Cleaning | Table for Five

Tackle it Tuesday – My Bathroom Shelves

February 22, 2011 By Elizabeth

In the bathroom that Kaitlyn and I share, I have a deep recess in the wall with shelves that I use to store all my makeup and skincare stuff. I never meant to let it get this bad. The storage cabinets with the multiple drawers seemed like such a good idea at first, I would have one drawer for face makeup, one drawer for eye makeup, one drawer for lip makeup, etc. Everything would stay neatly in it's drawer and I'd always know where everything was. Yeah, right. Not only have I failed at keeping the drawers organized, but I have all this big stuff that doesn't fit in the drawers that ends up piled up in FRONT of the drawers. Which means I can't OPEN the drawers. I'm going to show you something that causes me all kinds of embarrassment any time someone comes over here and needs to use my bathroom: And here's my biggest problem, bigger even than these shelves - I can't throw things away if they still seem useful. For example, I have lipsticks I bought that seemed great at the store … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Tackle It Tuesday Tagged With: cleaning, organization, Tackle It Tuesday

Tackle It Tuesday – Books and Bedroom

November 2, 2010 By Elizabeth

PART 1. THE BOOKS: It started with a notice at our township library that they were having a used books drive. All I had to do was pull my car up to the curb and volunteers would unload as many books as I wanted to bring in. With Chris out of town on a business trip, I wanted to do something to surprise him when he got back, the way he builds me a piece of furniture every time I go to BlogHer. And the fact is, I'm a book hoarder. I was hanging on to decades of books, stacked three boxes high in our basement. That notice at the library was the jump start I needed. I set aside 4 big packing boxes from product review deliveries and started sorting through the boxes in the basement. I made piles to keep, piles to donate, and piles to throw away. As a book lover, it's almost painful for me to throw away a book, but if I came across one with a torn off cover or the beginnings of mildew, out it went. Into the keep pile went everything by my favorite authors - Stephen King, Dean Koontz, … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Tackle It Tuesday Tagged With: Bedroom, big jobs, books, cleaning, donations, housework

Scientists looking for black holes should check my house

February 4, 2010 By Elizabeth

It's no secret that I'm unorganized, a piler, a clutterer. But it's not like the crew of Hoarders will be parking 1-800-Got-Junk trucks out front or anything. The surfaces might be piled with stuff, but you can tell there are surfaces underneath. Nevertheless, every once in a while, something disappears and no matter how hard we look, we just can't find it. The first thing to go missing was one of Kaitlyn's shoes. A shoe is not a tiny thing, and yet although we've torn the house apart, we just can't find it anywhere. Then, the case for my Nintendo DS vanished. We've looked and looked and looked, it is just gone. And now, this morning, I went to fix a cup of coffee, and the bottle of coffee creamer I bought at the grocery store last night isn't in the refrigerator. I checked every shelf and drawer, I even checked the freezer because you never know. It's just gone. So what is up with that? Where did those things GO? I hate having to buy Kaitlyn another pair of shoes when she has … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Stuff I think about Tagged With: cleaning, clutter, organizing