I am so loving the Container Store. I don't know why I never took any interest to go there after years of walking past the store on several occasions. If you've never been the Container Store, let me just warn you...it's like walking into a candy store. It's a place where you can find anything and everything to organize your life and make things so much easier. If you ever been to Ikea and you enjoy it every time, then you will love the Container Store. Every week I've been tackling a new project around the house. I started doing this regimen of mine since the New Years resolution that I blogged about was to be more organized. So last week I organized my pots & pans.


Yes, I know. My before picture looked atrocious. I had my baking pans on the top shelf along with other baking essentials and my pots and pans on the bottom. I gutted everything out. Donated a few unused pots and pans to a friend who just moved to their new apartment the day before I took this picture. Made the decision to designate this cupboard for only pots and pans and moved my baking pans to a new home.


I picked up a lid organizer from the Container Store for only $4.99 and put the lids on the top shelf and the pots and pans on the bottom. Putting the more frequent used pieces in the front and the remainder in the back.
I picked up some self-adhesive hooks and stuck them to the inside of the door to hang my oven mits and cutting board. The green cutting board is a thin flexible plastic cutting board. It didn't have any holes for me to hang on to the hooks, so I cut a small square into it with a utility blade. Perfect! Now I don't have to scramble anymore looking for a cutting board and the oven mits no longer have to take up drawer space.

It's that time again, 11th annual No Pants Subway Ride 2012. However, this year was a little different. My friend Lisa came to visit me from Phoenix, Arizona and she had absolutely no idea that she was arriving on the same day that the No Pants Subway Ride was taking place. I purposely planned a late lunch with her and took the same subway routes that I knew that pantless people would be on. Usually, I am involved as a pantless participant, you can see my blog post from it last year here. However, this year was quite fun being on the spectator's side of things. I recorded Lisa's reaction and you have to watch the video for yourself. Let me just warn you, my friend is pretty bold and has absolutely no filter when she talks....which I love about her. She's the type that says exactly what's on her mind or what's on other people's minds but who do not have the guts to say it. So with that in mind, go watch the video below.

See ya on my next blog post!

As much as I love baking cupcakes, the collection of cupcake liners can get a bit excessive if you're collection begins to grow throughout the Holidays. Luckily for me, I just baked over 4 dozen cupcakes within the past 2 weeks so my collection is starting to dwindle away (but not for long). I came across an amazing idea thanks to pinterest. Blogger Torie Jayne came up with a brilliant idea to organize her cupcake liners in a spaghetti jar. I had enlisted this idea in my previous blog post: "Happy New Organized Year"


Here are the steps:

You'll need a 1 liter size bottle for this project.

Step 1:
Peel off the wrapper from the bottle

Step 2:
Clean any excess goo stuck on the bottle

Step 3:
Use masking tape as your guide to where you will cut.
You can skip this step and just eyeball it.
But I preferred to make sure it was as even as possible
since my eyeballing skills for cutting is like a 4th grader.
I lied.
A 3rd grader.
haha.

Step 4:
Cut. Cut. Cut.

Step 5:
Remove the tape.

Step 6:
File any sharp edges.
I didn't have any sand paper
(remember it was 2am)
so I just used an extra nail file that I have.
After this process, be sure to wash and dry the bottle.
Step 7:
Decorate!
Don't worry, the glue is dried now.
I was just too excited to take the picture to wait for the glue to dry.






Hope you enjoy it! If you do plan on doing this or anything similar to this...please let me know. I'd love to see it!

So for starters, here's 10 organization tips:

1. Organize Cords
I just did this yesterday in my kitchen. Instead, I used a label maker as opposed to a bread clasp. It look so much neater and you don't have to fumble while trying to figure out what cord goes to what device.

2. Organize measuring cups/spoons
This is brilliant!

3. Organize Closet.
Utilize the door to hang your bags.

As much as looking at this annoys me because the perfectionist in me wants to fix and revert everything back its normal order. There is at the end of this...a purpose. At the beginning of the year, turn all the hangers backwards (takes less than a 60 seconds). Everytime you wear something, hang it back to its regular fashion. By the end of the year, if there is still some clothing hung backwards, you have to either throw it out or donate. Unless it's something that doesn't fit you but you plan to wear, get it out of your closet and put in storage until you can wear it. I actually did this on New Years day. It actually forces me to look at my clothes differently and be more creative with my clothing because there are pieces that I would hate to see go.

Who uses the ceiling space in their closet? I know I do not. As a matter of fact...Christmas is now over and the next time I'll be touching the gift wrapping paper won't be for another 11 months. So why not hang it where it's out of the way. Genius!

I'm happy that I've finished organizing my closet. I used empty shoe boxes that I decorated.
My closet looks so pretty now.


9. Organize Cupcake Liners
Spaghetti jar to organize your liners? Creative!

At the end of each month, transfer your photos to a CD to save space on your drive and to act as a back up. Label each CD by the month and year and
use a CD label to symbolize a general idea as to what's on the CD.