In our family room (which is where we spend the bulk of our day) we have two tall bookcases that have been driving me crazy. The first one was our DVD bookcase, which I finally organized last month. This month I finished the second bookcase, which has the kids summer school books, craft & school supplies, educational toys, cook books, mags, the phone/charger station, and the files/paperwork I use all the time. That’s a lot of stuff for one shelf.

Everything was just getting shoved everywhere. Plus it was hard that the second shelf had too much height and wasted space.

After some rearranging and organizing I was able to improve the book case to this.

First, for the bottom shelf, I got some new $5 magazine files from Target (like the ones I used when I organized my desk area bookcase.) I could have used one or two more but that’s all I could find locally. I used clear plastic holders that I already had for the rest of my magazines. They all fit, along with my manuals binder.
I used various sizes of Martha Stewart’s labels to label everything.

The second to the last shelf holds my recipe binders, cookbooks and a covered bin that holds stamps, address labels, envelops and such.
The middle shelf holds my tall file, my household binders (I’ll share those with you on my next organizing post), the phone and charging station etc.

For the top half of the shelf, I put away the workbooks we no longer needed and cleaned out the paper trays.
For the row that was too tall I bought too shelf rack similar to this. That allowed me to stack up the crayon/marker bins, the games and the craft bins neatly.

All in all, it is working out much better for us! Next time I’ll share about the binders and what went in them. In the meantime, happy organizing!

I am short on time today so this will be a quick one. I have already posted these photos of my fridge but not in the context of Operation Clean & Organize. I’ve been relatively good at keeping my fridge clean since I usually clean it out every week or two. On Sundays Brian always makes the family breakfast. After breakfast I wash the dishes and catch up on a little kitchen cleaning – like the fridge. I check what food or leftovers need to be eaten and plan the week’s menu around those items. Keeping on top of things makes my meal planning a lot easier and eliminates the problem of wasted food that we used to have.
Here is what my fridge basically looks like – including a munchkin looking for a snack.

To organize the fridge I got rid of the 101 mismatched reusable containers that overran my kitchen cabinet and I bought a big box of Rubbermaid Premier Containers when they were on sale at Costco. The lids and containers stack together so I keep the larger ones in my regular plasticware cabinet and the small and medium sized ones in one of my kitchen drawers.

The second best (if not best) investment I made was purchasing a number of Fridge Binz (see links below) for jarred items and lunch items like yogurt, jello, juice boxes, etc. I. LOVE. THEM. It makes finding things in the fridge much easier. Instead of rummaging for the tarter sauce or pickled relish that is stuck at the back of the fridge, you simply pull out your bin and there it is!

Here is the side view of the narrow bin.

I use these for our inside fridge and our outside fridge. If you’re interested, here they are. The also have shorter ones, ones for coke cans and pantry styles available. Just search “fridge bins” on Amazon.

Last week I worked on my DVD shelf. Over the last decade Brian and I have collected a crazy amount of DVD’s – both store bought ones and movies we recorded onto blank DVD’s. I couldn’t fit them all on our shelf! Not only was it overflowing with movies, but also with other junk it had collected.

I finally decided to get rid of the DVD cases and placed the discs in space saving CD cases. For the DVD’s we recorded, I placed them in white paper sleeves.

I had a bunch of media baskets I bought at IKEA ages ago. I used those for my regular DVD’s and labeled them by category.

I put the paper sleeved DVD’s in a long basket I picked up at Target. I cut down two file folders into mini files sleeves and labeled them.

Here is what the final shelf looks like. I kept the TV series box sets (Like Lost, Psych and I Love Lucy) on the top two shelves. The third shelf has the baskets of paper sleeved DVD’s and the fourth shelf the CD cases with DVD’s. A big improvement. I debated whether or not to get new colorful baskets but it would be silly to spend money on new ones when these will work fine, even if it looks a bit “brown.” LOL. To keep track of the movies we own, I’m almost done listing them and placing the sheets in a binder for easy reference when we need to decide what to watch for movie night. 🙂

When we remodeled the house and added a bedroom, we closed off the old master bathroom and made it into the kids’ bathroom. It has only one sink but a long countertop. Invariably, there were various toiletries and clothes thrown all over the counter. To try and keep things a bit more organized, I placed a basket on the counter for each child. (I bought these plastic baskets/bins at Target.) Inside their basket were extra diapers/undies and any products they alone used.

I placed name tags above their basket to remind them of which one is theirs. After they dress in the morning I also have them fold their pj’s and place them in their basket for the next night. (Although “wad” would describe it better than “fold.”) It has worked out well and eliminated the need to search through sheets and under beds for their pj’s before bedtime.

There is another small counter in the bathroom that I use when we have guests. I have extra bins and labels with the names of frequent guests – such as my mom who spent a few days with us while I was out of town.

I keep one bin for them to put their toiletries and things and one basket filled with extra shampoos, lotions, toothbrushes etc for them to use while they are visiting. I don’t have a picture if it here but along with their towels I’ll have a little welcome gift for them – chocolate or mints, a burned CD of favorite songs, a special soap or lotion in their favorite scent, stationary or mini-photo album, a favorite magazine or snack (best choices for when my brothers or dad come visit.) I just think it’s a nice touch to let my family or friends know that I am happy they are visiting our home.