Kitchen Cleaning Closet-ish

I'm in the 6-month Rich Life Mastery program with Belinda Rosenblum. While the focus is all things money management, I've found that as I've been in it, it's translated into management of everything. You can't manage chaos. So I've been slowly cleaning & organizing areas of my house that have been neglected. Entropy takes over. This week I'm working on the kitchen & will end with painting. Yesterday I cleaned out the laundry closet and then addressed this eyesore:

See? Ouch. It wouldn't be so bad (OK, it would) but it's not even functional.

 So I went to Home Depot & got this guy to saw me a coupla boards & I built this:

YAY, me! I have to give a shout-out to Kathy Jenkins of Come to Order. She's the one who originally taught me about track shelves. So easy! And more than that, she taught me HOW TO THINK about organization for my learning style. [Side note here: my tax gal said as I was giving her my files & receipts, "Wow. That organizer we wrote off last year really paid off!"] 

Laundry stuff conveniently located. Recycling on floor (not taking over the rest of the kitchen)! Car washing stuff on topmost shelf. Because, really. How often am I doing that?

 This morning, as I was admiring my handiwork, I thought, you know what these shelves need?

Washi tape. It's my new-favourite-thing!

 So then I got a tension rod and put up paint canvas curtains:

To match the laundry closet curtains, & everything looks neat 'n' tidy.

So tomorrow I'll be rearranging the kitchen cabinets for a 4th time. That's the advantage of having free-standing furniture. And perhaps getting to the painting part. We'll see. :-) 

Before & After: Office Closet

You may remember my organization post about the office work I did with organizer Kathy Jenkins. It only took me 10 months and 3 hours to clean out my office closet as homework from my last session. My file cabinets & desk drawers are still maintained, but the closet loomed over me:

Yikes. Threatening to spill on me every time I added something to the piles.

Working on the closet, necessitated addressing this area:

The plastic bin on the right holds gift bags, tissue paper, ribbons & bows. 

So I moved the gift bag drawers to the closet:

Much better!

 What I did:

Top shelf: Book bag, laptop bag, portable file folder that holds warranties & product info.

Second shelf: New drawer unit on left to hold all packaging envelopes to send out journals, CDs, artwork, etc. Gift packaging drawer unit on the right. On either side of the drawer units, boxes broken down; small on left, large on right. Whatever didn't fit, got recycled. On top of packaging drawer unit is a container to store bubble wrap. Again, whatever didn't fit, got recycled. On top of gift drawer unit is a container for bows.

On floor: box (with other boxes on top) with file folders. A metal trash can houses packaging paper and wrapping paper. On the right is a full spectrum light that I had on the table, but am putting away in anticipation of SPRING.

Here is the other area reorganized:

MUCH better!  The B&W laser printer sits on a new-old piece I just got at a thrift store for $10. I had planned on using it in the massage room, but it works really well here. The photo printer is on top of the cabinet that hold all the different kinds of paper. 

What I learned in my organization sessions with Kathy continues to pay off!