Year of Organized Living- Garage Make-over

When my parents bought our home in 1977, the previous owners had used the garage as a play room for their twin daughters. The walls were painted bright pink and the floor was covered in pebble textured red tile. Over the years, the pink paint faded and the tiles chipped off.

Last year, prior to moving back into my house, we took the first step to our total garage make-over. We had painters come in and replace the tile floors with epoxy. They painted the walls a white-grey color to match the floor. Dan installed rows of super bright lights. The idea was to keep the garage clean and an unwelcoming place for bugs.

After nearly a year, we have finally finished the garage with the addition of new shelves and a workstation for Dan. It's an organization paradise!

Here are some before pictures of the garage.

Dan bought a whole bunch of cupboards for my side of the garage, before he bought his own workstation set-up. I love my new cupboards and have somehow managed to still have available storage space in them. It helped organize a lot of stuff that was cluttering the interior of our home.

A few weeks after getting my cupboards, we went to the Orchard Supply Hardware store in Burbank, so that Dan could pick out his Gladiator workstation. This was our first experience with Orchard and we couldn't have been more impressed.

The staff was incredibly friendly and helpful from greeting us at the door to processing our order. We saved money with a "We Pay the Tax" promotion that they had over Memorial Day weekend. We also joined their free rewards program that gives us a portion of what we spend back in the form of a gift card. They really sealed the deal, when they gave us free assembly on all of our giant cabinets, usually a fee of around seventy-five a piece. We saved hundred of dollars at Orchard.

After all of our troubles with multiple local Home Depot locations, we are now loyal Orchard and Lowes customers. We don't even mind that Lowes and Orchard are a further drive as we never plan to shop at Home Depot again. Never!

Delivery day came and Dan was very excited to get his new workstation.

Dan with the first big pallet off of the truck.

And there was more....

I really never imagined that the garage could look so nice and be so organized. The Gladiator system has tracks for the walls where Dan mounted various hooks and baskets to hold all of our gadgets. Everything is off the floor and in its proper place.

Dan's new work bench and cupboards look fantastic. Naturally it's his "man-cave", so I can look, but not touch! I'm just happy that he got his tools out of our pantry and now I can use that space for food storage. Organizing the garage directly impacted the organization of our kitchen. I'm loving it!

My Pill Problem

Pilling is a problem. It can turn a beautiful sweater into a sloppy mess. It makes me look crazy, as I can't stop myself from playing with the little balls, trying to pick them off while wearing the sweater. So far, I've not found a great solution to my pill problem.

Last week, I was standing in the check-out line at Bed, Bath and Beyond, when I found a new product to try by Hollywood Fashion Secrets. The Hollywood Fashion Secret Company makes another product that I swear by, Hollywood Fashion Tape.

I have a closet filled with outfits desperate for an opportunity to surprise me with a wardrobe malfunction and the fashion tape is my first line of defense. It keeps everything in place. I highly recommend it.

When I saw that the sweater saver was made by Hollywood Fashion Secrets it made me decide to give it a shot.

I picked a favorite, old sweater to test the product on. The test sweater is a cheap one from the Gap, but I love the cornflower blue color and the boatneck fit. I've had it for years. Unfortunately, it has always had a pilling problem, covering the entire sweater in small darker blue balls with every wash.

The Sweater Saver is a pumice stone. I could be wrong, but it seems even more porous than an average pumice stone, so I'm not sure if just buying any old pumice stone would yield the same results.

The directions say to lightly rub the stone over the garment. At first, I rubbed too lightly, afraid of hurting the sweater. It probably depends on the material, but this sweater took a rather rough rubbing before I saw the pills captured in the stone.

It worked!

I was happy with the results, although it was a bit time consuming. It would have taken about fifteen minutes to do a great job on the entire sweater. The pumice stone easily crumbles, leaving a fine layer of black dust, that luckily,came off of the sweater with ease. I don't think that I would attempt to use it on more delicate fabrics, like my cashmere, however, it's great for less expensive pieces.

The packaging states that it can be used on opaque tights. I have a whole box full of pilling opaque tights that need some TLC.

The product was less than six dollars, a worthy investment.

It's time to Spring clean that winter wardrobe. I plan on a day of wardrobe maintenance, including washing, de-pilling and storing all of my sweaters until fall.

The Year of Organized Living- Martha Stewart Edition

A few weeks ago, Dan and I acquired a few organization tools from Staples. We had a coupon and browsed the Martha Stewart collection of office supplies. She has some great stuff that is not only cute, but very functional. I made a mental check-list for more things that I would like to purchase in the future.

Sadly, we are on a limited budget, so we walked out with two items.

The first resolved a big problem. We didn't have a good place for incoming mail. The mail sat in little piles all over the living room and we only dealt with it when the situation got out of control. This created unacceptable clutter. Our solution was this Martha Stewart Letter Pocket that now hangs on our wall, beneath our key holder. It's a visual reminder of the mail and so far, we have been much better with properly filing documents, paying bills and throwing out junk. It has been an indispensable organizational tool.

Our second problem is dinner time. We often fail to plan dinner and this means of course, that we have created a plan to fail. It has led to loads of eating out and unhealthy choices. Admittedly, right now we have a lot going on and most nights, one of us is out of town. However, I'm hopeful that things will calm down in the near future and we can use this board to plan meals for the week, helping us stick to a grocery budget and a healthy eating plan, together as a team.

Our Martha Stewart week board. Unfortunately, it's not magnetic, so we used our magnet collection to hold it up. Please don't judge the meal choices or messy writing!

The week board has a sticky back, but we didn't want to make anything gummy, so we used our magnet collection to hold it up. It made a cute frame of all of our vacation memories. We also had to buy the dry erase markers separately.

I'm trying to figure out a use for the Martha Stewart labels and tags, because I think that they are so adorable. If I can justify their use, they will be purchased the next time we are at Staples. I'm thinking maybe for closet and kitchen organization. There is still so much to be done in the house!