remarkable collection of dishes. Therefore, our little kitchenette became too small to store it all, so when I saw this idea , I immediately knew what will be my next craft. I made my own, simpler version. I just took the boxes in which I get groceries delivered (I have already blogged about these boxes) I pasted them with some glue and washi tape. My first result looked like this:

It turned out great for storing dishes and other kitchen-related toys, but aesthetically, it was not appealing enough. When I used scraps of gift wrapping paper, it looked much better.

                                                     


And here is the final result:

I strongly recommend stiffer cardboard, because the small hands like to hang on the shelves.

Except the background, can you notice some other difference between the first and the last picture? Little hands could not wait for mom to take all her photos, so they were constantly taking dishes off shelves :)      

P.S. I was featured on "My repurposed life", I recommend you to click and take a look on some awesome projects by dear blogging colleagues. 

Use boxes and have an organized home

Every pregnant woman swears she will not overwhelm her home with kid's stuff, but that quickly changes when the baby comes. I remember one of the first times when the patronage nurse visited us, she looked at our living room and joked saying: " A full house of the baby! " and it was really true. The room was full of diapers, cosmetics, spare clothes, strollers have been pushed to the side, a car seat stood  under the table .... Of course, after a while you learn to organize and just when you do that, your baby outgrows what you have managed to organize.

The boxes are the key of successful organization

So I realized I should find a system that will generally apply to babies and children of all ages. After a long time, and a lot of trying, I realized that the most effective system is the one that includes boxes, preferably those that can be carried with one hand (because your baby is in the other ;)) so you can easily carry things (for example, the outdoor toys). Supermarkets and shops like a Dollar Tree offer a large selection of boxes in various sizes and with various purposes, so it's not hard to find something that would suit you best. If you're like me, and you like to recycle, use something that you already have - like a box of diapers. Personally, I mostly use the boxes in which I have my groceries delivered (ordering groceries online is a great time saving for any mom, but I'll  blog about it some other time), because they have holes on both sides and therefore are easily transmitted. If you are uncomfortable with the logo on such boxes, you can wrap it in some gift-wrapping paper (a good idea how to recycle those scraps and wrapping leftovers which you are too sentimental to waste), but I'm not doing it though because I know my kids would tear it fast, so that would be of no use to me.

They are also very useful because they don't have a lid, so in this way a child sees what's in the box, and this makes decluttering easy since you can just pop in things. Of course, the system is most effective when the child cooperates in this chore, but it depends on the child's age, so you can hope to it, some time around the third birthday.

Labels on boxes

In order to make cleaning easy for a child, the labels on the boxes are a great help, especially those with pictures, because then you can use them even with the preschoolers, who still can't read. The tags from this link have been a great help to me.

source: confessionsofaslackermom.com

These labels are sufficiently large and contain a large number of different toys, for the both, girls and boys, so I'm sure that everyone can use them. Of course, I am sure you do not own each type of these toys in sufficient quantity so they would need a box of their own. For example, we keep dolls and Barbies in a single box, common for this two type of toys. Cars, trains and trucks are also in one common box, which means a total of two, not five separate boxes. However, it is better to take pictures of a child's own toys, those which truly are in the boxes, so that a child, especially a younger one, could associatively link a toy and the box itself.

Boxes as a way of cleaning up .... everything!

Of course, the boxes are excellent for organizing the other things in the household, as well. My dear friends lent me some photos of their homes. Isn't it wonderful to open the drawer and immediately know exactly where each thing is? Without tangled necklaces and mismatched earrings! On the photo below you can see a great organizing solution from a friend of mine, which includes a recycled candy box for tiny pieces of jewellery.

The boxes are a great thing for the shoe storage as well. It is best if you keep them in the original box, but it is also good to write which shoes are in it. You'll save time that would otherwise be spent on finding them and cleaning the mess you made while searching. ;)