New Years Organising Revolution - Week 2

This post is part of an organising contest that I'm participating in through I'm an Organizing Junkie.  Please vote for me from Friday - it's the one labelled "39 Trifectagirl". Thank you!!

I missed week one.  I'd planned to work on my desk, but that just got a bit too much last week.

This week the challenge area is the kitchen, so I chose to organise my utensils drawer.   I had sorted through my counter-top caddies just after the kitchen renovations, but not tackled the drawer yet.

I've had a pretty good double decker drawer divider/utensil holder for a number of years, so organising in this case was simply a case of 'empty, purge and allocate a home for what's left'.

My starting point was this jumbled hodge-podge mess. 

J loves pulling things out of this drawer, so I had already removed most of the knives (but I happened to find a few I'd forgotten about at the bottom of the pile).  I found multiple citrus zesters, pizza cutters, items I have no idea what they are, a chestnut cracker and 3 carving forks over and above my grandmother's good set.

I grouped things together, such as salad servers, useful but not used often (on the bottom rack!), skewers, spatulas and measuring spoons and long or chunky items. 

 

The top layer is things like can openers, garlic press, microplane and peelers.  Since finishing this and cooking a meal, I've done a bit of tweaking putting the microplane to the side and the nutmeg/ginger grater fits at the front of the divider.

 

 

I've decided I need to get one of these dividers from my cutlery drawer.  I'm using the moulded one that came with the kitchen, and realised tonight after doing this sort out that there is a bunch of wasted space in the existing set-up.

In the drawer I worked on, and my top one, I found a bunch of tea and hot chocolate items, so I bundled them together and have stored them in a glass mug with the tea and teapots. 

One thing I stumbled on in the drawer was a tea-bag squeezer, which I had forgotten I had.  I've stored this in the jar of teabags that sit on a lazy susan on my bench with the rest of my every-day coffee/tea making things.

This was a pretty quick project - if I'd not also done 2 loads of laundry and folded them, I'd have achieved the sort and this post while J was doing this:

Things I've Been Meaning to Do - 2013 plan

Previously I've done monthly 'Things I've been meaning to do' posts, and since I found them really useful to keep me moving on all those things I've been meaning to do, I'll resurrect them for 2013.

This list are things I've been meaning to do in some cases for years that I'd like to knock off in 2013.  Many of these I can set smaller goals during the year on a month by month basis to get them done.

• Make photo books of the photos I have of my mum and step-dad.  I've got piles of baby and childhood photos, so I'd like to get them organised and published into photobooks.  Only been on the list for 4 years or so.
• Finish J's baby cross-stitch.  He's nearly 2.  I need to get it done. I don't want it to be like the table cloth my mother started crocheting when she was pregnant with my sister in 1976.  It was left unfinished when she passed in April 2008.  By unfinished, there is one square to finish and and two to connect to the tablecloth!
• Sort through my filing cabinet.  This is just a general maintenance task that needs to be done, but something I tend to avoid.
• Sell the stuff I've been planning to sell for ages - some of this also dates back 4 years. 
• Tidy up the couch grass in my yard.  It's invaded the garden beds and since I have good edging, I really should get in and clean it up.  This will be a winter job when the ground is hopefully softer. 
• Re-paint all the trim around the outside of the house, a job that is well, well overdue.  I may use this as an opportunity to update the look.

I'm sure I'll come up with other things.

*The montly 'Things I've Been Meaning to Do' originally came from I'm A Lazy Mom.

New Years Organising Revolution

Some of my online friends have pinned/blogged etc about this link-party, and it looked interesting so I'm going to give it a go.  It's not a blog I currently read, so will add it to the collection. 

I've started sorting through some of the non-sentimental of Mr Trifectagirl's things (training calendars, manuals for long-gone electronic equipment and the like), so this will help with that process.  As I clear, I can re-organise the space.

Kitchen Renovation: Done!

After a long-ish lead up, finally, I have plenty of storage in my kitchen!! 

We started with a blank canvas - and crowded benchtop

Then my Dad help add some paint (Dulux Shimmer)

And a couple of weeks ago I got the cabinets installed:

 

 

 

Since these photos were taken, I've had the electrical work finished, got things put away and done a little decorating higher up.

And already the bench is cluttered again! 

Kitchen Rennovations Update

Two weeks and I'll have extra storage!!!

Getting quotes from other trade suppliers (sparky, plasterer and security system company) caused a bit of a delay in getting approved plans and deposit back to the cabinet makers.  I didn't want to book in the cabinetry without knowing the full cost of the project.  Especially since the sparky will cost a bit more than I was anticipating.

I have painting to get done still, but by the end of the month I'll be able to get an awful lot of stuff off my bench tops and have a neater looking kitchen.  Plus I'll have a reason to pull everything out of the existing cupboards and do a de-clutter.

And I'll have my practical power point, just in time to plug in my stand-mixer for the bulk of my Christmas baking!!

Eat the Freezer Month

When I moved into my house, one of the first things I bought was a second hand upright freezer.  We managed to find the same model that my dad has (and must have had through a lot of my child hood), and they're both still going strong.

One blog I read, The Year of Less, does a 'month' as part of their move to a simple life.  Last month was 'eat your pantry' month.  This month the writer is reading a particular passage of scripture each day.  They also do daily activities tossing excess hand whisks, plastic storage containers and sorting through clothing - you know, those things with the inexplicable ability to multiply like rabbits in your cupboard when you're not looking.

My pantry is ok (mental note: check supplies for Christmas baking...),  but my two upright freezers really need to be emptied. 

Yesterday I defrosted the inside freezer.  The outside one is newer and thankfully doesn't need defrosting.

And once again I decided that I really, really need to knock down the contents.  I do this every time I defrost.

Some of the contents was tossed due to freezer burn, but I have a lot of ready made meals, or partially made meals in there. 

And broad beans I froze from the garden last year.  This year's crop is already close to picking.  Prombles*.

Since J and I ate the soup that defrosted yesterday as it was well and truly stuck with frost that I had no choice but to let it defrost along with the freezer, I figure an 'eat your freezer month' is in order.

Hopefully I can then consolidate to one freezer, and bring the newer non-frosting one inside and put the frosting one outside as the back-up.

So the plan is to use in a meal at least one thing from the freezer a day for October. 

*this spelling is intentional.  A long-standing joke from a friend's English teacher mum who had a student once write 'I have prombles with my spelling'.

Father's Day Gift Box

Yesterday evening, Father's Day, I started clearing out the boxes I finally retrieved from the storage lock-up.  The plan is to chip away at it by doing a couple of boxes a week.

Of course the first one I open contained Mr Trifectagirl's day-planners, which also operated as a very sporadic journal. 

Since they go back to the early 1980s (including some school diaries!!) they're something I can't ditch.  At least not yet.  There's too much of him in there that will be useful for J to know his dad.

I also have a project idea brewing, but it will be a time-intensive one.  And is simply added to the end of the queue of project ideas I wish to undertake.

So much for the plan of going through and getting rid off stuff. At least box #2 was more successful on that side - I didn' keep anywhere near as much of that.

I like that I made this discovery on what would have been Mr Trifectagirl's 2nd Father's Day.  It wasn't really a sad moment, but a heartwarming one. 

Renovations

One thing that has been driving me nuts pretty much since Mr Trifectagirl moved in to my house is the lack of storage in the kitchen. Particularly since we both suffer from serious cases of 'ohhh new kitchen gadget'.  His was worse than mine. 

Since late last year, we've been working on getting quotes to get some cabinetry retro-fitted into the kitchen to add more hidden storage and get the microwave off the bench top.  That's the bare minimum we've (well I'VE) wanted done.  I'm getting a second option quoted, too.  But I'm suspecting that will be way out of reach financially.

We hadn't had much success getting anyone to actually give us figures.  We had a few people measure, but they never got quotes to us. 

Thankfully the company that manufactured and installed the original cabinets had left a sticker inside one of the drawers, and they came out to quote today.  With any luck, I'll actually have a quote in a couple of weeks.

Dangerous and unsentimental

Mr Trifectagirl with his cardiac issues was on a plethora of drugs.  Since he passed, one thing I've been wanting to do is get them out of the house - they're pretty dangerous.  Particularly with a curious monkey of a 17 month old running (ummm climbing) all over the place.

They were stored in a kid-proof medicine box, but I knew I'd be far more comfortable with them completely out of the house.   

I finally felt up to that task last week.  I also cleared out my out of date meds such as uncompleted courses of antibiotics and even some drugs left over from the pregnancy.

I took the safest method of disposal - took them to the pharmacy for them to dispose of.  Much safer than dumping them down the loo.

My niece (step-mum's granddaughter) has started a bridging course to get into university this week, so I've also handed over some of the stationary stockpile Mr Trifectagirl had accumulated.  It's unsentimental stuff, and he'd be thrilled to be helping her in her studies in a small way.