DIY BOX BASKET

SENSORY BOXES WITHOUT THE MESS

Who would have thought a simple box can keep those tiny little things in place??!  Ms. S loves playing with sensory boxes but OMG, the mess!!! It used to drive me crazy! 

DIY LEATHER PULLS

I've been seeing these leather pulls all over Pinterest and I just had to do it.  Initially, I made my 11x11 cube boxes from H&M into 5.5x11 boxes.  But I felt it was too plain and the girls were having a hard time pulling it out from the shelves.  I got myself some leather strips, hardware and...

DIY CARDBOARD GUITAR STAND

My husband got the LO her very first guitar and she loves it.  She carries it around the house and pretends to be like daddy.  But it is driving me crazy as to where to put it.  And so, I made a guitar cardboard stand.  Yes, crazy.  But, I did. 

HOW TO PACK BABY CLOTHES USIING ZIPLOCK BAGS

 It is common knowledge among my friends that when I travel, I travel light. I once traveled with a back pack for a 3 day weekend.  Now, however, that we have a toddler, packing has taken a new meaning.  It now means check in baggage, mixed up clothing and looking for things in a haystack.  On our first family trip, I over packed.  Half of our check in luggage was LO's; and her clothes are tiny compared to my clothes and my husband's.

SEARCH FOR THE PERFECT PLANNER

It's December and the year is almost over! That means it is time for me to search for the perfect planner.  I'm a "paper" kind of person, I write everything and a planner keeps me organized.  I tried several times to go digital but after a few weeks, I would end up getting a planner.  So this year, I'm starting the year right by getting the perfect planner.  I'm not loyal to a specific planner; I think I haven't really found the planner that actually works with my needs.  I have tried a LOT of planners in the past.  I've had a planner since high school and every year, I had a different one each year.

WHAT TO DO WITH THE EXTRA PASTA SAUCE

For those who know me, they will vouch that I don't have a lot of cooking experience.  That being said, I don't know any shortcuts when it comes to prepping or cooking.  One of my go to food is pasta in a jar;  not the healthiest but it's easy to make and quick.  My friend Cita thought me the coolest trick in storing pasta sauce.

 

STORING BABY CLOTHES

The LO is now 9 months! How time flies... Today, I organized her old clothes to put in storage.  This is an underbed storage box where I put her clothes as she outgrows them.  Not exactly organized.

  

WHAT TO PACK FOR THE BABY

The LO just had her first family vacation.  We visited her uncle, aunt and cousins in Arizona.  It was a week of firsts -- first airplane ride, first swim and first trip to the shopping outlet.  It was also a first for my husband and myself to travel with an infant and did we screw up!

I'm not going to lie, but I may have over packed for the LO. I think 1/3 of our checked in luggage was her clothes alone and she only got to use half of it.  I also brought a lot of just "in case" clothes that were not even weather appropriate.  And don't get me started with the burp clothes!  As a general rule I think, it is better to have packed more than she needed.  But nevertheless, it is a lesson learned -- pack what is just needed.

DIY CARDBOARD SHELF

I think I outdid myself this time. I made a cardboard shelf. I am upgrading the LO's play area and I needed a shelf to store her new toys.  The LO has started to crawl and explore her surroundings and I am not comfortable with a shelf where she could hit her head.

MAKING THE CLOSET WORK FOR YOU

How do you organize your closet? Do you take out everything, sort through your items and then put everything back only to redo everything in a week or two? For me, organizing is like doing a math word problem.  You define your problem, identify what is given and look for the solution. 

Take for instance my husbands closet.  His current "system" wasn't really working anymore.  Here is a picture of his closet.  I would not say his closet is disorganized but some things do not belong where they should be. 

ORGANIZING WINTER ACCESSORIES

About 2 weeks ago, I got a hanging shoe organizer from Target for $5 on sale.  I figured, "I'll buy it and I'll find a place for it".  And I did! It has been a very very brutal winter here in NY so our scarves, hats, gloves and earmuffs had to be easily accessible.  I re-purposed the shoe organizer to an accessory organizer --

DIAPER CADDY

 

When I started organizing the nursery, I knew that a changing table was out of the question because of the limited space that we had.  As an alternative, I opted for a diaper caddy that I could bring from the bedroom to the living room and vice versa.

ORGANIZING TINY BABY CLOTHES

Baby clothes are teeny tiny and there's a lot of them!  There's the short sleeve onesie, the long sleeve onesie, the pajama, the footed pajama, the burp cloths... the list goes on.  If you're a mom, you're probably nodding your head with a smirk on your face right now saying "oh yeah" and if you're not a mom you're probably scratching your head and thinking "how could a tiny baby have so much stuffs?"  Of course being the OC that I am, I just had to organize my daughter's drawer.

BYE BYE PAPER CLUTTER

 Organizing paper clutter is one of the most taxing task I could think of.  Sorting through document after document and figuring out what is important and what is not important is very time consuming.  Once you've sort through your stack of papers, you need a filing system to help you keep organized. Here are 8 paper organizers that could do the job depending on the size of the documents you have and the functionality you have in mind.  

Mercer Desktop File $30 Container Store  /   Flyt Magazine File $2  Ikea   /  Vertical File Cabinet $170  Staples   /  Stockholm File Box $35  Container Store  /  Letter-Size Portable File Box $16 Container Store  /  Poly Colors Expanding File $13 Staples  /  Dokument Letter Tray $9 Ikea  /  Martha Stewart Binder by Avery $6 Staples 

HOW TO STORE BABY'S NEW CLOTHES

This is a long over due post (after all, my baby is now 2 months old!) on how to organize baby clothes for storage.  After my baby showers, I was faced with the dilemma of figuring out how to store the clothes I got for my daughter.  I have to confess that before I got pregnant, I didn't know that baby clothes were sized by month --- NB, 0-3, 3-6, etc.  I was confused on how some sizes' overlapped like 3-6 months and 3-9 months or 6-12 months and 6-9 months.  So, when I was deciding on how to store my daughter's clothes, it was important to me that I could easily sort through the clothes to make sure I know which she can already use and which she already has so I won't buy doubles.  Since I didn't have a lot to store and I wanted to maximize space (I wanted to use the space under the crib), I opted to use an underbed shoe organizer over clear bins and over sized Ziploc bags.

DIY FOLDER TABS

Since I have been home for a while, I've picked up some "projects" around the house that I have been too lazy to do.  Today, I worked on my filing bin.  My filing bin is pretty organized but it doesn't look nice, for a lack of a better term, I think its boring and ugly looking.

SHOE CLUTTER BASKET

You know how you come into your apartment and take your shoes off by the door and the next thing you know there's like a big pile of shoes and you don't even know how they all got there? Welcome to my world! My husband and I have a no shoe policy at home so we take our shoes off as soon as we enter our apartment.  We are pretty good at making sure we don't bring in the outside dirt, but we're not so good on putting our shoes where they should be.  Thus, the pile of shoes by the door.  What to do.. what to do... I came up with the solution of setting up a "shoe basket" by the door. It's not conspicuous enough to be an eye sore and it blends with our home design and serves the function of de-cluttering the entryway.  

MAKE COOKING LESS MESSY

I'm not much of a cook, but when I do cook I tend to be very messy... (spills on the counter, flying chopped garlic, vegetable stalks on the floor, unwashed plates and bowls), I finally figured out a way to  make my life a little bit easier. 

On the Rachel Ray's show, she uses a bowl to put all the "trash" in as she preps her ingredients; instead of using a bowl, I use a plastic bag (you know those clear bags where you put your produce at the grocery store).  When I am all done prepping and cooking, I just throw the bag straight to the garbage.  This makes my clean up time much faster and the counter a little bit less messy (now, if I could just address my inexperienced chopping and slicing abilities).   

MOBILE OFFICE

My husband and I live in a 480 square foot apartment in New York City.  Translation: Space is a precious commodity.  Believe it or not, I am a teacher who does not have a desk at home!  Since our apartment is tiny, having a desk specifically for the function of work was just not an option (like that's not a good reason enough!).  So instead of setting up a desk, I opted for an IKEA Billy bookcase for 2 reasons.  First, it gave me a much needed storage and second, it took less space than a desk would.  I used white IKEA boxes to store all my paraphernalia (scrapbooking materials, lesson plans, supplies) and labeled each box with what's inside it.  The printer is set up in the bookcase low enough that I could connect it to the power supply and to my laptop when I need to print without the need to move it.  I purchased a basket from Container Store to hold my "most used" items like pens, stapler, calculator, post-its, etc. which I could easily move to the dining table when I need them. The beauty of this mobile system is that everything has its own place and it doesn't take so much space than a desk would.