A mama with ideas...

My kids are no different to many others, in that they have an inability to hang the hand towel back up when they have washed their hands! It is often to be found damp, and scrunched up on the counter...




...on the stool...




...or, even on the floor!




It is something that easily adds to the untidiness that creeps up unannounced every day in my house. How it happens in such a short period of time, I'll never know! One minute, peace reigneth and everything is in its proper place. Then, BOOM!... you blink, and everything that's not bolted down has been strewn across the house. Sigh.

And therein lies the solution to the problem. If the towel was literally 'bolted down' it could not be dumped on the counter/floor!

You will need...

• a wall-mounted towel rail
• a hand towel
• 2 x sew on snap fasteners
• cotton in a coordinating colour to your towel and a needle

Fold a portion of the towel up.  You may wish to measure this on your towel rail so that there is enough room for the towel to hang and still be used.




Sew the 'male' halves of the snap fasteners to two corners of one of the short sides of the towel.







Line up the 'female' halves of the fasteners so that they are level with each other at the point you folded the towel to.  Sew them on.




Drape the towel over the rail and snap the fasteners together.







Done.

You can then easily remove the towel for laundering but it stays put while the kids dry their hands!  If you'd rather, you could use sew-on velcro instead! 

I have waxed lyrical about my obsession with Pinterest before... but it's really starting to become a problem. I am getting dissatisfied with perfectly functional areas of my home because they don't have perfectly coordinated accents and creative & ingenious storage solutions. The thing is, that functional does not equal pretty.

Take my laundry room slash cloakroom slash downstairs bathroom. It is what I like to refer to as an organised mess. There is:

• a cupboard above the washer & dryer to store cleaning supplies. Check.
• a row of hooks for coats & bags. Check.
• storage shelving for shoes. Check.
• a basket for dirty laundry and a basket for clean laundry. Check, and check.

But it's still a mess and quite frankly an eyesore. Unfortunately, this utility room opens directly from my open plan kitchen and dining area so everyone gets to see it. It is also where our downstairs toilet it is located, so most visitors need to actually venture in there. Cue embarrassed me. So after a recent depression-inducing browse through Pinterest, I decided to something about it. I felt there was no harm borrowing ideas from the grand schemes displayed by people with A, lots more money than me; B, no kids; and C, domestic help!!! I would just adapt them to suit my budget and lifestyle! :-)

Firstly, I took stock of what I had in this area and made an inventory of the things that needed storing and a list of activities/functions that the room had to serve. I employed this strategy recently when organising my kitchen junk drawer. While I call the area a laundry room, it is in fact much more than that. Functions carried out in the area include: laundry & ironing; storage of coats, hats & scarves, umbrella, bags & shoes; storage of cleaning supplies & equipment; storage of DIY items such as lightbulbs, flashlights etc... It is also where the washbasin for the downstairs bathroom is located!

Ultimately, what I needed was storage that worked! The biggest investment was replacing the wire cube shelving with some cupboards from the Stuva range from Ikea. I chose these because they are sturdy, well built and spacious, allowing laundry baskets to be stored on the shelves comfortably.

However, they are also not one-trick ponies! They are actually a range designed to be used as furniture in a child's bedroom. You can buy hanging rails for the interior to turn them into wardrobes. This is important to me as we rent our home and as expats are likely to move on in the next couple of years... I want multi-function furniture that can be re-purposed in other parts of the house! Taking inspiration from many of the aforementioned Pinterest gems, I purchased some extra laundry baskets to aid the sorting process. One is for the clothes ready to put away in the boys' closets upstairs. One is for Him Indoors & myself! The other is for items that require ironing. Each basket is labelled using some nifty box labels I found in Target (far more practical than fancy chalkboards)... these are similar!

The square Sterilite ones fit the shelves perfectly and they come in white or beige!

Another great aspect of this range of furniture from Ikea is the option for deep drawers.  These are perfect for storing shoes of all sizes (including the boats that Him Indoors wears)!!!

For taming the clutter in the wall mounted cupboards above the washer/dryer I bought a variety of plastic baskets and bins and sorted the contents of my cleaning storage cupboard, making things easier to find.

A major improvement was in de-cluttering the coat hooks and putting a basket for the school backpacks on the floor below. This helped remove some of the bulk on the hooks. I labelled each hook for a member of the family so that the kids can take ownership of their own items. I found this worked brilliantly for some stair baskets I set up. To label each hook without damaging the walls I used some brilliant Post-it Labels. I also invested in a wall rack to organise the brooms and mops that were cluttering up the corner. This has made a huge impact on reining in the clutter.

I used suction hooks to hang things like the clothes horse off the side of the dryer.

One of the best investments I made was to get a countertop ironing board. As with many ironing boards I found the pad that it came with was a little thin, so I also invested in a universal fit felt pad. I have another suction cup on the side of the wall mounted cabinets to store it when not in use, but it really doesn't take up any space so is actually easy to leave out.  It really streamlines the laundry process too, as if an item needs a quick iron I can do it as I pull it out of the dryer. I added an over the door hanging rail to help with this.  I store hangers here to put ironed items on.

One of the most effective things I employed in cheering up the room (without being able to actually decorate) was to pin a piece of bright patterned fabric to the wall behind the washer & dryer!! The fabric was only about $5 a yard from Ikea and really creates an impact... I love using cheap fabric for cheap & easy DIY wall art on a big scale!

BEFORE...





AFTER...

I live in a house of 3 boys (four if you count long-suffering Him Indoors).  There are many upsides of being surrounded by all this masculinity and I love being a Mum of boys... however, one of the things that has been slowly building ever since my youngest two (recently turned 4-years old twins, the Shouty One & Chubby Cheeks One) potty trained last year is my realization that boys stink.  There is no ignoring the fact.  They pong and I'm not just talking about the whiffy socks and smelly toes that goes along with their age & gender!  

Those of you with a delicate constitution may wish to stop reading now, because I am referring to the rather gruesome reality that is their bathroom.  I have an ongoing daily battle with our downstairs bathroom (the one the boys use most frequently) which invariably stinks like a bus depot in the early hours of a Saturday morning.  I clean that toilet and floor daily with a bathroom cleaner and bleach.  I've bought extra mats so that these get changed out daily too.  And yet, the malodorous stench is only temporarily held at bay.

It was really getting me down.  Even to the point where I would beseech my newly independent little men to go back to sitting down for a pee, just to minimize the hose pipe effect (not that this made much difference)!  My husband even worried that we had a leak around the base of the toilet until I explained to him that the recurrent puddles on the floor were simply the result of the boys' bad aim.  Sigh.


Renton in the worst toilet in Scotland - from the film Trainspotting.

Whilst we weren't quite ready to accept the title of 'Worst toilet in Texas' à la the film Trainspotting I needed to sort the situation out.  The real problem was that the smell was deep into the porous surfaces in the bathroom... the grout around the tiles and the sealant at the base of the toilet bowl.  So all the surface scrubbing and cleaning wasn't getting rid of the miasma!

The solution was easier than I anticipated.  Pet stain & odor remover.  Simple.

We sadly don't have pets at the moment as the mobile expat lifestyle isn't very easy for them, but several years ago we had a very elderly cat called Tabitha who came to spend her golden years living with us when my in-laws emigrated. Such a sweet little thing, but at the ripe old age of 21 she started to lose control of her bodily functions (sad, but it happens to the best of us). I therefore became very familiar with certain pet cleaning products... and while I would hesitate before calling my kiddos little animals, how different could it be?

I sprayed the solution (containing enzymes that actually consume the odor-causing bacteria) around the base of the toilet, onto the grout around the floor tiles, along the baseboards, and even on the wipe clean paintwork (you can even use it on carpets and upholstery).  Allowed it to do it's magic for a few minutes and then wiped it up.  Easy and perfect.  Even days later, the lingering trace of urine that had plagued our bathroom has gone, leaving it fresh smelling and far more pleasant to use!

It hasn't cured my boys' lack of aim or stopped me having to clean up their messes EVERY SINGLE day, but it has got rid of the embarrassing whiff that had me cringing every time a visitor used our bathroom!

I was totally inspired by a pin on Pinterest showing a handy way to de-mystify the tangle of cables at the back of your furniture! We've all been in that situation where you've accidentally unplugged the alarm clock instead of the lamp, only to have to reset the time (grrrr!). Well, the easy fix for this issue is to label your cables, and the humble bread tag is the perfect recycled solution! Simply write the name of the appliance on the bread tag and slip it over the cable near the plug end. Perfect.





With this brilliantly simple solution in mind, I have been collecting bread (and potato bag) tags for a while, even designating a container in my newly organised kitchen cupboards for this purpose. But ever since this small, but handy, piece of plastic has registered on my radar I have been coming up with other uses for them. Check them out:





A cheap and simple wine glass tag... keep track of your drink when entertaining!





A key tag so you can identify & label all those random little keys in the drawer!





A perfect sized pan-scraper that won't damage your non-stick surfaces and will get in all the nooks and crannies unlike a normal scourer!

It would be brilliant to hear of some other ideas on ways to recycle these ingenious little thingamajigs, so leave a comment below if you have one to share!

I am pretty confident that most people reading this post have a junk drawer in their kitchen. I have no idea how or why this happens, but in every house I have ever lived in this seems to be the case. In my case, it had recently expanded to junk drawer AND cupboard, and it was getting to the point where stuff would disappear into this bermuda triangle-esque mess never to be seen again! So, utilising one of my delicious child-free mornings (courtesy of the new school semester), I decided that enough was enough... the junk drawer/cupboard was going to be tamed!  This is the result...






I have periodically attempted this feat over the years, but it has only ever been a temporary decluttering solution, so I decided to be a bit more methodical this time by completing an audit of what actually ends up in the mess! The list was very long (and sometimes random), but I was able to categorise some of items:

- Stationery items - sticky tape, paper clips, glue sticks, elastic bands, scissors, pencils, erasers, pens, stapler, pencil sharpener, post-it notes, ruler, adhesive labels, reward stickers etc....
- D.I.Y. items - screwdrivers, hex keys, picture hooks, super glue, tape measure, felt furniture pads, adhesive hooks, pen knife, etc...
- Medications - headache tablets, bandaids, antiseptic cream, antihistamine cream, thermometer, children's pain reliever, arnica cream, sore throat lozenges, hand cream, lip balm etc...
- Books - recipes books, address book, bird field guide, etc...
- Transitory stuff the needs to find a home - Bits of broken toys/found parts awaiting reuniting with the rest, unopened mail, kids' artwork, photos, mementoes I want to keep....!
- Batteries
- Sunglasses
- Phone chargers etc...
- Box tops, Labels for Education, etc...
- Spare change
- Bread tags (I told you some of it was random)
- Garage door openers & spare keys
- Postage stamps
- Check book
- Business cards
- Takeaway menus
- Coupons
- Scraps of paper with important notes


I then measured the dimensions of the space available in the drawer and cupboard.  Armed with this information and the audit information (particularly the categories) I went shopping for solutions!


The Drawer



It is much harder to lose items and get in a muddle when you have dividers in your drawer.  Just consider your cutlery drawer... knives, forks & spoons all have a home and rarely get in a state!  So I figured that a drawer divider with small compartments would help keep the junk in order.  The reason for choosing a divider with small compartments is based on the audit above.  A lot of the items I found in my audit were small and easily lost.  The bigger items, especially paper items, such as menus, mail and kid's artwork deserved better homes than being stuffed in a drawer and so by only having small compartments in the drawer it means that they can't fit in even if you were tempted!!  I made this mistake before by putting a filing tray in a drawer... it just got filled with junk!
I bought mine in target for under $10, but there are some brilliant designs around that even expand to fit your drawer exactly to prevent bits from getting lost down the side!



I put small frequently used stationery items, such as paperclips, sticky tape & post-it notes in the divided drawer compartments.  Plus things like my check book and garage door opener that I need ready access to. You can also utilize small containers with lids to store items - I used a small plastic container to keep all my batteries together.


The Cupboard
Above my now orderly drawer is a cupboard which was also in need of some serious organisation.  Firstly, to keep the scraps of paper, menus, photos, lists, etc... I needed a display solution.  However, in wanting to keep the kitchen streamlined, I wanted to keep it hidden from view for the general public!  My solution came via Pinterest and it was one I had earmarked for this purpose... cork boards inside the cupboard door!!!!  I bought some plain 12" square cork tiles and used some 3M removeable adhesive strips to attach them to the inside of the doors.  Perfect!  I then use pins to attach business cards, important notes etc... I also keep a small sandwich bag pinned to the board to collect Box Tops & Labels for Education for the kids' school.  I've pinned a binder (bulldog) clip to the board to collate and store takeaway menus.  And finally, I've glued a hook to the board to hang scissors so they are easily to hand but well out of the reach of little people!!!









Inside the cupboard itself, I needed to streamline the storage of items that were less frequently needed.  For this purpose, I found a brilliant Sterilite plastic drawer unit in Target for under $10.  The drawers pull completely out which means you can put it up high and just pull the tray out when you need to find something.  It's approximately 9"x9"x9" so fitted in perfectly in one of the cupboard shelves.  I used the drawers to store: stationery (such as a pack of pencils, permanent markers etc..), glues & fixtures (picture hooks, super glue, felt furniture pads etc...) and tools (screwdrivers, hex keys, etc..).  I also raided the dollar section of my local Target and came up with some small bins and a plastic basket.  The basket I used to create storage for all the medicines and first aid items I needed close to hand... again, handy to keep out of the reach of small people.  The small bins I labelled to store the small random pieces that tend to accumulate over time... for me, it's pieces of toys that either need to be reunited with their set or need gluing/repairing.  I also have a bit of a thing for collecting bread tags... handy little things (I will blog more another day)!!!













Then, once the books are lined up neatly, an old mug/jar repurposed for spare change, a pot found for pens and a filing tray set up for kids' artwork that I want to file & keep... and the cupboard is done!






Several weeks on and this system is working unbelievably well!  In fact, it has turned into a mini desk area.  I invested in a charger unit to keep all the phone chargers organised and neatly out of the way, and with all the space created, there was even room for my notebook computer to be set up waiting in the cupboard!