January Cure: Bathroom Cabinets Cleanout

 Since our bathroom vanity does not have much extraneous space, awhile ago I had picked up an open storage box from Target to corral often-used products, which has helped keep good order (for the most part!) year-round. So the before and after here is hardly dramatic, except for the tragic loss of the lovely little lid on top of the crystal jar (which was a wedding gift and has been faithfully storing cotton balls and Q-tips ever since) - while lifting the jar to scrub the countertop, the lid wobbled off and smashed to pieces - causing a much bigger cleanup of the bathroom than I had initially expected!

The medicine cabinet also benefited awhile ago from re-purposed metal boxes which used to hold small miscellaneous office supplies on a big desk from our Mass. house, but no longer fit on the small desk in our apartment. A quick tidy-up here was all that was needed (and a few expired products that were tossed along the way!)

The under-the-sink-cabinet benefited from two upgrades - I borrowed a Target storage box from a kitchen cabinet (which had been holding a measly one spare lightbulb) and filled it with "spare" or not-used-as-often products, and added a command hook to the inside wall to hang up my hair dryer. Honestly, the command hook, simple as it was to add, has made a world of difference - no more pushing around cleaning chemicals to grab it at the back of the cabinet!

I included the medicine cabinet from the kitchen too and straightened that up a bit as well - now there's good storage space for first aid and medicine (as well as batteries, tools, wax tarts, and that one spare lightbulb!)

 So this challenge, quick and easy as it was, actually made the list, and I was happy with the results (unlike the deep-clean-your-kitchen-appliances challenge which for some reason I have not yet found the inspiration to get around to...)

January Cure: Set Up An Outbox

Today's task was to set up an "outbox", a physical storage space for items that you no longer need before deciding their ultimate destination - and put at least one item in the outbox.

OUTBOX RULES
1. Anything can go in the Outbox 
2. The Outbox is allowed to get messy 
3. Everything must stay in the Outbox for at least one week 
4. After that time you have several choices 
    a. Take anything back out 
    b. Leave anything you are undecided about for one more week 
     c. Dispose of the rest by moving to the garbage, recycling bin, selling, or giveaway pile. Once you get used to separating first and disposing of later, you'll find that clearing clutter gets easier and easier.

I have always had an unofficial "outbox" in my closet - a Target bag that I fill over time with clothes to be donated that don't fit well or that I rarely wear - and I really do find that if I am on the fence about a particular piece, if it sits in the "outbox" for awhile, I really do later feel that it's worth donating rather than keeping. So I am sticking with that system for clothing, and decided to create a new little zone for the rest of the house - I reused and labeled an empty storage box and placed it by the front door for miscellaneous household goods. Since moving out of our four bedroom house in Massachusetts into a much smaller one bedroom apartment in Washington, we have been pretty good at keeping up with the policy of donating/recycling/selling something if we bring a new "something" into the apartment - when we first moved across the country, our PODS container was already filled to the brim, so there is no room for more stuff for a future move! A bookcase I thought would be great that we brought from Mass. just couldn't fit anywhere in our new apartment and was Craigslisted instead, and several small things that either just didn't fit or were rarely used were donated instead.

I put the first objects in the outbox - several dead lightbulbs that had been stashed in miscellaneous drawers, awaiting a future recycle trip to Home Depot. An old laptop and computer base that are too big to fit in the outbox are also awaiting a recycle trip to Staples. And we are lucky to have a clothing and household goods donation bin in our apartment complex, and an eyeglasses and book/dvd/game donation box in our nearby library, making future donations a breeze.

January Cure: 10 Mindful Minutes

Today's task was to sit somewhere in the apartment and observe a space you would like to improve during the month. Turn off TV, radio, music and your phone - this is a quiet exercise and is most effective with focus and concentration.
1. Look around the room...recall what it was like when you moved in. 
2. Focus on whatever part of the room that you feel is the most problematic and imagine removing the "stuff" from that area - furniture, belongings, everything. Now, start rebuilding that area, adding back in only what feels right and looks good in your minds eye. 
3. Make note of what changes you envision and move forward with some additional clarity about how you truly want your home to be; what you need and what you can move forward without.

The focus of today's space was in the living room, where the bookcase to the left of our television is, and an area of dead space to the left of our balcony doors. We have been considering adding a small office space for Matt with a small desk to fit a laptop and chair, and contemplated moving the bookcase to the empty space by the balcony door and setting up the office space in place of the bookcase.

This is a feature that Matt has wanted for awhile, but we hadn't actually taken time to consider how it might best work or be arranged in our space, so it was nice to take a few moments to actually consider and plan what might be the best options for arranging the space in the living room - as well as establish a savings plan for a new laptop and desk for down the line! I'd like the laptop for on-the-go research projects, and Matt would like to use it for occasional side projects or the odd day that he gets to work from home, while I am working on our main computer simultaneously. There was recently a great sale on a budgeting program called You Need a Budget that we had heard excellent reviews about, so we have started to plug in all of our numbers, arranged bill payments, and set up savings goals for things big and small. It has been fascinating to use and really helpful!

January Cure: Weekend Chores: Flowers and Floors

This weekend's January Cure tasks were to:

• Buy flowers for your home
• Clean ALL of the floors
• Gather cleaning supplies for the month (eco-friendly if possible)

Flowers. I decided to cheat a little bit and count a new Christmas gift as the "flowers" for this weekend - $0 to the budget and it makes me smile every time I see it! This is a selection of succulents (grown locally) from my in-laws when we visited the Seattle Conservatory. They consist of: gasteria nitida, haworthia limifolia, huerniahislopii ssp. hislopii, and sempervivum (hen and chicks).The beautiful glazed pot was from local pottery Bruning Pottery in Snohomish, Washington. And the cactus soil and stones were from a fun and lovely garden store in Seattle - City People's Garden Store.

Floor Cleaning. A good sweep and mop of the kitchen and bathroom floors brought a nice shine to those rooms. I also swept the balcony which had accumulated some autumn leaves and spilled potting soil. Unfortunately the motor on our vacuum just died, so the bulk of the apartment's floors, which are covered in rugs, didn't get a good cleaning - although I did pick up the majority of the pine needles left over from the Christmas tree. Once our house is sold and our budget normalizes a bit, a new vacuum is first up on the list!

Gather cleaning supplies. Our cleaning supplies are easy enough to find - laundry supplies by the washer/dryer, bathroom supplies underneath the bathroom sink, and kitchen/general cleaners under the kitchen sink. Over the years we've tended to pick up "green" cleaners in general, though admittedly that's primarily due to the fact that many cleaning products and scented products tend to irritate my skin, although the environmental friendly nature of them is a nice bonus! We use non-scented laundry supplies, but my favorite scented cleaners are Mrs. Meyer's lavender and honeysuckle products. Matt for awhile has been wanting to try cleaning with vinegar, so he gave the washing machine a rinse with vinegar and water - and while during the run it made me hungry because the house smelled like salt and vinegar potato chips, the scent was gone by the end and did the trick!

The January Cure: Assignment #1

2014 has arrived! And this year I am following along with Apartment Therapy's January Cure and I'll be blogging my efforts here. We are in the process of selling our home in Massachusetts, so our Seattle area apartment soon will truly be our primary home. Therefore, it felt like a good time to well and truly make our apartment feel a bit more like a home - and along the way give it a good thorough cleaning and organization effort!

Assignment #1 was create a project list. "Do a walkthrough of your home and make notes on any trouble spots as you move through each room. It's easiest to organize your list by room... Start at the front door and do a thorough "inspection", noting each area or item that needs a good cleaning, a de-cluttering or a re-organization... select a few (3 - 5 is ideal) key areas from each room that you plan to focus on - the spots that will make the biggest impact on the look and use of the room as a whole when they are improved...."

Matt and I took a walkthrough our of small apartment (all 777 square feet of it) and came up with the following list (keeping in mind that not all of these projects are intended to be completed this month!):

ENTRYWAY.

• General de-clutter (ie find home for cacti planting supplies, winter wear, etc.)
• Create "drop zone" for keys and "heading out" supplies
• Organize shoe closet

KITCHEN.

• General cleaning of all surfaces and appliances
• Organize cookbooks and printed recipes
• Create better system for spare utensils and knives

BATHROOM.

• General cleaning of all surfaces and appliances
• Organize under sink
• Replace shower liner

LIVING ROOM.

• Organize bookshelves
• Organize DVDs and games
• Create office space for Matt (small desk and chair for laptop)
• Donate old laptop and old computer base

MARY'S OFFICE.

• Organize paperwork and supplies
• Digitize handwritten notes
• Add small table/shelf for additional storage (move side table from bedroom?)

BEDROOM.

• Obtain additional sets of sheets
• Organize under the bed storage
• Organize/digitize historical archives
• Organize/digitize current paper files
• Find artwork for room

BEDROOM CLOSET.

• Create better storage for Matt's gym clothes
• Obtain additional garment hangers for Mary's clothes

BALCONY GARDEN.

• General cleaning of surfaces (sweep, deadhead, clean wicker furniture and fountain, etc.)
• Organize spare pots and garden supplies

Checking off even some of this list should be a nice way to bring some "home" into "home sweet home" this year!