Operation: Get Organized.

There are some things in life where I am not an individual. I jump on the bandwagon, follow other's leads and don't think on my own.

New Year's Resolutions happens to be one of those areas. January comes and I am all about doing just as everyone else is doing: starting to work out and get organized.

I haven't really made much progress as far as the working out goes, but I'm doing pretty good with getting organized! We came back from the holidays with our families and still had a few days off of work, so I set out to purge some items around the house. One of the first places I started with was a few key junk drawers. {Yes, a few. Not proud but true.} I wasn't thinking ahead to take befores, plus I might be too prideful to post them, but here are some bad iPhone afters.

{top left} In the kitchen: I threw away a lot of the pens/markers/junk that we had and consolidated our office supplies, plus put in this little container to keep them all together. I rubberbanded extras together so they are more controlled.

{top right} this is one of my drawers in our dresser. it was overloaded with stuff. {y'all, I found over $75 in shopping gifts cards I had no idea were in there.} now it only has boxes and bags for special jewelry and will hold my tights, but they are currently drip drying right now!

{bottom left} this is the middle drawer in our dresser. anytime we think we've lost something, this would be the first place we look. I threw away receipts and many different odds and ends. I added this small tubs to make it easier for us to distinguish what really goes in there. {if you ever break into our house, this is where we keep the goods: our restaurant gift cards! :}

{bottom right} this is a piece of furniture in our living room that was really full of a whole lot of nothing. I threw papers away, stored what needed to be saved, put pictures up in their proper place and now have a new empty drawer! we may eventually use this for something, but I really hope to keep it empty.

Junk drawers no more!

My next project is what I'm most proud of. Back right after I had Griffin and we had family staying with us, this pile of stuff {mail, coupons, etc} started on our hutch. It was helpful because I knew where to go look for something if I needed it but kept the clutter from being all over our house. The problem was that it just kept growing and growing and growing. Instead of sorting through the items and dealing with them like the needed to be, I just kept stuffing things over there.

I was finally fed up with the mess, so I found an easy way to tackle it. I bought clear sleeves that hold papers in 3 ring binders and started sorting: one binder is for special keepsakes {notes, pictures, momentos} that I don't want to part with; one binder is for all household items {warranty information, insurance letters, proof of donations, receipts for work we had done on the heater, etc.}; and the last binder  is for personal items {medical receipts, pay stubs, etc.}


I bought a package of 50 sleeves and divided them up between the 3 so that when I have something new to file, I already have them in there and it takes me 2 seconds to get it taken care of. I'm not one to spend a lot of time being organized. I got our first item for taxes on Friday and immediately put it into the household folder. Easy peasey and we'll know exactly where to look when it comes time to file our taxes!

I know some people use a small filing cabinet for a system like this and someday I'm sure we'll work up to that. Right now though, I wanted a quick, cheap solution and all I had to pay was $3.50 for the sleeves. I am happy with how this turned out and so thankful that pile of junk is gone!


So that's how I spent the last few days of my holiday! It may totally be totally cliche to reorganize at the New Year, but there's a reason people do it: it feels so good to get your clutter under control!


Linking up with The Francis Family for  The Dog Days Of Winter... check out all of the organization tips shared today!