Cheap and Cheerful Closet update.......

I got the front hall closet decorated and put back together over the weekend.  We normally put custom closet organizers in our closets, but don't have the funds for that at the moment, so did a cheaper alternative to tide us over, for well under $10.

This is the closet painted.  When the colour first went on, it reminded me of a nasty dirty diaper.  It dries a lot darker and the colour grows on you...thank goodness!

Here is the finished closet.  It is not only a place to store our coats and shoes, but also where some of my cleaning things go, so it does double duty:

To try and tidy up the things I put on the shelves, we got a five pack of clear plastic tubs and some "chalk board" label's from Michael's.

 Not sure if you can see, but my bill came to $9.12 and that included a couple of buttons.

 The chalk board labels are great as you can erase the writing as long as you use the chalk or chalk based pens, like I have for my chalk board.

 So when you are happy with your writing just pop the label on the box.  Try not to tear it like I did!

Those chalk board labels are a new to me thing, that I think I will incorporate in other places in the house.  Have you discovered anything new to you for the house recently?

I am so behind in visiting people's blogs at the moment, so please forgive me.

KonMari method anyone?

On Frugal Queen's blog on Thursday she was talking about the KonMari method of folding.  Personally I had no idea what so ever what she was talking about.  So I watched the You Tube video that she posted with interest:




As I am still sick and most things tire me out, I thought an hour of t-shirt folding wouldn't kill me.  Here is the before and after photos.

Before:

After:

Took me all of 20 minutes to sort them out and fold them and I have a lot of extra space; plus I can see things better.

She has a book called: The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up by Marie Kondo   

Did you know there is even a You Tube video on how to fold your socks correctly?

I was quite surprised at how many organizational videos there were on You Tube.  I quite liked this one.



Saw this article on Facebook on 37 Clever Ways To Organize Your Entire Life With Ikea it's quite good and interesting.

All I need to do now is do these things.  Are you organized?

New Years Day - time to get back to normal.........

By that I mean take down all the Christmas decorations and move everything back to it's original place.  I really need to have a clean out of Christmas decorations as I don't use a number of them, but am not sure what to do with them?  Who buys Christmas decorations?

I also cleaned out our medicine cabinet and now have a bag full of medications that are out dated.  I will drop them off at our pharmacy next time I am passing and they will dispose of them safely.

I also put up our new calendar in the kitchen and transferred all the important dates from one calendar to the other.

A couple of weeks ago a friend was cleaning out her china cabinet and gave me a couple of her vases.  Neither are that old but are lovely and will remind me of her forever.

Had hoped to have a no spend day on Sunday as I never left the house all day, but ended up spending $5 on shipping and handling on a magazine subscription I paid for earlier on in December.

I ended up getting a two year subscription for Canadian Living for $24 plus $5 shipping. 

Buddy Friday - Homemade and home grown is the best....

I mentioned the other day that my dad had made me a set of book shelves from some old barn board we had on the property. I finally got them varnished, I put three coats on them and they look smashing.

So on Thursday I set about filling them. This is what they looked like before I started to fill them up:

This is the side of them, my dad made them fancy.

This is my best friend "Dolly," without her I wouldn't have been able to cart all the books up from the basement. "Dolly," is my second best friend after the lawn tractor and trailer.

I had seven boxes of books to unpack.

Here is the after, all my books neatly sorted. I even unpacked a box of ornaments, and put some on the top shelf.

I dug up a potato top for supper and picked some more raspberries, I make mini Pavlova's with them, using individual meringue bases, raspberries and fresh cream.........they are yummy!!

So basically what I am saying I am lucky to have a dad who can build such lovely furniture and I am lucky I can go into the garden and harvest such lovely fruit and vegetables.

For more Buddy Friday posts, pop over to Margaret's Ramblings