Recently I signed up to participate in the Ultimate Blog Swap. Today is the day, and you’ll find me posting over at Living the Balanced Life about my obsession with time, and how this obsession can be good thing AND a bad thing – So sad. That site doesn’t exist anymore. Sorry!. Here at A Slob Comes Clean, I’m welcoming Amy from Resourceful Mommy.
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I’m so honored to be guest posting today at A Slob Comes Clean because I am a natural born slob descended from a long line of slobs. We are all just one deranged gene away from hoarders, and we specialize in clutter and piles. My mom is a magazine and mail pile creator, I am a big fan of kids’ craft piles, and my grandmother was a clothing piler. Give her a staircase and she could block it.
The irony is that shortly after I began blogging at Resourceful Mommy, I created the Resourceful Living section with organization and other resourceful tips to make day to day life easier. Any time I find something that works in my crazy cluttered house, I can’t help but share it with my readers. Each organization skill that moves me away from my dubious past is like a tiny treasure, a chink in the armor of my own slobbery. I love to share my occasional triumphs, like the day I found my dining room table (it’s since been re-lost) and the day I figured out how powerful lists can be when used around the home.
While I’m not always resourceful, I do have my moments, so I’m happily sharing my favorite Resourceful Living tips from the past three years with all of you here at A Slob Comes Clean!
Tip 1: Turn shelves into drawers with bins – I have found that the various bottles and containers in my pantry, medicine cabinet, and hall closet really are more suited for drawers than shelves. However, converting closets into pull out drawers can be costly or even impossible. By purchasing inexpensive bins of various sizes, I was able to make my shelves function more like drawers, thus making those tiny eye drop containers or packs of q-tips easier to find.
Tip 2: Organize drawers with boxes – Are you sensing a theme? When given a wide open space like a large drawer or a shelf, I tend to lose things, especially little kid socks, underwear, tights, and camis. I used old children’s shoeboxes, just the right size, to tame the craziness of my daughter’s top dresser drawer. A year and a half later, it still works!
Tip 3: Use bed lifts to create storage space – While I get that it’s a little cliché for a pack rat to hide things under the bed, this trick actually works wonders! Every child has an exponentially growing collection of plastic toys, none of which fit neatly on a shelf or even in a toybox. However, if you create more room under the bed by using inexpensive bed lifts, you suddenly have exactly the right size/shape storage space you need! Just don’t forget to give the dust bunnies a heads up that they need to move along…
Thank you so much for letting me visit A Slob Comes Clean! I hope to see you all at my normal hang out, Resourceful Mommy.
Go check out all of the blogs involved in the Ultimate Blog Swap over at Blogging Your Way!
Virginia (Jenny) says
I love it and I have been beginning to see the importance of what you are talking about. I don't do well with wide open spaces either.
Jenny says
I find another good place to use boxes is in the fridge. They are great for storing all those little bottles and jars of condiments, salad dressings, sauces, marinades, etc. that always seem to get lost and forgotten in the back.
I have two boxes in my fridge, one on the bottom shelf for taller bottles, and one in the middle for shorter ones. Not really well sorted, but good enough for me.
Now when you are looking for one of these things, you just have to pull out the box and look through that, rather than dig around in the back of the fridge, pulling other things out in the process.
Ideally when you were done with that condiment, it would go back in the box. However, what actually happens is once a week or so, I go through the fridge and put everything back into the boxes.
It really makes for both a neater looking and, more importantly, more useful fridge
Anonymous says
Did you know they make risers for couches now too? I have one. I have an under the bed box under my couch.
Sabrina says
Here’s where real life comes in and we all have to do what works for us: I was so excited to find two sets of bed risers at garage sales. My kids beds are too low to fit an under bed box, so theirs were the plan. Set them up, used extra fabric drawers, fit perfectly! I tried to wiggle the beds, seemed highly sturdy, I was satisfied and proud!
About a week later, the boy (2 at the time) had managed to put a HOLE in the wall somehow with his bed, which was now being pinned into place in the (almost perfectly sized) nook it is located in. Their beds are used-to-be-cribs-toddler-beds, so the wooden fancy top of the side just went through the wall. Glad he didn’t kill himself (or do that to his sister’s, which wouldn’t have ended so well). The risers went that day, and the drawers won’t work. Lesson learned (but I still have to get the hole patched – the boy likes to make his sister cry by throwing her stuff in the wall. But I have to get all that stuff out first, right?)